Cincinnati Reds Need to Call Up Sal Stewart Immediately

The Cincinnati Reds have one question to answer about Sal Stewart and a potential call up: can he be a league average hitter right now? If the answer is yes, then he should be upon here playing at the MLB level.

The Reds have gotten almost nothing out of the guys who have played second base. Matt McLain has played far and away the most games there and has mustered a 70 OPS+, or 30% below league average. 

Santiago Espinal has an OPS+ of 58 overall and should not be starting anywhere on the field.

Gavin Lux has been okay in limited playing time at second base and has hit right-handed pitchers well on the year. 

The other part of this is the defense. None of the three players has a positive number next to Defensive Runs Saved. Only one of the three has a positive number next to Outs Above Average and that is McLain with two. None of them is overwhelmingly leading the fielding side of things.

Bring Stewart up and let him play.

The Reds could employ a platoon of Stewart against lefties and Lux against righties to maximize the amount of favorable matchups Stewart sees.

If he takes off, then maybe they bump up that playing time.

But it is clear that it is time to punt the idea of McLain or Espinal helping this team. I am not sure if there is some intangible that all of us fail to recognize that Terry Francona sees, but there is ample evidence neither guy is helping the team win now.