Cincinnati Reds links - Sal Romano, Tyler Mahle to pitch in Cactus League opener

There will be Cincinnati Reds baseball tomorrow.

There will be Cincinnati Reds baseball tomorrow.

There will be Cincinnati Reds baseball tomorrow, and you’ll even be able to watch it live on FS-Ohio, as they’ll be taking on their complex rivals from Cleveland at 3:05 PM ET. The Cactus League opener for the Reds officially ends the wacky, league-wide offseason shenanigans, and it begins the glorious eight month run of having baseball of some form or fashion on our plates day in, day out.

There will be Cincinnati Reds baseball tomorrow, and for a damn long time beyond tomorrow. I’ll cheers to that.

As for some good old fashioned details on Friday’s game, The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans revealed which pitchers Bryan Price will send out to toe the rubber. It seems that Sal Romano and Tyler Mahle will head out first for the Reds, with both young starters getting the initial crack at winning a coveted spot in the team’s Opening Day starting rotation.

Rosecrans also has the goods on when you’ll see some of Cincinnati’s other name-brand starters in the coming days, which should be handy for your viewing interests.

In transactional news, the Reds made a trade with the Texas Rangers yesterday, shipping a large chunk of their international bonus pool money to the AL West club in exchange for pitcher Miguel Medrano, as The Enquirer’s Zach Buchanan relayed. Medrano is a 20 year old righty who hails from San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic, the same town that has produced the likes of Johnny Cueto, Sammy Sosa, Robinson Cano, Alfonso Soriano, Tony Fernandez, and dozens of other successful big leaguers. Having only thrown 64 innings in the Dominican Summer League, there’s not a ton to go on statistically for Medrano, but the 2.67 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 9.3 K/9, and impressive 1.7 BB/9 in those innings sure look nice at initial glance.

Doug Gray has more on Medrano at RedsMinorLeagues.com, including a brief scouting report that details a fastball that reaches 94 mph, which is quite a nice thing to see for a kid who pitched his last season as a 19 year old.

Newly signed reliever David Hernandez has had quite the emotional and physical roller coaster over the last handful of years, as Buchanan reported in The Enquirer yesterday, and it’s a story that’s absolutely worth a read. I increasingly get the impression that this signing in particular will pay off in spades for the Reds, especially given the gargantuan contracts doled out to relievers across the league prior to Hernandez signing to pitch for Cincinnati.

Finally, we’ve begun to get reports of which pitchers are on-point early in camp in Goodyear, and as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon reports, Cody Reed appears to be one of them. The talented lefty has obviously struggled as both a starter and reliever with the Reds of late - and even struggled a bit in AAA after chomping his way through the minors. Still, the 24 year old has three potentially plus pitches, and if he’s locating him come April the way it sounds he is at the moment, there’s a good chance he opens the year in the big league bullpen. Of course, both Reed and Price think there’s a very real shot of the lefty starting games again, but for now it appears how he handles big league batters in smaller samples first is going to be a part of his track back to starting games.