The Reds completed a four-game sweep of the Cubs over the weekend. They\u2019ve won five straight and pulled into a tie with the reeling Mets for the National League\u2019s last playoff spot. Cincinnati went 4-2 against New York, meaning they have the tiebreaker. They also hold the tiebreaker over the Diamondbacks, who find themselves one game back.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati now controls their own destiny. They\u2019re off tonight before hosting the Pirates for three games. They finish the year with a weekend set in Milwaukee. That\u2019s a tough series on paper, but the Brewers could have already secured home field advantage through the postseason depending on the result of their ongoing series against the Padres.<\/p>\n
As they enter that critical stretch, the Reds are facing a potential absence from their left fielder.\u00a0Austin Hays<\/a> made an early exit from Saturday\u2019s game with back spasms. He sat out yesterday\u2019s series finale. Manager Terry Francona said on Saturday the team is hopeful that Hays will be ready for the start of the Pittsburgh series tomorrow (via the MLB.com injury tracker<\/a>). The off day gives him a little extra rest.<\/p>\n If Hays is unable to go, Cincinnati could kick\u00a0Will Benson<\/a> to left field and plug\u00a0Noelvi Marte<\/a> in right. Pittsburgh is set to run a trio of right-handed starting pitchers \u2014\u00a0Johan Oviedo<\/a>,\u00a0Paul Skenes<\/a> and\u00a0Braxton Ashcraft<\/a> \u2014 against Cincinnati. Hays hits in the middle of the lineup regardless of handedness, but he does most of his damage against left-handers.<\/p>\n A bigger factor for Cincinnati is getting their franchise player on track. The Reds have made their push back into the playoff picture despite a disappointing stretch from\u00a0Elly De La Cruz<\/a>. The switch-hitting shortstop has hit .212\/.271\/.315 in almost 200 trips to the plate since the beginning of August. He homered off\u00a0Porter Hodge<\/a> on Friday, his first longball in more than six weeks. The slump got to a point where Francona felt he needed to drop De La Cruz in the batting order. He has hit sixth or seventh over the past week after operating as the team\u2019s #3 hitter for the entire season.<\/p>\n De La Cruz still has decent numbers overall. He\u2019s up to 20 homers with a .263\/.336\/.436 batting line across 673 plate appearances. He\u2019s tied for sixth in MLB with 36 stolen bases. Yet he clearly hasn\u2019t played to his potential over the past few weeks. C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic<\/a> observed over the weekend that De La Cruz has played through a pair of leg injuries (quad and hamstring) while starting all but one of the team\u2019s 156 games. He certainly won\u2019t come out of the lineup at this stage of the season, but it\u2019s possible he\u2019s battling fatigue.<\/p>\n On the pitching side, rookie right-hander\u00a0Rhett Lowder<\/a> seems likely to miss the entire season. The 2023 seventh overall pick has been on the injured list all year because of forearm and oblique injuries. Lowder made a two-inning rehab appearance at Triple-A Louisville on September 13. MLB.com\u2019s Mark Sheldon<\/a> writes that he was scratched from his second scheduled rehab outing after feeling that his shoulder didn\u2019t recover as hoped from the first.<\/p>\n Lowder has already undergone imaging that came back clean, but it\u2019s yet another setback that makes it difficult to imagine him returning even if the Reds make a deep playoff run. The Triple-A season is over, so Lowder won\u2019t get any more game action. The Wake Forest product impressed late last season, working to a 1.17 ERA through his first six MLB starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds completed a four-game sweep of the Cubs over the weekend. They\u2019ve won five straight and pulled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[124,5,535,50,4259,1177,4,536,6967],"class_list":{"0":"post-339180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-austin-hays","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-cincinnati","11":"tag-cincinnati-reds","12":"tag-cincinnatireds","13":"tag-elly-de-la-cruz","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-reds","16":"tag-rhett-lowder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115261695954991425","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339180","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=339180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}