Dayton Dragons 2026 Team Preview: Part 1—The Catchers

The 26th season of Dayton Dragons baseball is on the way!

The Dragons annual home “Opening Night” game is set for Tuesday, April 7 against their Ohio rivals, the Lake County Captains (Cleveland Guardians affiliate) at 7:05 pm at Day Air Ballpark. The Dragons will officially open their season on the road a few days prior to the home opener when they begin the season on Thursday, April 2 at Lansing against the Lugnuts.

The Dragons will again play a 132-game schedule in 2026 including 66 home games. The Dragons are one of 12 teams in the Midwest League, a circuit that is again classified as “High-A” and features two divisions, each with six teams. Over the next four weeks, we will provide an eight-part positional preview of the candidates for the Dragons 2026 roster. For Dragons ticket information (season tickets, groups, or single-game), go to daytondragons.com/tickets or call (937) 228-2287.

Spring training is currently underway in Goodyear, Arizona, with 165 minor league players in competition for roster spots within the Cincinnati Reds organization. Additionally, there are 40 players on the Reds major league roster training in Goodyear and another 11 minor league players training with the big league Reds, for a total of 216 players currently battling for Reds major league or minor league roster spots. Only 146 players will start the season on an active roster (major league or minor league), so the competition for every spot is fierce.

The full list of Reds Minor League players is here:

Reds full-season affiliates in 2026 are the same as they have been for the past five seasons. Each Reds minor league team will play a spring schedule with games on most dates from March 11-29. The Dragons will arrive in Dayton on March 31 and workout on two dates at Day Air Ballpark before heading to Lansing.

Louisville Bats (Triple-A)

Chattanooga Lookouts (Double-A)

Dayton Dragons (High-A)

Daytona Tortugas (Single-A)

Some players who do not earn spots on any of the four affiliate rosters will continue to work at the spring training complex in Arizona in what is commonly referred to as “Extended Spring Training,” playing an informal schedule against players from other organizations before a fifth Reds farm club, the Arizona Complex League Reds, begins its season in May.

This is part one of an eight-part series previewing the 2026 Dragons. 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 March 31. Spring training variables including performance, injuries, trades, and additional player acquisitions will impact the roster accordingly.

The Catchers

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

Candidates: Alfredo Duno, Ryan McCrystal, Diego Omana

If you are going to talk about the players in the picture to start the 2026 season in Dayton, you might as well begin with the top prospect, and he happens to be a catcher, where we start our preview. Alfredo Duno is a 20-year-old native of Venezuela who is listed at 6’3” and 248 lbs. He is not only the highest-rated prospect at the catcher position to ever play for the Dragons, but he is one of the top prospects to pass through Dayton at any position. He is currently rated by Baseball America as the #2 prospect in the Reds organization, trailing only Sal Stewart.

Duno spent the entire 2025 season with the Daytona Tortugas, one level below the Dragons. He was chosen as the Florida State League Most Valuable Player and was also selected as the league’s best Major League prospect.

Duno led the Florida State League in eight of the most important categories including home runs (18), runs batted in (81), extra base hits (52), runs (78), doubles (32), on-base percentage (.430), slugging percentage (.518), and OPS (.948). He finished second in the league batting average (.287) and base hits (112). It should be noted that the Florida State League is considered the most “unfriendly” league for hitters in all professional baseball based on many years of statistical data, so Duno earned everything he achieved.

Baseball America’s scouting report on Duno is interesting: “Few young hitters come close to Duno’s advanced understanding of the strike zone. His career .425 OBP ranks fourth among active minor league hitters with at least 750 plate appearances. He will not swing at pitches out of the zone…his exceptional power could get him to 25 home runs regularly. Duno moves well for his size.”

Duno’s signature game came on November 13, 2025 in the Arizona Fall League playoffs. The AFL is made up of a high percentage of top-level prospects with each MLB team sending approximately six players to the league. Duno was one of the Reds representatives. In one playoff game, Duno hit three home runs, including two that were estimated at more than 450 feet. There has been entire seasons in Dragons history when no player hit a home run that traveled 450 feet, and Duno did it twice in the same game, and added another homer for good measure. He drove in six runs in the game.

During the regular season in 2025, Duno became just the second Daytona player to win Florida State League MVP since the Reds affiliation started with Daytona in 2015 (Aristides Aquino in 2016 was the other). Prior to 2025, the only other Reds minor leaguer besides Aquino to win a full-season league MVP in the last 15 years was Billy Hamilton in the High-A California League with Bakersfield in 2012, the year Hamilton broke the all-time record for stolen bases in a season. Notably, former Dragon Sal Stewart joined Duno in 2025 as a Reds prospect who won a league MVP award as Stewart was named the best player in the Southern League.

When was the last time the Dragons had a player who had won his league’s MVP the previous year? You would have to go back to Chris Valaika, now the Reds hitting coach, who played for the Dragons in 2007 after winning the Pioneer League MVP with Billings in 2006.

