6-24-24 – By Gary Morgan – @garymo2007 on Twitter
Hey, didn’t we just do this dance?
Yeah, we just saw these guys and they just saw us. Neither team scored, both teams pitched and as the week shook out, the Pirates are exactly 1 game better than the Reds in the standings.
The Pirates pitching is kinda in flux, with the David Bednar injury we’ll see some things change on the backend, and they’re due to get Lefty Martin Perez back in the mix here, likely on Tuesday or Wednesday.
I think we’ll see Carmen Mlodzinski used in the back end more, and less on the opener end. In other words, if they’re still flirting with Ortiz as a starter, I think he’ll just straight up open.
6/24
Reds – Carson Spiers (R) –0-1, 25.1 IP, 3.20 ERA, 20 Ks/5 walks, 1.22 WHIP
Pirates – Bailey Falter (L) –3-5, 79.1 IP, 3.74 ERA, 52 Ks/21 walks, 1.12 WHIP
6/18
Reds – Hunter Greene (R) –5-2, 82.1 IP, 3.61 ERA, 89 Ks/37 walks, 1.18 WHIP
Pirates – TBD
6/19
Reds – Andrew Abbott (L) –6-6, 84.2 IP, 3.40 ERA, 70 Ks/26 walks, 1.18 WHIP
Pirates – TBD
Reds:
Jonathan India has started to look a lot more like himself recently. In his last 15 he’s slashing .280/.345/.380. The power numbers are down for India, and playing in Great American Bandbox, that’s probably more significant than if you were talking about a young Tigers infielder.
Pirates:
Bryan Reynolds: It was Reynolds in the last iteration of this Series Preview, it’s still Bryan Reynolds. He’s not only hot, he’s the only bat who is at the moment. He’s carrying a 20 game hit streak into this series in Cincinnati, the longest such streak in baseball. Like Paris would say, that’s hot.
Reds:
Will Benson: No reason to change this one from the last preview. He’s still bad. In his last 7 .000/.118/.000, I mean what’s to break down?
Pirates:
Look, it’s hard to put someone in the “Who’s Not” category who hasn’t been very good all year, but if it’s good for the Reds it’s good for the Pirates. Jack Suwinski in his last 15 believe it or not has been worse than his overall season marks. .159/.229/.318 and I’m not sure it’s looked that good. That’s 44 at bats, 21 times that’s been a strikeout.
Key Injuries
The Pirates have some very welcome injury news along with some not so great injury news. David Bednar enters the list, retro to the 20th, it’s left oblique strain, and this could be weeks, or months. No prognosis yet, but here’s hoping it’s not that bad as they held him on the roster thinking he might just work through it.
Now, Martin Perez is back very soon, as early as tomorrow. Marco Gonzales, Quinn Priester, Mike Burrows, Ryan Borucki, Ji Hwan Bae, and Joey Bart are all either throwing off the mound, doing baseball activities or on rehab assignments.
Henry Davis should be coming off concussion protocol here soon, he was still experiencing symptoms as of Saturday, hate to guess here, but the next really weird thing is going to come when they suddenly have 4 healthy catchers, and have to try to pick the 2 “best” while minding who they’d lose trying to stash in AAA.
Very real possibility of losing Bart or Delay in this process, can’t see them carrying 4 catchers on the 40 man for much longer though.
Things to Look For
Mostly, familiarity starting to breed contempt. The Pirates will likely throw Keller at the Reds again, the Reds will toss Greene at the Bucs once more. Both these lineups were frustrated the first time around, expect frustrations to start to manifest themselves in some rivalry like sniping at each other.
These teams looked like two teams who were going to pitch the hell out of each other at PNC Park last week. This week at GABP, we could see a completely different looking matchup.
The ballpark differences are there for both teams, but the differences in these two particular ballparks can make it look like two different sets of teams are playing depending on the venue.
Bailey Falter in particular is a high fastball pitcher and while the weak contact he generates with it is often more than good enough, this ball park has the ability to turn some of those deeper flyouts into front row stingers.
Steel City Pirates 