It\u2019s been an unfortunate yet somewhat predictable start to Nick Lodolo\u2019s 2026 season since he missed over a month while dealing with blister issues. It forced him to tweak the way he approaches batters, looking at times to avoid throwing his slider too much and risking a recurrence of the problem. He also, obviously, missed a lot of time he\u2019d otherwise have been building up to his best at the start of what was viewed as a crucial season for him, especially with Hunter Greene on the sidelines for months.<\/p>\n
So far, he\u2019s yielded 12 earned runs in just 15 IP across a trio of starts, though at times in his start on May 18th against the Phillies he looked a bit more like his old self. Still, he\u2019s been plagued with the exact same problem as the entirety of the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff as a whole this year, as he\u2019s walked an uncharacteristic 9 batters against just 11 Ks in that time.<\/p>\n
For the record, he was fanning hitters at a 9.0 K\/9 just last year with a stellar 1.8 BB\/9. The Reds, quite frankly. aren\u2019t going to go anywhere in 2026 if he can\u2019t rediscover something close to that form.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll get another shot to find it on Monday in New York as the Reds begin a series against the sputtering New York Mets. The Reds will do so with a rested staff, too, having had Thursday, Friday, and Sunday off thanks to scheduling and some weather postponements.<\/p>\n
The Mets, meanwhile, will roll out burgeoning ace Nolan McLean, who has looked mostly brilliant through his first 58.0 IP of the season.<\/p>\n
First pitch in the series opener is set for 4:10 PM ET.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how the Reds will line up for the opener, with Blake Dunn continuing to get run at leadoff and in CF, Eugenio Suarez in the lineup at DH, and hopefully a big pile of runs baked into it:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been an unfortunate yet somewhat predictable start to Nick Lodolo\u2019s 2026 season since he missed over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,79233,101,4,1690,61,2548,4203],"class_list":["post-708573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-mets","tag-baseball","tag-cincinnati-reds-game-information","tag-mets","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-mets","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkmets"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116636677852060398","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708573","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=708573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}