The Cincinnati Reds, on the whole, are having a pretty miserable season. They sit nine games under .500 and in last place in their division, with even an outside shot at one of the myriad Wild Card spots painfully out of reach.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve dealt with injuries galore. Hunter Greene and Elly De La Cruz, the team\u2019s two stalwarts and usual All Stars, each was shelved. The team\u2019s entire back-end up of the bullpen hit the infirmary, while blisters have dogged starters Brady Singer and Nick Lodolo (2x) repeatedly. Even the indomitable Eugenio Suarez missed a month with an oblique strain, while CF has been a revolving door of hard-luck injury and underperformance, too.<\/p>\n
Just about the only two spots on the roster where we\u2019ve been able to know exactly what to expect everyday have been those of Chase Burns and Sal Stewart, a pair of former 1st round picks by the Reds who\u2019ve been forced to immediately graduate from \u2018youth movement\u2019 to \u2018literally carrying the team\u2019 this season.<\/p>\n
Burns and Stewart will rep the Cincinnati Reds in tonight\u2019s MLB All Star Game, which will begin at some point after coverage starts at 8 PM ET in Philadelphia on FOX. They\u2019ll do so as incredibly deserving participants, too.<\/p>\n
Burns rolls into the break having posted 4.2 bWAR across 18 brilliant starts. He\u2019s 11-1 with a 2.54 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 10.3 K\/9 across 102.2 IP, his ERA+ a sterling 173. The 4.2 bWAR has him tied for the 4th most valuable pitcher in the sport so far this season with Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski, while FanGraphs (2.9 fWAR) ranks him as the 8th most valuable. Not bad!<\/p>\n
Sal, meanwhile, leads all rookies with 65 ribbies, a mark that\u2019s tied with Pete Alonso for 9th most in the sport – and that\u2019s with the Reds having spent most of the season with a blind bat holding a wet noodle in the leadoff spot in front of him. He has socked 19 homers, making him one of just six players in the sport to have hit that many and stolen at least 10 bases – he\u2019s got 11 – alongside Zach Neto, CJ Abrams, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Miguel Vargas, James Wood, and Home Run Derby champ Jordan Walker. Overall, he\u2019s hitting .256\/.338\/.474 with a 120 OPS+.<\/p>\n
Neither will start the game, and Burns – who\u2019s dealing with a minor groin problem he picked up playing defense in his final start of the first half – won\u2019t participate at all. Sal, though, will hopefully get some run at some point late in this one.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how both the AL and NL will line up to start:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cincinnati Reds, on the whole, are having a pretty miserable season. They sit nine games under .500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,4259,4,13669,536],"class_list":["post-751780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cincinnati-reds","tag-baseball","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-cincinnatireds","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-all-star-game","tag-reds"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116919923133085572","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751780","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=751780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}