Edwin Arroyo stays hot with 107.8 mph homer for Louisville

Edwin Arroyo is turning every trip to the plate into a louder question for the Reds.

The 22-year-old switch-hitting shortstop launched a leadoff homer in his first at-bat for Louisville on May 14, a 107.8 mph shot that traveled 398 feet and helped the Bats beat Indianapolis 4-2 at Louisville Slugger Field. The ball came off José Urquidy’s 93.4 mph four-seam fastball and gave Arroyo his ninth homer of the season, continuing a blistering stretch that is starting to look less like a hot week and more like a timetable shift.

Arroyo has homered five times in his last six games and six times since May 2. Louisville’s recap said he had a hit in every May game except one, and the numbers behind the surge are just as loud as the exit velocity. In a May 9 feature, Arroyo was 37 for his previous 92 at-bats over 22 games, with 14 extra-base hits and an OPS that had climbed from .764 to 1.003. He also had 38 total bases in eight games and led the minors with 15 runs since the calendar flipped to May.

That is the kind of production that moves a prospect from promising to unavoidable. Arroyo, the Reds’ No. 6 prospect on MLB Pipeline’s 2026 Reds Top 30 list, was back on the Top 100 radar after being ranked as high as No. 92 a year earlier. If the power is real, and the recent run suggests it might be, Cincinnati has to start considering how long Louisville can keep him.

His path makes the rise more striking. Arroyo was drafted by Seattle in the second round in 2021, then sent to Cincinnati in the Luis Castillo trade at the 2022 deadline. He missed the entire 2024 season after surgery for a torn left labrum, returned in 2025 and was added to the Reds’ 40-man roster in the offseason. A player who lost a full year is now forcing a conversation about how quickly his bat can carry him past Triple-A.

The latest homer only sharpened that case. Arroyo followed a May 12 blast that was measured at 107.5 mph and 427 feet with an even louder strike two days later, and the sequence has made Louisville one of the most watched stops in the system. For the Reds, the next question is no longer whether Arroyo is healthy or productive. It is how much more of this he needs before the call becomes impossible to ignore.