Per Baseball Reference, the two best starting pitchers (and two of the three most valuable overall members) on the Milwaukee Brewers are ace Jacob Misiorowski and lefty Kyle Harrison. The Cincinnati Reds managed to dodge facing either one of them during this series in Great American Ball Park, yet here they are on the cusp of being swept (again) by their division rivals.
(Are they even still rivals at this juncture?)
A loss this evening would sink Cincinnati to 5 games under .500 for the first time
all season. They’re already sporting a comically awful 2-15 record against NL Central opponents this season. And unlike recent series, they can’t even hand the ball to ace Chase Burns in the final game of a series to help them salvage it.
Instead, they’ll hand it to Rhett Lowder, who yielded a pair of homers and 4 ER in 5.1 IP his last time out against the New York Yankees. The Reds, if they’re to go anywhere this season, simply must get more out of their 2023 1st round pick tonight and going forward.
Milwaukee will send swingman Shane Drohan to the mound to start tonight. He has alternated between the bullpen and starting rotation often this year, though each of his most recent four appearances have come as a starter. He’s a lefty, too, so manager Terry Francona has stacked his lineup accordingly to begin (including with Dane Myers, of all folks, batting in the #3 spot in the order).
First pitch is slated for 7:10 PM ET. Here’s how the Reds will line up to start:
If there is any good Reds news at the moment, it’s that they didn’t immediately make a roster move to place Nick Lodolo on the IL after his pitching wrist was hit by a 107 mph comebacker last night. Hopefully that’s an indication that they think he’ll emerge from that scary incident mostly OK, though it remains to be seen whether he’ll need to have a start pushed back, or not.
Anyway, go win a baseball game, Reds. It would really make a lot of very, very disappointed people happy for a few minutes.
