Edwin Arroyo just turned 23 years old almost exactly two months ago. Just over two months ago, Edwin Arroyo turned just 23 years old.
This reiteration, deep breath, and patience is brought to you by a 2026 regular season with the Cincinnati Reds that saw the aforementioned Arroyo hit just .223/.266/.264 (.529 OPS) across 160 frustration PA, most of which came at the same time the team around him caved in on itself after a promising – albeit lucky – start to their regular season.
It does seem, at this juncture, that Arroyo has been around forever already. Acquired in 2022 in the deal that sent Luis Castillo to Seattle, he's been in the Reds organization long enough for Castillo to have arrived as the Mariners new ace, for Castillo to have signed the long-term contract with Seattle that Cincinnati wouldn't give him, and for Castillo to pitch his way down to the bottom of Seattle's rotation and get dumped onto the Chicago White Sox in a weight-cut.
Arroyo, though, is still barely 23. His struggles at the big league level at age 22 came after he blasted out of the gate with AAA Louisville to the tune of .323/.383/.562 (.945 OPS) through 250 PA and the end of the month of May. At age 22, for instance, fellow Reds middle infielder Matt McLain was busy hitting .232/.363/.453 in 452 PA down at AA Chattanooga – his 'breakout' at the big league level didn't come until age 23, either.
The big league struggles were glaring, and there's no real way to sugarcoat that. The switch-hitter posted just a .513 OPS against RHP and .573 OPS against LHP. Somehow, he managed to hit just .171/.203/.224 (.426 OPS) in the extremely hitter-friendly confines of Great American Ball Park. He struggled during his first stint in the big leagues with regular playing time, and he struggled again in his second stint when playing time was more sparse. Even his defense on the dirt was iffy at times, his decision-making and positioning often flat wrong in big spots despite his instincts and technique long having been graded as plus.
It puts him in an odd light as we head into 2027, assuming there's a 2027 season at all for us to peruse. For one, the expecations placed upon him when he was first called up were immense at the time. He was a top prospect who'd finally seemed to regain 100% health and rocket back up Top 100 lists with peak performance atop the minors slotting perfectly into a regular role (without a patented position change on the fly, as the Reds are wont to do) as the team was struggling. The Reds needed a 2B, a leadoff man, better overall defense and athleticism, and he – in theory – was going to provide a lot of that, and it just didn't work out for him at age 22.
With those struggles also came the seeping sensation that the Castillo trade was not, at all, going to pan out. Noelvi Marte's collapse as a big league hitter has been brutal to watch over the last two years, but at least we always had in our back pocket that Arroyo – very much the co-headliner of the deal that sent away Cincinnati's ace – was going to arrive eventually and at least give the trade the chance to come good. There's no ace in the hole for Arroyo at this point, though, since if he flops the way Marte has that's it – that's the deal gone wrong with no more pie left in the sky on which to dream.
If you peel back all the periphery and give yourself a little more tunnel vision, though, there's a deep breath in there for us all. Arroyo is a switch-hitting middle infielder with a rep for potentially plus glovework who just mashed AAA pitching to the tune of .301/.367/.524 (.891 OPS) with 15 homers in just 354 PA in his age-22 season. If instead of being the guy for whom they gave up Castillo he was simply a 2nd round pick out of high school in Puerto Rico who'd overcome a major shoulder surgery and put up that kind of AAA production at 22, we'd be falling over ourselves heading into this winter for his prospects going forward.
We'd be clamoring for him to take the place of McLain, of Ke'Bryan Hayes, of basically anyone on the Reds other than Elly De La Cruz or Sal Stewart.
It's easy to forget just how hard it is for young players to adjust to the big leagues. It's easy to forget that Elly, for instance, came blasting out of the gate in his month in 2023 only to slump down to .213/.284/.377 (.661 OPS) across his final 77 games (332 PA) of the year. Right now, there seems to be a prevailing sentiment by many that we've already seen all we need to see from Arroyo so far, and I can't help but implore for just the slightest bit more patience for a guy who 100% deserves it.
Where he fits on the 2027 Reds remains a little bit out of his control. Manager Terry Francona remains convinced that there's a whole lot more from McLain we've simply not seen in over three years, and the Reds seem committed to paying him through his second arbitration trip to be the club's regular 2B once again. Over at 3B, there's a void left by Eugenio Suarez almost certainly reaching free agency again, but the club has time and again opted against cutting bait with Hayes, and all signs point to Hayes again getting the chance to show he's something other than the worst hitter on the planet again to start 2027.
Maybe that's the deep breath and patience we all need. There's no pressure on Arroyo entering 2027 to immediately assume the role of a regular at the big league level, and it would appear he'll be destined to begin 2027 at the AAA level again – ideally with an eye at the plate for different pitches after the ones he saw at the big league level were night and day from what he saw while with Louisville. That is unless the Reds let Suarez walk, don't backfill on the infield with any additional slugger, and commit to an infield rotation at 2B/3B that gets Arroyo regular-enough time at both spots while spelling Hayes and McLain here and there. I'm not sure that latter scenario is ideal for him (or makes the overall roster good enough to matter), so I certainly hope there's a bit more patience involved that allows him to still be in 'a' lineup everyday and improving at the plate.
He technically service-time'd his way out of being a 'prospect' anymore, but he's still very much just that – and a good one, too, perhaps eclipsed only by Alfredo Duno on the Cincinnati farm. He just had a whole lot asked of him at a stage of his career when he wasn't yet ready to meet the ask. Fortunately, there's a lot more time for the Reds to do the asking.
