It\u2019s hard to process just how complicated it must be to be a two-way professional baseball player. There\u2019s a reason, after all, while the list of those who have successfully pulled it off in the modern age consists of Shohei Ohtani and literally nobody else.<\/p>\n
So, when you look at what Sheng-En Lin pulled off during the 2025 season in the Cincinnati Reds system, you\u2019ve got to view it through the lens of a player who\u2019s been trying to both pitch and hit since signing with the club at age 17.<\/p>\n
The 2025 season for him also featured a series of notable twists. First, he stopped being a position player mid-year after being promoted to Class-A Daytona of the Florida State League after slumping to a .172\/.348\/.310 line in his third trip through Arizona Complex League play. But when he got to the Tortugas, he picked up pitching again in actual games for the first time since signing with the Reds as an international free agent, and immediately hit the ground running with a 3.06 ERA and 61\/15 K\/BB in 47.0 IP.<\/p>\n
In one season he dropped being a hitter for the first time, returned to pitching in games after a two-year hiatus, and got promoted to A-ball mid-season, yet still found a way to thrive. And now that he\u2019s going to focus solely on pitching, there\u2019s sincere hope that he\u2019ll both gain velocity back that he\u2019d shown earlier in his career and continue to dazzle, as that\u2019s what we\u2019ve seen from him already in a very short stint.<\/p>\n
Sheng-En Lin is the #19 prospect in this year\u2019s Community Prospect Rankings, earning that honor by the narrowest of margins in the latest round of voting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to process just how complicated it must be to be a two-way professional baseball player. There\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,4259,67081,4,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-574387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cincinnatireds","12":"tag-community-prospect-rankings","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-reds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116076408196437032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}