The Cincinnati Reds offense was due, not just because the shutouts had been stacking up at an alarming rate. <\/p>\n
They were due for a home run that wasn\u2019t hit 115 mph, for an otherwise deep pop fly to coast over the cozy walls in Great American Ball Park. They were due for finding a hole through the infield, for the opposing defense to throw a ball away, for 400+ foot towers to CF to not be caught by a leaping Luis Robert, Jr.<\/p>\n
They finally got that on Thursday afternoon in the series finale against the Chicago White Sox, thank heck. <\/p>\n
Elly De La Cruz lifted a 395 foot ball just over the wall in left-center for his 8th dinger of the season, while Matt McLain later added a tater of his own that coasted 406 feet. Will Benson got in on the homer action with a 401 footer that actually bounced out of Robert\u2019s glove at the CF wall, giving the Reds a trio of round trippers on the day as they dispatched the otherwise listless Sox to finally take a game of the series.<\/p>\n
Nick Martinez was positively brilliant on the bump, tossing 7 IP of 2 H, 0 ER ball with 3 K and nary a walk as he coasted through an opposing lineup for three times successfully. His efficient 96 pitch outing helped take some of the pressure off a taxed bullpen, too, something the Reds will hopefully be able to lean into as they welcome Terry Francona\u2019s previous club – the Cleveland Guardians – to town tomorrow for yet another big seris in GABP.<\/p>\n
For the record, that series starts a stretch of some pretty serious competition for the 21-24 Redlegs. As Joel Luckhaupt made note of on Bluesky earlier, the upcoming 45 games for the Reds will almost exclusively come against high-caliber competition<\/a>, something the Reds – who entered play today with the lowest opponent win percentage faced in all of baseball so far in 2025 – will have to find a way to overcome.<\/p>\n After today, the Reds next 45 games are against opponents with an average current winning percentage of .548 (89-win season). And that includes the Pirates for 3 games. Take them out and the avg win pct goes to .563 (91 wins). This is gonna be a brutal stretch.<\/p>\n \u2014 Joel Luckhaupt (@jluckhaupt.bsky.social)<\/a> 2025-05-15T14:36:11.396Z<\/a><\/p>\n For now, though, we savor one victory over a Chicago club that set the all-time single-season loss record just last year. It at least sets the stage for the possibility of a winning homestand should they find a way to put the brooms to Cleveland all weekend long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Reds offense was due, not just because the shutouts had been stacking up at an alarming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,138,535,50,4259,181,4961,176,4,31,1320,285,536,17,286,1377,11821,294,2022],"class_list":{"0":"post-30608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-cincinnati","11":"tag-cincinnati-reds","12":"tag-cincinnatireds","13":"tag-front-page","14":"tag-game-recaps","15":"tag-in","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-offense","18":"tag-over","19":"tag-red","20":"tag-reds","21":"tag-reporter","22":"tag-sox","23":"tag-up","24":"tag-wakes","25":"tag-white","26":"tag-win"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114515875270137864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30608","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=30608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}