Reds Minor League Baseball Blog

This may be hard to believe, but the Reds actually have other pitching prospects other then Homer Bailey.  They might not be as promising, but they definitely bear keeping an eye on.  The “next best guy” in the Reds farm system is right hander Johnny Cueto.  Mr. Cueto was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2004 and he made his minor league debut in 2005 with the Gulf Coast League.  In 43 innings there, he showed some solid control and walked only eight while striking out two.  The problem was, he gave up runs to the tune of 5.02 and that pretty much took him off the radar.  He did make a brief appearance at Sarasota but he only threw six decent innings.

In 2006, he started the season at Dayton where he finally began to bloom.  In fourteen starts and 76 1/3 innings, he struck out 82 and walked 15 en route to 8-1 record and a 2.59 ERA.  He made the move back to Sarasota and while he was effective, he struggled at times.  His strikeout rate came down a touch (61 in 61 2/3 innings) and his walk rate went up (23).  He did finish 7-2 though and that his full season record an impressive 15-3.  That’ll turn some heads.

Cueto will most likely start the season back at Sarasota but if he proves his mettle, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him up at Double A by midseason.  John Sickels likes him, and while he only gave him a B-, he did say he could see Cueto breaking out this year.

Chris Kline at Baseball America got a scout’s take on Homer Bailey and while he starts with the fact that Bailey doesn’t yet have a third pitch, and he finishes up with how he thinks Bailey should get some time at Triple A like the Reds are giving him.

Three Reds minor leaguers made the cut in MiLB.com’s All NL Central prospect team.  Homer Bailey is the top right handed starting pitcher while Joey Votto (1b) and Jay Bruce (OF) also made the cut.  Not too shabby considering if they had done this a couple of years ago, there probably wouldn’t be any Reds on the list, or at most maybe one.

Alright, for those of you who don’t know me, I go by the handle Blade Stevens.  I’ve been blogging the Reds for two and a half years, followed the team pretty closely and even delved into some historical content.  If you want to know more about me, here’s my first post at Reds Cutting Edge.  One thing that’s been lacking has been coverage of the Reds minor league system.  That ends today.

When Brian told me he was on the lookout for people to cover the minor leagues, I thought about who I might ask.  I thought about it some more and then decided, what the heck, I’d do it.  I’ve got the Thaq man helping me out at RCE so we’ll see how it works.

Now, what will be happening here?  Basically the main jist of the site will be coverage of all of the minor league games.  Whether it’s the Bats or the Mustangs, you should be able to stop by here the morning after each set of games and read all about how well the Reds minor league affiliates did.  Some of the sites that got set up earlier, like Tigers Minors, have gone through a top ten prospect list but I’m not going to have time to do that with only a week and a half until minor league game time.  Instead, I’ll do a few prospect profiles of guys who I think are worth noting.

And if you really like minor league baseball, there’s nine sites in the network so far and all of the feeds will end up at Minor League Blogs.  That should be a nice one stop minor league resource similar to what Baseball Historians is for the major leagues.  And don’t be shy.  Leave a comment if you hate what I say (or love it).