The Cincinnati Reds powered their way to victory on Friday in the series opener against the Texas Rangers, with 2-run blasts by Spencer Steer and Tyler Stephenson fueling the 5-3 victory. On Saturday, it was starting pitcher Rhett Lowder\u2019s excellence paired with some timely bucket brigade of singles that led to Cincinnati\u2019s 2-0 win.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, it will be Chase Burns with the chance to put his stamp on the first road series of the season for the Reds as they look to sweep aside the Rangers and move three games over the .500 mark. Burns was his electric self again in his first start of the season, fanning 7 in 5.0 IP while allowing nary a run and a lone hit in a 2-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, showing zero ill-effects from his bullpen role down the stretch in 2025 and his somewhat odd \u2018de-load\u2019 late in spring camp.<\/p>\n
Standing in Cincinnati\u2019s way will be another former #2 overall pick in Texas Rangers starter Jack Leiter. Leiter, whose path to big league success hasn\u2019t been quite as rocket-like as Burns, settled in as a solid mid-rotation contributor for the 2025 Rangers, but the stuff has always been there for him to lead a rotation. Still just 25 years old (for a few more days), he looked the part of an ace in his first start of the season, and the Reds will have their work cut out for them today against the righty.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something of an interesting matchup today given yesterday\u2019s between Rhett Lowder and Kumar Rocker. Lowder and Burns, of course, were both aces that came out of Wake Forest\u2019s elite pitching development program, while both Rocker and Leiter came out of a Vanderbilt system that current Reds pitching coordinator Derek Johnson set in motion himself. All four are former Top 10 overall picks, too, showing just how much elite arm talent has been on display in this series so far.<\/p>\n
First pitch for Sunday\u2019s matinee is set for 2:35 PM ET, as the Reds will head to Miami next to continue their first road trip of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, Nate Lowe is back on the bench and Ke\u2019Bryan Hayes is starting at 3B again. Here\u2019s how the Reds will line up for this one:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Reds powered their way to victory on Friday in the series opener against the Texas Rangers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,79233,4,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-664813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati-reds-game-information","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-rangers","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-rangers","14":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116352862900427475","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664813","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=664813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}