When the 2025 baseball season began for Mason Neville he was in his junior season at Oregon. He would go on to smash 16 doubles and 26 home runs for the Ducks in 57 games. That performance helped lead to the Cincinnati Reds draft him in the 4th round (fun fact: the club also drafted him out of high school in 2022 in the 18th round but he chose to go to college).

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The draft took place in the middle of July and while a lot of players who were selected didn’t get on the field after, Mason Neville was not one of those. There was a little bit of time between when he signed and when he headed out to the field for games, but the Reds had him head off to Florida to join Daytona in the second week of August.

He came off of the bench as a pinch hitter in his debut and struck out. The next day he got the start for the Tortugas in left field and picked up his first hit, going 1-4 against Jupiter. He would pick up another hit in two of the next three games, with a pinch hitting spot in the middle where he didn’t pick up a hit.

On the 13th he was playing in his 6th game of his career and he had what was the best game of his career to that point. He would go 4-5 against Fort Myers with two triples, three runs scored, and an RBI. A week later he would top that game to open up his series in Bradenton. Neville went 4-4 with a walk, two doubles, and he hit his first home run. He would have a hit in each of the next four games, with two of those being doubles. That led to him hitting .348/.423/.630 through the first three weeks of his career.

Things slowed down quite a bit after that. There were only nine games left in the regular season, but Neville struggled bit time. He went 3-31 with two doubles and had 16 strikeouts in that time. Those struggles continued in the four playoff games for the Tortugas as he went 1-10 against St. Lucie and Lakeland.

For all 2025 Season Reviews and Scouting Reports – click here (these will come out during the week throughout the offseason).

Position: Outfield | B/T: L/L

Height: 6′ 3″ | Weight: 210  lbs. | Acquired: 4th Round (2025 draft) | Born: January 13, 2004

There are plenty of things to like about what Mason Neville brings to the field. He’s got plus raw power, he’s an above-average runner, an above-average arm, and an outside shot to play center. But there’s a pretty big ding on his resume, too. He has never made enough contact as an adult to give anyone confidence that he can hit much at the highest level.

Neville only had 33 plate appearance as a freshman at Arkansas, but he struck out 20 times that season. After transferring to Oregon for his sophomore season he played daily but struck out 60 times in 179 plate appearances. As a junior he cut down on his strikeouts, fanning 66 times in 280 plate appearances. Going from a 33.5% strikeout rate to a 23.6% strikeout rate is definitely a big improvement worth noting. But also worth noting is that the average Big Ten hitter had a strikeout rate of 18.5%. That kind of strikeout rate is still an enormous red flag for a college hitter.

When Neville makes contact, it can be very loud. No one questions the power. And when he gets on the bases he’s a good runner. It’s always going to be about whether or not he can make enough contact to allow that power to play and for him to hit for enough average for any of it to matter.

While he doesn’t have your typical true center fielder type of speed, he’s in the range of the guys who can get away with it as long as they run good routes and get good reads off of the bat. If he can make center work then he’ll get more leeway with the bat than if he has to slide to a corner spot where his arm works plenty for right field.

Stats

Spray Chart

Video

Interesting Stat on Mason Neville

Everything is a small sample size with Neville at this point, but he absolutely killed the ball on Wednesday’s in his debut. He went 8-13 with two doubles, two triples, and a home run. He hit .615/.643/1.308 on Wednesday and hit just .172/.276/.266 every other day of the week (20 games total in these other games).