Dragons 2025 Team Preview, Part 3: Second Basemen

As spring training continues in Goodyear, Arizona, the Dayton Dragons continue to look ahead to their 25th season in 2025. The entire season will be a celebration of the Dragons rich history, and it will kick off with a special game on March 25 at Day Air Ballpark in Dayton when the Cincinnati Reds battle a team of minor league prospects at 6:10 pm. Minor League spring training games will continue through March 29 in Arizona.

The Dragons annual home “Opening Night” game is set for Tuesday, April 8 against the Fort Wayne TinCaps at 7:05 pm at Day Air Ballpark. The Dragons will officially open their season on the road in 2025, four days prior to their home opener, when they battle the West Michigan Whitecaps in Grand Rapids, Michigan at 6:35 pm on April 4.

There are roughly 180 minor league players currently in competition for roster spots within the Reds organization in Arizona. The four Reds full-season farm clubs are the Louisville Bats (Triple-A), the Chattanooga Lookouts (Double-A), the Dayton Dragons (High-A), and the Daytona Tortugas (Single-A). A fifth Reds farm club, the Arizona Complex League Reds (Rookie classification), begins its season in May.

This is part two of an eight-part positional preview of the candidates for the Dragons 2025 roster. Players listed here are candidates for positions on the Dragons season-opening roster.

This preview is an unofficial projection of possible roster candidates. Minor League rosters are not established until April 1. Spring training variables including performance, injuries, trades, and additional player acquisitions will impact the roster accordingly.

For Dragons season ticket or group ticket information, go to daytondragons.com/tickets or call (937) 228-2287.

The Second Basemen

Click links on each name for career stats and player information.

Candidates: Peyton Stovall, Victor Acosta

Peyton Stovall appears to be one of the most advanced college hitters the Reds have drafted in recent years. He was selected in the fourth round of the 20-round draft by the Reds in 2024 out of the University of Arkansas. He will begin his first full season of professional baseball in 2025.

When Stovall completed his career at Haughton High School in Louisiana in 2021, he was ranked as the #1 prospect in the state by Perfect Game. Baseball America rated Stovall as the 16^th best high school draft prospect in the entire country in ‘21, and he was selected by Collegiate Baseball as a high school All-American. He made it clear that his intentions were to go on to college rather than turn pro out of high school, so he was not selected at all in the draft that year. In college in 2022, Stovall started as a freshman at Arkansas at first base and played a key role for a Razorbacks team that reached the College World Series and finished the year as the #3 team in the nation. In 11 post-season games for Arkansas, Stovall batted .429 with two home runs and 13 RBI. Stovall hit .360 in the CWS with a home run against Ole Miss, the eventual national champion. Stovall finished his freshman season with a batting average of .295 with six home runs in 52 games.

After a disappointing sophomore season in 2023 when he battled a shoulder injury, Stovall bounced back with a huge season in ’24 with Arkansas while playing second base. He batted .340 with nine home runs in 48 games, missing the early part of the season with a broken left foot. He was selected as a Third Team All-American. He was a team captain and was named to the Southeastern Conference Academic Honor Roll. He signed with the Reds for a reported $625,000. Stovall played briefly with Daytona at the end of the 2024 season, appearing in 16 games as he got his feet wet at the pro level. He will begin his first full season in April.

Stovall is ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Reds #27 prospect, just ahead of 2023 Dragons second baseman Tyler Callihan, and just behind 2024 Dragons shortstop Leo Balcazar. It is possible that Stovall could start the 2025 season back with Low-A Daytona to gain more experience, and then join the Dragons later in the season, but his profile suggests he could be with the Dayton club on opening night, similar to the way the Reds pushed college outfielder Ethan O’Donnell to Dayton in 2024, his first full season of pro ball after being taken in the sixth round in ’23 out of the University of Virginia, or 2022 Dragons second baseman Jose Torres, who had been selected in the third round out of North Carolina State the previous summer.

Victor Acosta, a switch-hitting middle infielder, was the Dragons starting second baseman in 2024 and was one of the youngest players in the Midwest League (he did not turn 20 years old until June 10 of last season). Acosta struggled to hit with the Dragons in 2024 and will likely return to Dayton in 2025.

Acosta was originally signed by the San Diego Padres as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 2021, reportedly given a signing bonus of $1.8 million, the largest awarded to any Padres international signing that year. The Reds dealt for Acosta at the trade deadline in 2022 when veteran third baseman Brandon Drury went from Cincinnati to San Diego. Acosta was a very highly-regarded prospect at the time of the trade. He was ranked as the Padres #11 prospect entering the 2022 season, the Reds #17 prospect entering 2023, and #19 on the Reds list entering his 2024 season with the Dragons.

Acosta played in 107 games for the Dragons in 2024, tied with Cade Hunter for fourth most on the team (behind Hector Rodriguez, Cam Collier, and Jay Allen II). He started 68 games at second base and 34 at shortstop. Acosta also started both Dragons playoff games at second base. Acosta had made his full-season minor league debut with Low-A Daytona in 2023 and held his own, batting .251 in 100 games, but the transition in 2024 to the High-A level was difficult for Acosta, still a teenager for the first two months of the season in a league in which the average age for a pitcher was 23. Acosta had 404 plate appearances on the year, and 402 of those were against pitchers who were older than he was. Acosta finished his season with the Dragons batting .186 with four home runs and 14 stolen bases.

Acosta does have talent and will be a strong candidate to show improvement with the Dragons in 2025. Depending on what the Reds do with Stovall, Acosta could return to the Dragons in a starting role, or fill a utility position with the defensive skills to play both second base and shortstop.

There could also be a possibility that 2024 Dragons shortstop Leo Balcazar could return to the Dragons in 2025 and play second base, though Balcazar might be ready for the jump to Double-A Chattanooga. There could be a bit of a logjam in Double-A with former Dragons shortstop Edwin Arroyo penciled in for the shortstop job there after missing all of 2024 with an injury. The Reds also have middle infield prospect Dominic Pitelli at Chattanooga as well as former Dragon Sal Stewart, primarily a third baseman, but a prospect who can play some second base too, so it looks a bit crowded in the Chattanooga infield. But Balcazar is highly-rated and could find a spot with the Lookouts, though a return to Dayton for Leo is also a possibility. It will be sorted out before the end of spring training.

Next up: Shortstops