Hunter Greene was drafted 2nd overall by the Cincinnati Reds over 8 years ago, and after tonight he’ll finally have a ‘Postseason Pitching’ section on his Baseball Reference player page.
Greene, a Los Angeles
native who went to high school in nearby Sherman Oaks, will take the mound for the Cincinnati Reds in Game 1 of their Wild Card Series against his hometown Dodgers. Los Angeles, meanwhile, will turn to a two-time Cy Young Award winner in Blake Snell, who has logged 48.2 IP across 12 games in his postseason career dating back to the 2019 season with the Tampa Bay Rays.
That’s a storyline you’ll hear early and often in this particular series – the vast playoff experience of a Dodgers squad featuring four to seven future Hall of Famers versus the upstart, inexperienced Reds. In fact, tonight’s starting lineup for the Reds features exactly two players who’ve ever actually stepped into a batter’s box in the postseason – Austin Hays and Miguel Andujar – and they’ve totaled just five hits and no homers in their playoff careers.
Gavin Lux, who’s 14 for 85 in his postseason career as by far and away the most experienced playoff player the Reds have, will begin the night on the bench with the lefty Snell on the mound. So, we’re just going to have to find out who can manage to step up against incredibly competition under the bright lights on the biggest stage as it happens.
Maybe that’s to Cincinnati’s advantage. Maybe, though, their putrid 79 wRC+ against LHP all season is actually a problem that the Dodgers chose to specifically attack.
Coverage of tonight’s game will begin at 9:00 PM ET on ESPN, so track down the ESPN app if you don’t have it already elsewhere.
