Cincinnati Reds’ top prospect Nick Senzel is ready for the promoton to Double-A after a fast start at Daytona Beach

The Cincinnati Reds’ top prospect continues to make baseball look easy at the professional level.

Nick Senzel has made a stop at every team in the Cincinnati Reds’ minor system.  Often a top prospect will skip one or more levels, but Senzel started in rookie ball just like everyone else.  That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t move up more quickly.  He wants to make Cincinnati some time this year, but that may be taking things a bit to the extreme.

With less than a year of professional baseball under his belt, Senzel has played just over 100 games.  In that time he has struggled to get to ten home runs and 50 RBIs.  Power isn’t really Senzel’s game.

What Senzel has done is establish himself as a professional hitter.  He averages over a hit a game and one RBI for every two games.  He has also established himself as an OBP machine, making him the right handed hitting version of Jesse Winker.

The biggest surprise so far may be his sneaky speed.  He almost reached 20 steals last year and is on pace for 20 this year.  This is after it was questioned whether he could have plus speed at all.

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Most recently Senzel drove in four runs in one game three days after being named the #6 prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America.  In the abbreviated month of April he only drove in four runs.  He doubled and homered to tie his career high in RBIs from Daytona.

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The Cincinnati Reds are in no rush for Nick Senzel to reach the majors with the season that Eugenio Suarez is having.

Even with the .381 OBP and the .767 OPS that Senzel has started 2017 with, the Reds are happy with Suarez for the moderate term plans at third base.  Suarez is leading the National League in WAR and has become the second best third baseman after last year’s MVP Kris Bryant. That allows the Reds more patience with Senzel.

That won’t hold Senzel off forever, however.  Senzel average 2 total bases per game, which is pretty nice.

More impressively, Senzel has yet to hit into a double play yet this season.

He also strikeouts less than one per game.  He has been able to maintain that this season as he moved up to High-A.  That is important for earning a promotion.

Last year Senzel batted over .300 and hovered around .400 in OBP.  This season he is batting over .280 with a sub-.350 OBP.  Those numbers should still be good enough for a promotion.

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The Reds have enough positional depth that Senzel can be moved along slowly.  However, he is doing everything in his power to move up in the organization.  Right now, there is no reason to hold him back.