Tim Adleman exits start with stiff neck, Reds to recall Amir Garrett this week

Tim Adleman threw 25 pitches in the first inning of his start against the San Francisco Giants on Sunday, and they went about as well as the relative health of Cincinnati Reds starters so far in 2017. Two walks, three hits, and four runs later, Adleman’s inning was done.

Unfortunately, so was his day on the whole, as he exited in favor of Barrett Astin, and it was later revealed that Adleman was dealing with tightness in his neck, as The Enquirer’s C. Trent Rosecrans relayed.

That’s bad news in its own right, since although Adleman struggled today, he entered with a respectable 98 ERA+ and 1.18 WHIP to date this year. More importantly, he’d eaten 26.1 IP in his 5 games pitched (4 games started), something that’s been of immense value to a rotation that has struggled to pitch deep into games. That, in turn, has left the bullpen to log more innings than any in the majors, something exacerbated by Friday’s 17 inning marathon affair.

With Anthony DeSclafani and Brandon Finnegan still on the DL and over a month away and Homer Bailey closer to a return (but still not super close), any time Adleman would miss would further throw a wrench into a rotation that shockingly contains only Scott Feldman, Bronson Arroyo, and Lisalverto Bonilla as healthy options. However, Rosecrans also relayed some positive news, as it seems Bryan Price and GM Dick Williams are intent upon bringing back Amir Garrett at some point later this week.

Good gah, that’d be as needed as ever, since the decision to option Garrett to limit his overall innings (and, perhaps, shave off some would-be time from his service clock) has coincided with an already thin Cincinnati pitching staff increasingly falling down around him.

Hopefully, it won’t need to be Adleman’s spot that Garrett will take, since there’s every reason to believe his neck tightness might not cause him to miss any time. Regardless, it meant Sunday was yet another game in which the Reds were let down by their starter, something that definitively must change quickly if this season is going to remain promising at all.