{"id":142219,"date":"2025-06-30T16:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/142219\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T16:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:53:12","slug":"nl-central-packed-with-talented-young-pitchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/142219\/","title":{"rendered":"NL Central packed with talented young pitchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chase Burns arrived in the big leagues with a flourish, striking out\u00a0the first five hitters<\/a>\u00a0he faced for Cincinnati in his debut against the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n

He’s just the latest young pitcher in the NL Central to show his impressive potential.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

The NL Central is suddenly packed with talented young pitchers
\n
Pittsburgh\u2019s Paul Skenes finished third in the National League Cy Young race as a rookie last year
\n
Milwaukee\u2019s Jacob Misiorowski threw 11 straight hitless innings to start his career and then beat Skenes in a head-to-head matchup Wednesday
\n
Now Cincinnati’s Chase Burns has reached the majors, striking out the first five hitters he faced for the Reds in his debut against the New York Yankees<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes, of course, finished third in the National League Cy Young race as a rookie last year. More recently, Milwaukee’s Jacob Misiorowski threw\u00a011 straight hitless innings<\/a>\u00a0to start his career and then beat Skenes in\u00a0a head-to-head matchup<\/a>\u00a0Wednesday. Now Burns, the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft, has reached the majors, and Skenes could have some help in his own rotation whenever Bubba Chandler \u2014 MLB Pipeline’s\u00a0No. 2-ranked prospect<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is promoted to the Pirates.<\/p>\n

These pitchers have given the NL Central quite a shot in the arm after the Chicago Cubs have appeared in control of the division at various points. Milwaukee has won 22 of its last 31 and trails the Cubs by just two games now. Cincinnati has won 14 of its last 21. Even the last-place Pirates have played better than .500 baseball for over a month, and they just swept three straight from the New York Mets by a combined score of 30-4.<\/p>\n

Four teams in the NL Central are at least four games over .500, and every team has an ERA under 4.00 \u2014 the only division that can say that. These young starters, who have joined more established pitchers like Freddy Peralta of the Brewers and Hunter Greene of the Reds, suggest the future is bright in the division \u2014 as long as you’re not a hitter.<\/p>\n

SF slump<\/p>\n

The Giants dropped two of three to the lowly Chicago White Sox immediately after losing three in a row to Miami. San Francisco is now 7 1\/2 games behind the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers and has gone 4-8 since its big trade for Rafael Devers.<\/p>\n

Devers has hit .217 since arriving from the Boston Red Sox.<\/p>\n

Trivia time<\/p>\n

Washington’s James Wood became the first player since Barry Bonds to be intentionally walked four times in a game Sunday. But which Hall of Famer drew five intentional walks in a game in 1990?<\/p>\n

Line of the week<\/p>\n

Sonny Gray \u2014 another NL Central pitcher \u2014 was sensational Friday night in St. Louis’ 5-0 win over Cleveland, throwing\u00a0a one-hitter<\/a>\u00a0with 11 strikeouts. Gray had not thrown a complete game since 2017 and hadn’t thrown a shutout since 2015.<\/p>\n

Gray did not have a walk, faced one batter over the minimum and threw only 89 pitches.<\/p>\n

Comeback of the week<\/p>\n

Miami trailed Arizona 7-3 before scoring three runs in the eighth, one in the ninth and one in the top of the 10th to win 8-7. Dane Myers stole second and third in the ninth before scoring the tying run on a sacrifice fly, and Agust\u00edn Ram\u00edrez put the Marlins ahead in extra innings with an RBI single.<\/p>\n

Arizona’s win probability peaked at 97.4% in the bottom of the seventh,\u00a0according to Baseball Savant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Honorable mention: Baltimore fell behind 6-0 in the second Friday night before blowing out Tampa Bay 22-8. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Orioles became the first American League or National League team to win\u00a0by at least 14 runs<\/a>\u00a0after trailing by six.<\/p>\n

Trivia answer<\/p>\n

Andre Dawson of the Chicago Cubs was intentionally walked five times on May 22, 1990, against Cincinnati. The Cubs won that game 2-1 in 16 innings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chase Burns arrived in the big leagues with a flourish, striking out\u00a0the first five hitters\u00a0he faced for Cincinnati…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[27962,14932,556,560,1769,5,136,843,59,4280,4,169,185,558,1519],"class_list":{"0":"post-142219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-all-markets-rank-everywhere","9":"tag-app-for-your-consideration","10":"tag-app-sports","11":"tag-app-top-stories","12":"tag-associated-press","13":"tag-baseball","14":"tag-brewers","15":"tag-milwaukee","16":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","17":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-wisconsin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114773361283396838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}