While Major League Baseball is still making its way through the playoffs – and we all saw perhaps the best performance in a game ever on Friday night thanks to Shohei Ohtani – winter league baseball kicked off this week on Wednesday in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Mexico. Three days into the season in the Dominican Republic and a Cincinnati Reds prospect made for a big night.
Only four Reds players have appeared on a roster in the league so far: three prospects and then left-handed reliever Reiver Sanmartin (he hasn’t pitched a game yet). On Friday evening it was the oldest of the candidates who had a big competition. Just before the winter league season started, the Toros Del Este made a trade to acquire Francisco Urbaez from Escogido (where he played in winter ball the past three years) and the move paid off early. The undrafted free agent who signed in 2020 (when the draft was only five rounds instead of the normal 20 rounds) went 4-4. He scored three points. And he capped his day with a bases-loaded RBI single in the 7th inning to extend his team’s lead. Through his three games this winter league season, he hit .455 with a walk, hit by a pitcher, and did not strike out.
During the regular season, Francisco Urbaez spent the entire 2025 season with Triple-A Louisville. He struggled through the first month of the season, hitting .222/.265/.333 in 17 games played through May 4. But on May 6, he went 2-2 with a walk and two doubles and never looked back.
As the season ended, he had increased his average on the year to .314. Urbaez struckout just twice more than he walked (40 strikeouts, 38 walks) for the Bats and he had more extra-base hits than strikeouts thanks to 32 doubles, five triples and four home runs in his 97 games played. An injury would cost him five weeks of the season, as he missed the last few days of July, all of August and the first game of September.
He could be an interesting option as a utility player. At Louisville last year, he played second base, third base and left field. A similar pattern also applies in recent years. He has spent most of his time at second base (270 games), but he has played 40 games at third base, 37 at left, two at right, six at shortstop and five at first base.
In Arizona
The Arizona Fall League started two weeks ago and the Reds sent eight players to the league. Rhett Lowder is among that group and he will take the mound for his second start on Saturday evening at 6:30 PM ET. In his first, he threw two shutout innings and had 21 strikes out of his 23 pitches thrown that day. We wrote here with more details about his outing if you’re interested.
Friday’s Arizona Fall League game for the Reds team – the Peoria Javelinas – went quite well for two of their prospects. Leo Balcazar, the team’s #15 prospect, had three hits in the game. He doubled, walked, drove in a run and scored two runs, raising his average to .385 in his six games played.
But it was Cam Collier who stood out on the day. He also had three hits, a walk, was hit by a pitch and drove in three runs. Collier’s big hit was a two-run home run that went an estimated 450 feet. His home run left the bat at 107.2 MPH, but it wasn’t the hardest hit ball he had that day. One of his two singles had an exit velocity of 107.7 MPH. The other was 104.5 MPH off the bat. The Reds #7 prospect is hitting .364/.533/.591 in his six games played for Peoria thus far.
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