Former Cincinnati Reds 1st round pick Austin Hendrick becomes free agent
· Yahoo Sports
You may recall that calendar year 2020 featured a lot of unprecedented events through which we all got to live. Way, way down on that list of importance was the abbreviated 2020 Major League Baseball season, which ended up only being 60 games long and played in front of empty stadiums as the COVID pandemic raged across the world.
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The pandemic impacted the 2020 MLB Draft, too. Though it was still managed to be pulled off during June per usual, it was agreed upon that the draft itself would be cut to just five rounds and instead of being held on-location in Omaha was held remotely.
Nailing your selections in the draft is hard enough under normal circumstances. Getting them correct in those circumstances, though, was probably a little bit tougher than we all could have even imagined.
The Detroit Tigers jumped for Arizona State 1B Spencer Torkelson with the #1 overall pick, and he’s carved out a big league career of some reasonable aplomb. The Baltimore Orioles selected Arkansas OF Heston Kjerstad with pick #2, and he officially reached free agency yesterday after being outrighted off their 40-man roster and clearing waivers with just -1.3 bWAR in 304 AB to his name.
There were a litany of ‘misses’ in this 1st round, and we can now officially chalk up the first selection by the Cincinnati Reds as one, too. With the #12 overall pick they took Austin Hendrick out of high school outside Pittsburgh, a ‘cold weather’ player who was already old for his class that sported plus power alongside a number of glaring red flags. Those red flags – notably his extreme swing and miss tendencies – dogged him through five minor league seasons with Cincinnati, and as Doug Gray of Redleg Nation noted this morning, Hendrick was one of 21 Reds minor leaguers who reached free agency when Cincinnati opted against adding them to their 40-man roster.
That cadre includes former big leaguers like Michael Chavis and Garrett Hampson, who’ve spent time in the big leagues off and on over various seasons. It also features Ivan Johnson, who spent time with the Reds towards the end of the 2026 regular season. More than anyone else, though, it’s closing the chapter on Hendrick that is the toughest pill to swallow in this particular wave.
What burns perhaps the most is that Hendrick, a lefty-swinging high school outfield bat, was the third of four such players that were selected in the 1st round in 2020. Both Robert Hassell and Zac Veen came off the board before Hendrick went at #12, and while neither has panned out so far in their own development, it was Pete Crow-Armstrong at pick #19 that was the fourth such lefty high school outfielder to be selected, and he is currently days away from winning the National League MVP Award on the back of a nearly 10 WAR season.
Hendrick’s Reds career, meanwhile, never actually happened. He reached AAA in 2026 after repeating multiple levels before it and posted just a .566 OPS in 58 games there despite the extreme offensive conditions at the time.