Cincinnati vs. Cleveland, Game 2 - Preview

Let’s wrap up the first half, shall we?

Disco and the Reds kept it close with the Indians yesterday, but the bullpen kinda blew it late and the offense, outside of Yasiel Puig, couldn’t do much against Shane Bieber.

It doesn’t get a lot easier today, as Trevor Bauer takes the mound for Cleveland. Bauer’s regressed a bit from his career year in 2018, with a 3.74 ERA this season in 125 innings pitched (vs. 2.21 last season). He’s striking out guys still (10.1 K/9), but his walk rate is back up to his career average (3.5 BB/9). He’s also not been able to limit the home run ball as well as he did last season, when he led the NL with a 0.5 HR/9 number. That’s up to 1.2 this year, and pitching in Great American Ballpark is not going to help if the Red are able to barrel him up today.

Bauer gave up 11 hits his last time out against the Royals, which tied a career high. Still, when he’s on, he’s very extremely on, so the Reds will have their work cut out for them today.

Tyler Mahle will start for the Reds. He’s alternated good and not so good starts lately. After making his thoughts about his usage known, he pitched a really solid seven innings against Houston, but then got roughed up back in his hometown against the Angels. He bounced back and pitched into the seventh inning his last time out against the Brewers, though he seemed to run out of gas in that seventh inning.

The Reds are wearing 1956 throwbacks today, which are potentially sleeveless. If Derek Dietrich is wearing this uniform with sleeves today, I’m going to be extremely disappointed.