Reds righty Julian Aguiar underwent Tommy John surgery on Friday, tweets Mark Sheldon of MLB.com. Sheldon had reported earlier in the week that Aguiar underwent surgery before issuing a correction that the rookie pitcher was still evaluating his options.
The second opinion evidently didn’t allow the 23-year-old to avoid surgery. Aguiar will almost certainly miss the entire 2025 season. Assuming the Reds keep him on the 40-man roster throughout the offseason, they can place him on the 60-day injured list at the start of spring training. He’d spend all of next season on the IL before returning to the 40-man during the winter.
Aguiar has developed from a 12th-round pick out of a California junior college into one of Cincinnati’s better pitching prospects. Baseball America slotted the 6-foot-3 righty as the No. 9 prospect in the Reds system on its most recent organizational ranking. BA credits Aguiar with a plus changeup as the headlining pitch of an otherwise average arsenal. The outlet suggests he could profile as a back-of-the-rotation starter.
Cincinnati called Aguiar up in the middle of August. He earned the promotion with a solid 3.79 earned run average across 116 1/3 innings between Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville. Aguiar didn’t have much success in his first look against big-league competition. Opponents tagged him for a 6.25 ERA over seven starts. He surrendered eight home runs across 31 2/3 frames while struggling to miss bats. Aguiar generated swinging strikes at only an 8.1% clip, resulting in a well below-average 13.6% strikeout rate.
The Reds lost two potential back-end starters in the waning weeks of the season. Lefty Brandon Williamson also blew out in September and went for his own Tommy John procedure. The Reds still have a promising nucleus of Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder and Andrew Abbott but will need to find reliability at the back of the rotation. Nick Martinez and Jakob Junis are both expected to decline options and become free agents. Lowder has limited MLB experience, while Graham Ashcraft and Carson Spiers had rough seasons. The Reds could look for multiple starting pitchers during the offseason.