Reds at Cubs, Game One: Preview and lineups

Today begins a pretty tough stretch of baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. They’ll play three this weekend in Chicago against the Cubs, and then travel back to Ohio for a three game set with the AL Central leading Indians, before crossing back over to St. Louis for three against the Cardinals, who aren’t all that good but it’ll be at Busch Stadium where the Reds seemingly always lose.

Then there’s the All Star break.

So yeah, we’re going to learn quite a bit about just how good these Reds are in the next week or so. Hopefully they’ll take this recent hot streak all the way into the break.

In this one, they’ll face off against Mike Montgomery, who they faced a couple of Sundays ago at Great American Ballpark. Montgomery seemingly cruised through the Reds batting order until that fateful 7th inning. He ended up getting tagged for 4 runs at the end. He’s otherwise been good this season for the Cubs, whether it’s been starting in place of an injured Yu Darvish or coming out of the bullpen.

Hopefully the Reds can get to him a little quicker today.

Tyler Mahle sat down a career high 12 Brewers with the strikeout last weekend. In his last three starts, he has a 3.24 ERA over 16.2 IP with 25 strikeouts. He dominated these Cubs in his first outing of the year all the way back on April 2nd, which was a lot of fun. Let’s see more of that.

Cincinnati Lineup

Chicago Cubs lineup