Reds reliever Jared Hughes claimed by Philadelphia Phillies, Sal Romano optioned

Jared Hughes fired a trio of scoreless innings for the Cincinnati Reds yesterday, something that sounds rather remarkable when you consider that the Washington Nationals scored a whopping 17 runs in that game.

As it turns out, those will go down as the final innings Hughes pitched as a member of the Reds, as the club announced today that he’d been claimed off waivers by the Philadelphia Phillies. That was just part of a flurry of roster moves, as said tweet details below.

The back-end of those transactions was obviously to help back-fill the currently depleted bullpen, which is already a man short with Amir Garrett serving his 8-game suspension and the roster therefore limited to just 24 spots. Matt Bowman, he of ample big league experience and 19.2 IP with the Reds already this season, will return, while Joel Kuhnel will be making his big league debut the moment the Reds send him to the mound.

Kuhnel, 24, was an 11th round pick by the Reds back in 2016 out of the University of Texas at Arlington, and has done nothing but retire pretty much everyone he has faced so far in 2019. He owns a tidy 2.18 ERA with 14 saves across 53.2 IP split between AA Chattanooga and AAA Louisville, with an 8.4/2.7 K/BB ratio in that time.

Making way off the active roster is Sal Romano, who threw 44 pitches yesterday and was an obvious candidate to be optioned given that he’ll need rest and the short staff. As I mentioned with Hughes earlier, those 17 runs were scored against non-Hughes pitchers yesterday, and Romano was tagged for 8 of them while retiring just 2 Nationals in his time. Hopefully, he can fix things and make a return later this season.