Baseball America’s Top 10 Cincinnati Reds prospects for 2018

Each new offseason brings a bevy of new Top 10 prospect lists, and Friday brought us the updated version from Baseball America detailing the highest-end talent on the Cincinnati Reds farm. In an endorsement that drafting second overall each of the last two years hasn’t been too overwhelming for Cincinnati’s scouting team, the Reds’ 2018 list is headlined by the two players used with those high selections - IF Nick Senzel and RHP Hunter Greene.

Senzel, 22, is fresh off clubbing 40 doubles in just 119 games in 2017, a season in which he hit a stellar .321/.391/.514 in 507 PA between A+ Daytona and AA Pensacola. A 3B exclusively during his two seasons as a professional, we heard earlier this week that Senzel will get time at 2B this upcoming spring training, which is a position he played quite often while at the University of Tennessee. It seems obvious that his potent right-handed bat will be in Cincinnati’s big league lineup somewhere at some point during the 2018 season, which makes both his top-tier ranking and ETA things to make you salivate.

As for Greene, the player with the highest draft signing bonus in history still rates as a can’t miss prospect despite limited action and so-so performance in our first glimpse of him as a professional. Having just turned 18 years old in August, he’s got years before he’ll make an impact at the big league level, but his 102 mph fastball and picturesque delivery are enough to suggest his talent level is as rare as there is in the game today, and 4.1 rough innings pitched with Rookie League Billings in 2017 wasn’t about to change that perception.

Rounding out the list: 3) OF Taylor Trammell, 4) RHP Tyler Mahle, 5) OF Jesse Winker, 6) RHP Tony Santillan, 7) OF Jose Siri, 8) IF Shed Long, 9) RHP Vlad Gutierrez, and 10) C Tyler Stephenson.