How are the Reds players performing in winter league baseball?

Some winter ball leagues have about two weeks remaining in their regular season, though some will take their regular season into early January before starting the playoffs. Either way, we are more than half way through all of the winter league seasons. What better time than now to check into how the various players from the Cincinnati Reds organization have performed thus far than now?

A note worth mentioning here – we are not looking at the Arizona Fall League, which ended nearly a month ago. We are looking at the active winter league’s in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Australia.

The Hitters

There’s been a mix of performances here. Some guys are killing it, a handful of guys have been solid, and some guys have had some struggles.

At this point, most of the guys listed above are playing every game day. Francisco Urbaez hasn’t played in over a month and Yael Romero had been getting some starts until mid-November, but he’s mostly been relegated to pinch-hitting duties over the last three weeks. Edwin Arroyo has only played a few games so far in Puerto Rico, but he just joined the team last week.

The biggest highlight performances have come from Pablo Nunez and Jirvin Morillo down in Australia. Nunez is leading the league in average and on-base percentage and is 5th in the league in OPS. Morillo is 5th in the league in average, 4th in on-base percentage, 5th in slugging, and 4th in OPS. Drew Davies hasn’t exactly hit well but his five doubles do rank second in the league.

The Pitchers

There have been almost no pitching done by the Reds players in winter league baseball this offseason. Luis Mey pitched in one game and didn’t record an out. Ovis Portes did pitch in one game in the middle of October, but then the game was interrupted by rain in the 2nd or 3rd inning and then postponed rather than suspended, so the game doesn’t count and Portes will not get credit for the game, and he also hasn’t been rostered by Licey since. Irvin Machuca recently joined his team and made his first relief appearance on November 25th. Jose Franco didn’t pitch in the first month in Venezuela’s winter league, but since then he’s pitched in six games with inconsistent results.

In total, officially, there have only been three Reds pitchers enter an official game and they’ve combined for 15.0 innings.