But Duno also paired his MVP award by winning the award for best prospect in the Florida State League last year with Daytona, a combination that does not often occur because the player who is the best prospect is often one of the youngest players in the league (and Duno was only 19 years old in 2025). He became the first Daytona player to earn the prospect of the year award since the league began selecting this honor in 2021. Incidentally, the Dragons have had two players in the last 20 years who won the Midwest League’s best prospect award: Elly De La Cruz in 2022 and Edwin Arroyo in 2023.

How does Duno compare as a prospect to familiar names from past Dragons seasons?

Over the Dragons 25 seasons, there have been two Dayton players who were ranked at the time as the Reds #1 prospect, most recently Homer Bailey in 2005. Duno would become the eighth Dragons player to be ranked as the Reds #2 prospect, joining a list that includes Adam Dunn, Jay Bruce, Billy Hamilton, Robert Stephenson, Hunter Greene, Rhett Lowder, and Chase Burns.

The highest ranked prospect at the catcher position to play for the Dragons was Tyler Stephenson, who was rated as the Reds #4 prospect when he opened the 2106 season with the Dragons. Stephenson returned to Dayton the next season in 2017 was ranked as the Reds #10 prospect that year. Devin Mesoraco was ranked as the Reds #6 prospect when he played for the Dragons in 2008. Both Stephenson and Mesoraco were Reds first round draft picks.

There can be no mistaking the fact that Duno, assuming he does start the season with the Dragons, would be one of the most highly-regarded prospects in Dragons history.

Duno’s elite talent level does create a question as to how the Reds will construct the Dayton roster at the catcher position. Clearly, Duno is going to play as often as the Reds feel he should play, regardless of whomever else is on the roster. That is a way of life when dealing with such an immense prospect. The Reds likely will keep three catchers on the roster so that Duno can stay in the lineup as the designated hitter on days when gets a defensive day off, and a third catcher would still leave the team in the position of having an available catcher on the bench in case of an injury to the catcher who is playing that day.

Ryan McCrystal is a catcher who had an excellent 2025 season that was split between Daytona and the Dragons. He can also play first base. In other circumstances, McCrystal might be the Dragons everyday catcher, and he showed enough talent in 2025 to have earned everyday playing time in 2026. But where will he play? The Reds could give McCrystal two or three games per week at catcher, assuming Duno is in the lineup as the designated hitter a couple of days per week and perhaps utilize McCrystal at first base multiple times per week, with some days as the DH mixed in too. Or they might just put McCrystal at first base most days, as they did in 2025 at Daytona, when Duno was also on the team. This will be a decision for Reds Director of Player Development Jeremy Farrell, likely with some input from Corky Miller, the Reds Catching Coordinator.

McCrystal was the Reds ninth round draft pick in 2024 out of East Carolina University, where he was Second Team All-Conference (American Athletic Conference) in his final season as a junior in ‘24, batting .346 with seven home runs in 54 games. In his first full season of professional baseball in 2025, he began the year with Daytona and hit .295 with four home runs in 67 games. The FSL league average for batting average in 2025 was just .234, making that .295 mark look very impressive, and McCrystal’s OPS was 100 points higher than the league average. He moved up to the Dragons in the second half and hit .271 without a home run in 20 games. His defense continues to be a work in progress but was acceptable. McCrystal should be one of the Dragons best hitters, regardless of where he plays on the field.

The third catcher in the mix is Diego Omana, a 23-year-old native of Venezuela. Any discussion of Omana starts with his defense, which was sparkling with the Dragons in 2025. While most of the talk about quality defense at the catcher position in the Reds farm system currently centers on former Dragon Connor Burns, a player with major league defensive skills behind the plate, Omana quietly put together a season that might have matched Burns without getting the attention. While a catcher’s throwing stats in the minor leagues are nearly impossible to draw conclusions from because of the way they are recorded (a catcher gets statistical credit for every caught stealing situation, even if the pitcher picks a runner off first and the catcher is not involved in the play), Omana absolutely shut down the opposing running game last season, to a point where teams just stopped trying to steal bases on the days he played. On the night when the Dragons broke their club record by winning their 14^th straight game on September 2 against Lansing, Omana went 3 for 3 in throwing out Lugnuts base stealers. He also threw out three base stealers in one game at Beloit in July and had three games when he threw out two base stealers. He looked like a big league catcher.

Unfortunately, Omana has not hit as well as he would hope, and that has kept his defense from getting the recognition it deserves. In 48 games in 2025 between Dayton and Daytona, he batted .200 with one home run. These struggles were particularly frustrating for Omana after showing promise as a hitter earlier in his pro career. In 78 games at the Rookie level from 2021-24, he hit .287, but he has not yet found success in Full-Season leagues, batting just .202 in 83 games. Omana could back up Duno if the Reds elect to keep McCrystal at first base.

Next up: First Basemen