Reds July Game Thread 2024

[CJD]

(07-29-2024, 10:50 PM)Goalpost Wrote: 8:41pm: Cincinnati is acquiring young outfielder Joey Wiemer and veteran right-hander Jakob Junis from the Brewers in the deal, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.

I was expecting less than nothing in return for Montas, so the fact that we got back a legitimate prospect for him is impressive. 

Joey Weimer was the 90th overall prospect in 2022 and the 100th overall prospect in 2023 and was the 2nd and 3rd ranked prospect in the Brewers system in those respective years. His scouting report is big power (grade 60), great speed (grade 60), a cannon for an arm (grade 70) and above average fielding (grade 55). His major weakness is a lot of swing and miss and a high k rate to go with his below average hit tool (grade 45).

A 45/60/60/70/55 prospect is a legit piece of the future plans for any organization. It seems like he just got pushed out of Milwaukee because of the emergence of better prospects in Sal Frelick, Jackson Chourio and Blake Perkins.

He has not performed well in the majors thus far, with a career line of .201/.277/.349/.625 with a 69 OPS+. and a 28.6% strikeout rate. I'm not going to pay much attention to his line this season because it's just 26 ABs, but we'll have to see if he continues this downward trend of if he reclaims his highly touted prospect status.

There is some optimism to think that his underlying statistics are better than his stat line, since his BABIP is just .257 (MLB average is .297) which indicates he's been unlucky on balls in play. He's also got an above average hard hit % of 38.1% (MLB average is 36.7%)

At the absolute worst, he can be a platoon bat as he batted a respectable .267/.298/.517/.815 against lefties in 116 ABs last season. It looks like the Brewers were trying to use him as an everyday outfielder, as he has more ABs against righties where he batted just .175/.277/.291/.568 in 251 ABs.

So he's kind of like Stuart Fairchild with a little less contact, a little more power and an arm that actually belongs in the outfield. The major difference is Wiemer projects to be better than this. We'll see if the Reds can squeeze that potential out of him.

Right handed outfielder with some power was a need we had going into the season, so it's nice to see they added a controllable prospect that could develop into a solid piece of the outfield rotation if nothing else.

And, as an added bonus, he played for UC. So that's fun.