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We are here to talk about a Cincinnati Reds baseball club that’s already missing Nick Castellanos, Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suarez, Tucker Barnhart, Sonny Gray, Wade Miley, Michael Lorenzen, Tejay Antone, Amir Garrett, and Mychal Givens off last year’s club. Through all the culling and jettisoning done this winter, the Reds barely even brought back any players at all who had any chance of making the club for Opening Day, something that was a feature, not a bug, of the payroll slashing priorities they had.
As Opening Day nears, however, it’s looking more and more as if some of the very few key pieces still part of this club aren’t going to be ready to play, either, further denting the potency of this once promising roster. David Bell spoke to reporters from The Enquirer, MLB.com, and The Athletic (among others) on Tuesday morning, with the news sounding somewhat harrowing for any chance these Reds might come out of the gate punching to start 2022.
Per Bobby Nightengale of The Enquirer, it appears Luis Castillo is doubtful for Opening Day due to shoulder soreness, while Justin Dunn - one of the key pieces of the massive salary dump of Winker/Suarez to Seattle - might miss half the dang season.
Luis Castillo may not be ready for the season, David Bell said. He was shut down for a day because of shoulder soreness and now throwing again.
— Bobby Nightengale (@nightengalejr) March 22, 2022
Also, Justin Dunn is expected to miss a couple of months with his shoulder injury.
On top of that, Jose Barrero’s hamate injury indeed needed surgery to be corrected, something that went down today per The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans. That puts him on-pace for a likely mid-May return at the earliest.
Reds SS Jose Barrero is scheduled to have surgery today in Scottsdale, Ariz., to repair the hook of his hamate bone in his left hand. He’s expected to miss 6 weeks.
— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) March 22, 2022
Add-in that Lucas Sims, one of the only proven relievers on the roster, has already been ruled out for Opening Day (per MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon), and the Reds are hosting a rip-roarin’ good time out there in The Land of the Endless Strip Mall. Heck, Mike Moustakas and Nick Senzel might be the two healthiest players on the roster at the moment.
It was already going to be a scramble all year with this haphazard, spendthrift roster all that Bell had at his disposal. Now, it appears the scramble’s going to start from day one with a blindfold and shoelaces tied together.
Get well soon, evruh’body.
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