Noelvi Marte is hitting in Triple-A Louisville, but the number that jumps off the page is the one that isn’t there: walks.
Since the Cincinnati Reds sent him back down, Marte has put up a .339/.351/.482 line with a 116 wRC+. He’s also trimmed his strikeout rate to 21.1%, which is a solid sign. But the walk rate is only 1.8% of his plate appearances, and that’s the part that stands out most.
That lack of patience is the real issue. The Reds didn’t option Marte because they doubted his ability to hit the ball hard. The bat speed and raw talent have always been obvious, and when he gets something he can drive, he can do damage.
What they need from him is better selectivity.
Minor league pitching can let a hitter survive some chasing. The arms aren’t as sharp, the mistakes come more often, and gifted hitters can still rack up production anyway. That gets much tougher in the majors, where pitchers are quicker to identify what a hitter will expand on and keep going right after it.
For Marte, that vulnerable area is the breaking ball away. He has to make pitchers come back into the strike zone instead of helping them by chasing out of it.
He has to be willing to take his walks. Big-league pitchers have thrown him strikes only 44% of the time, which points to just how much he’s been expanding the zone.
So yes, the batting average in Louisville looks good. But the 1.8% walk rate makes it hard to get too carried away.
The talent has never been the question. The numbers in Triple-A are encouraging. The numbers that may matter most still are not.
There’s also a staggering Elly De La Cruz stat that puts his place in Reds history into sharp focus.
As Matt Wilkes noted, Barry Larkin retired after the 2004 season. From 2005 through 2022, Reds shortstops combined for only 33.2 fWAR, which ranked sixth-lowest in baseball over that stretch. Zack Cozart led Reds shortstops in that span with 11.7 fWAR.
De La Cruz has already piled up 17.3 fWAR as a shortstop in his first four seasons.
That means he has already sailed past Cozart and produced more than half of the total fWAR Reds shortstops generated across those 18 seasons after Larkin’s retirement and before De La Cruz arrived.
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