Is Christian Encarnacion-Strand Close to Making His Major League Debut?

Is former Oklahoma State standout Christian Encarnacion-Strand getting close to making his official Major League debut? With how he’s playing for the Louisville Bats, the Cincinnati Reds’ AAA affiliate, you’d have to think the answer would be yes.

Encarnacion-Strand is absolutely tearing it up in Louisville. He’s hitting an insane .352 on the season, which includes 57 hits in in 162 at-bats, 12 doubles and 15 home runs, with 41 strikeouts and 14 walks. You can see his complete stat sheet here.

In fact, he hit his 15th of the season last night against Columbus and was just a triple shy of hitting for the cycle.

Now, there’s still a lot of baseball yet to be played as the Bats have played just 38 games so far this season. But CES has very quickly risen to the AAA level in just a little over two seasons of professional baseball.

The Reds are currently 28-33 and are calling up their top prospects at a pretty decent rate this season, having brought their top prospect, Elly De La Cruz up on Tuesday. However, defensively, CES plays first base and there appears to be a bit of a log jam there right now with Spencer Steer and Kevin Newman on the depth chart. Wil Myers, who’s the third 1B, is currently on the IL-10.

I think we’ll be seeing CES up in Cincy before the season is over.