While Major League Baseball is still working their way through the playoffs – and we all got to see arguably the greatest performance in a game ever thanks to Shohei Ohtani on Friday night – winter league baseball started up this week in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Mexico on Wednesday. Three days into the season in the Dominican Republic and a Cincinnati Reds prospect put together a big night.
So far only four Reds players have shown up on a roster in the league – three prospects and then left-handed reliever Reiver Sanmartin (he has not yet pitched in a game). On Friday night it was the oldest of the prospects who had himself a big time game. Right before the winter league season began the Toros Del Este made a trade to acquire Francisco Urbaez from Escogido (where he had played in the previous three years in winter ball) and that move paid off early on. The undrafted free agent signing in 2020 (when the draft was only five rounds instead of the normal 20 rounds) went 4-4. He scored three runs. And he would cap off his day with a bases loaded RBI single in the 7th inning to pad his team’s lead. Through his three games this winter league season he’s hitting .455 with a walk, hit by pitch, and he has not struck out.
During the regular season Francisco Urbaez spent the full 2025 year with Triple-A Louisville. He struggled over the first month of the season and was hitting .222/.265/.333 in 17 games played through May 4th. But on May 6th he went 2-2 with a walk and two doubles and he never looked back.
When the season came to an end he had raised his average to .314 on the year. Urbaez only struck out two more times 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 final few days of July, all of August, and the first game of September.
He could be an interesting option as a utility player. With Louisville this past year he played second base, third base, and left field. A similar pattern holds true over the past few years, too. Most of his time has come at second base (270 games), but he’s played 40 games at third, 37 in left, two in right, six at shortstop, and five at first.
Out in Arizona
The Arizona Fall League began two weeks ago and the Reds sent eight players out to the league. Rhett Lowder is among that group and he will take the mound on Saturday evening at 6:30pm ET for his second start. In his first one he fired two shutout innings and had 21 strikes out of his 23 pitches thrown on the day. We wrote about his outing with more detail here if you are interested.
Friday’s Arizona Fall League contest for the Reds team – the Peoria Javelinas – went quite well for two of their prospects. Leo Balcazar, the team’s #15 prospect, picked up 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 that stood out on the day. He also had three hits, a walk, was hit by a pitch, and he drove in three runs. Collier’s big hit was a 2-run home run that went an estimated 438 feet. His home run left the bat at 107.2 MPH, but it was not the hardest hit ball he had on the day. One of his two singles had an exit velocity of 107.7 MPH. The other one was 104.5 MPH off of the bat. The Reds #7 prospect is hitting .364/.533/.591 in his six games played so far for Peoria.
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