The final week of the season will feature one of baseball’s best power pitching matchups when the Cincinnati Reds host the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday night in the second game of a three-game series.
The Reds will start Hunter Greene (7-4, 2.74 ERA) against the Pirates’ Paul Skenes (10-10, 2.03) in a duel of right-handers.
Greene is coming off his first career nine-inning complete-game shutout in a 1-0 win over the Chicago Cubs on Thursday.
The 26-year-old Los Angeles native carried a no-hitter into the seventh and wound up allowing just one hit. He struck out nine, walked one and finished the game with his fastball blazing past Cubs hitters at 101 mph.
The Reds (80-77) could use another dominant pick-me-up after collecting just five hits during a 4-2 loss to the Pirates (68-89) in the series opener on Tuesday.
Despite the 21st homer of the season by Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati saw its season-high-tying five-game winning streak end.
The loss dropped the Reds out of a tie for the third and final National League wild-card spot. Cincinnati is now a game behind the New York Mets (81-76), who beat the Chicago Cubs 9-7 on Tuesday. The Arizona Diamondbacks (80-77) also are one game back of the Mets after rallying past the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-4.
“I don’t think anybody’s mind is on that,” Greene said of the standings. “I mean, the people that are actually doing this and actually playing, we don’t worry about that. I think outsiders worry about it.
“I think people that like to read into different narratives, and whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, other social media platforms, I think they might dive down those rabbit holes, but for us, we’re trying to stay present and control what we can control that happens to be the situation that we’re in, but I think maybe the outsiders concentrate on it more.”
The Reds hope to have right-handed power bat Austin Hays back in the lineup on Wednesday after the outfielder missed the past two games due to lingering back spasms.
Skenes, meanwhile, is set to make his 32nd start of the season. The 23-year-old LSU product is coming off one of the roughest starts of his young career. On Sept. 16, he took a 4-1 loss to the visiting Cubs, allowing three runs on a career-high-tying seven hits over 3 2/3 innings.
Skenes needed 33 pitches to get through the first inning and allowed multiple runs in the opening frame for the first time ever.
“Just out of the gate, just didn’t really have a good feel for my body and stuff,” Skenes said. “That’s what it came down to. Dialed it in later, but long first inning, and they did a good job getting the pitch count up. So only so much I can do.”
Still, his 2.03 ERA leads all qualifying major league starters while his 11 scoreless starts are tied for the most in team history during a single season. Trevor Williams established the mark in 2018.
Skenes is 4-0 with an 0.39 ERA in four career appearances against the Reds. Greene is 1-4 with a 2.51 ERA in eight outings vs. the Pirates.
–Field Level Media
