What to expect from Reds top prospect Stewart in the Majors
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On July 12, Sal Stewart manned third base during the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game, representing the National League.
Just over seven weeks later, the future is now in Cincinnati.
With the Reds just four games out of the third and final National League Wild Card spot entering play Monday, they have called up their No. 1 prospect -- and biggest power threat from Triple-A -- to deliver an infusion of thump to a lineup that has the fourth-lowest SLG (.370) and second-lowest ISO (.127) in the Majors since July 1.
But as Stewart smiled for the cameras and did an in-game interview on MLB Network back in July, he donned the hat of Double-A Chattanooga. He hadn’t yet sniffed Triple-A Louisville. A lot can change in a pennant race.
From the start of the season through mid-July, Stewart led the Double-A Southern League in batting average at .306. Despite his 6-foot-1, 224-pound frame and considerable raw power, he wasn’t exactly mashing the ball over the fence. While the Double-A ballparks he played in are notoriously a bit cavernous (and the high-level pitching prospects aplenty), he had just 10 homers in 80 games. And that’s after hitting eight in 80 games at High-A in ‘24. He hit just 12 over 117 contests in his debut full season in ‘23. So you get the point -- power wasn’t his calling card.
His arrival at Triple-A has been a complete 180-degree flip. After posting a .167 ISO at Double-A, he nearly doubled that mark to the tune of .315 since his Louisville debut. While he recorded a 146 wRC+ with Chattanooga, that mark has soared to 163 after his promotion, the third-highest mark in the International League among all batters with 165 plate appearances this season.
Stewart didn’t suit up for Louisville until July 18 but he holds the club’s highest exit velocity of the season -- a 113.7 mph single. He also holds three of the other spots among the top 10, two of which were home runs -- 460 and 436 feet, respectively. Only Elly De La Cruz and Noelvi Marte have hit a ball harder as members of the Reds organization during 2025 than Stewart.
Eye-popping exit velocities. A significant power jump. An uptick in RBIs. Surely the caveat here is that Stewart -- MLB’s No. 31 prospect -- has expanded his zone as a trade-off, forgoing his preternaturally gifted plate discipline for some good old-fashioned production, right? Nope. Since the promotion, Stewart’s walk rate has actually jumped (11.5 percent, up from 8.2). His called strike/whiff percentage has stayed largely unchanged by the move as well.
Sometimes the highfalutin metrics belie what’s really going on in the batter’s box. But that’s not the case here. Stewart has hits in 31 of his 38 games for Louisville, matching his home run total (10) in fewer than half the contests. His August in particular was something from another stratosphere -- a .316/.417/.611 slash line with 16 of his 30 hits going for extra bases, including six home runs, all of which have come since Aug. 12. He’s collected 27 RBIs, far and away the most he’s ever logged in a month.
He’s done all of this despite being more than five years younger than the average player in the Triple-A International League. It’s been a rapid ascension, but one that the Reds could have seen on the horizon after Stewart was brought to big league camp this past spring. Across 13 Cactus League games, he more than held his own, hitting .292 (7-for-24) with an .893 OPS. He’s long been mentored in the offseason by Padres All-Star Manny Machado and former Reds slugger Yonder Alonso, who didn’t make his debut until age 23 -- fittingly on Sept. 1 on the banks of the Ohio River.
Much like when Alonso arrived 15 years ago, positionally barricaded, it was still time to get his bat in the lineup. The Reds went on to win the National League Central that season. This time around, Stewart comes ready -- he’s played primarily third base in 2025, but has sizable experience at second as well. Over the past two weeks, he even grabbed a first baseman’s mitt and made a pair of starts at the cold corner.
At the end of the day, as rosters expanded by two players with the calendar flipping to September, the Reds recognized that Stewart was one of their 28 best.
In short, the Reds are calling up a kid on a heater. One they hope can spark their offense over the season’s final month as they look to return to the postseason for the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. Stewart won’t be asked to do anything other than what he’s done over the past seven weeks -- and that’s mash.