Reds at Pirates, Game 3 - Preview and Lineups

There aren’t really words that accurately describe the Reds offense at this point.

I mean, there are, I guess. “Bad.” “Horrific.” “Awful.” All of those come to mind, but it still doesn’t really seem like any of those totally encapsulate the Reds incompetence this past week. It’s been truly historic!

Not as “historic” but still really bad:

So yeah, it’s been a dogshit start by the Reds offense.

Oh! There’s the word. “Dogshit!”

Anyway, the Reds will face the guy who started all this shutout business in Trevor Williams today. Williams completely baffled the Reds last Sunday, striking out six Reds through six innings without giving up a run. He threw a fastball 72.5% of the time, averaging just about 90 MPH on it, and the Reds just absolutely could not pick it up. Maybe one more look at him so soon will do them some good.

Or, maybe not, because they’re very not good right now.

Tanner Roark is making his second start of the season. He was really bad through the first inning or so on Monday night against the Brewers, but settled down a little bit thereafter and managed to stretch a 30ish pitch first inning into a 4.1 innings pitched outing, retiring 10 of the last 13 batters he faced.

If he settles in like Sonny Gray did last night, that’d be super great.

Of course, at this point, if Reds pitching doesn’t figure out how to put a -1 on the board, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

Reds lineup

Pirates lineup