The 2024 season was the first full-season for Ricky Cabrera. He was just 19-years-old with Daytona but he more than held his own at the plate as he showed a bit of pop for a teenager in the pitcher friendly league and stole 19 bases on the year for the Tortugas.
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When the 2025 season began the Reds sent Ricky Cabrera to join the High-A Dayton Dragons. He would go 1-4 in the first game of the season. The next two days saw him go 0-4 in each contest to wrap up the 3-game series to begin the year against West Michigan. Over the first four games of the home series against Fort Wayne he would go 5-14 with two doubles and a walk.
After that things went south as the hits dried up and he went into a big slump over the next three weeks. From April 12th through May 2nd he would go 8-49 with one extra-base hit and 15 strikeouts. His line on the season dropped to .187/.276/.240 at that point. To make matters even worse, in that game on May 2nd he would suffer a season ending knee injury.
For all 2025 Season Reviews and Scouting Reports – click here (these will come out during the week throughout the offseason).
Position: 3BÂ | B/T: R/R
Height: 6′ 0″ | Weight: 201 lbs. | Acquired: International FA (2022) | Born: October 31, 2004
The 2025 season was a disaster for Cabrera. Players from Latin and South America getting out to a slow start in the cold early season in the Midwest League is something that we often see every year. Cabrera wasn’t the first guy to do it and he won’t be the last, either. But the Venezuelan infielder did get out to a very poor start and his knee injury never really allowed him time to turn things around. Placing much stock in his numbers from 2025 probably isn’t the best idea.
Still, there are some things worth noting from 2025. The first is that Cabrera did not get a single game in at shortstop. While he didn’t get a ton of time there in 2024, he did start 17 games there with Daytona. At this point the position just isn’t a future option for him. His lower half has really thickened up since he signed back in 2022.
He spent most of his season at third base. His defensive struggles continued early on in the year as he made seven errors in just 18 games at the position and had an .844 fielding percentage. In his 91 games at the spot since signing he has an .893 fielding percentage. He has the tools to make the position work but he has to clean things up to make more accurate throws where his plus arm strength could be a valuable weapon if the throws can find their way to the first baseman’s glove more frequently. He’s also started to see more time at second base since the beginning of 2024, but it’s also a position he will need to improve at defensively.
At the plate, 2025 not withstanding, Cabrera is ahead of where he is in the field. He’s got a good hit tool and there’s average to slightly above-average raw power to tap into. Cabrera showed in 2024 that he can use the entire field, though his power was mostly to his pull side. In order to get the most out of both of those tools, though, he’s likely going to need to be a bit less aggressive at the plate. While Cabrera has thickened up since he signed, he was still showing above-average speed before the knee injury. He hasn’t exactly used that speed well as a base stealer over the last two years as he’s gone 19-for-29 in the stolen base department.
The profile for Ricky Cabrera is a bat over glove one. While there’s a chance he could stick at third or even second base, he’s going to have to make improvements to do so and even if he can get things right with his accuracy on throws he’s still likely going to be a below-average (but playable) defender. The value is going to come from what he can do in the batters box. If things develop right for him he could be a guy who hits for both average and for power. Neither of those things are likely to jump out of the box score at you, but he’s got 20+ home run power and a chance to have a solid average to go along with it. That’s a starter’s profile, but there’s a lot of work to be done in order to get there.
Stats
Spray Chart
He only had 64 batted balls in 2025. His spray data in that sample size is not worth much.
Video
Interesting Stat on Ricky Cabrera
The sample size for everything was small in 2025 due to less than one month of play before his season ending knee injury, but he went 1-16 against left-handed pitchers on the year.