It was a glorious weekend for the Reds against the southsiders.
The Cincinnati Reds routed the hapless Chicago White Sox on Sunday 11-4, and by doing so wrapped a three-game series sweep of the AL Central club for the first time in Chicago.
It was a series that also featured a 5-0 shutout and 11-1 thumping, and clearly the Sox are mired in the kind of half-rebuild, half-injury-hell that the Reds themselves so recently slogged through. Here are three takeaways from the Reds sweep over the weekend and what they might mean moving forward.
The Reds have amassed some pretty intriguing arm depth in their arm barn over the course of this rebuild. What they’ve put together down there consists of former 1st round picks, former Top 100 overall prospects, and guys who throw funky stuff in funky ways that’s hard for anyone else to replicate. What they haven’t yet done, though, is produce a true, front-line starter out of that bunch.
Enter Lodolo, who returned to the mound on Saturday for 5.2 brilliant IP in which he allowed just a lone hit and lone walk against 10 K while allowing nary a run. It almost immediately erased the bad taste of his lost 2023 season and, if he’s healthy for good, looked a lot like the guy who broke out in a big, big way when last healthy in 2022.
He’s looking more and more like the dude the Reds need to lead their staff, and it’s also just fine if the other guys end up being pretty, pretty good, too.
Man, that’s just bad baseball.
They’re playing without superstar Luis Robert, Jr., Eloy Jimenez, and Yoan Moncada, while Dylan Cease was traded out from under them just before Opening Day. It’s a shell of a formerly proud franchise on both ends, and it’s really, really sad to see.
Get well soon, Sox.
After leading all of baseball in swipage last year, the Reds had their running ways on display again on Sunday. Jake Fraley swiped a trio of bags, Will Benson a pair himself, and Spencer Steer even got into the action, too - another day of taking advantage of their speed advantage on a day when their fastest player (Elly De La Cruz) didn’t even get on base to steal for himself.
They’ll be doing this all year, and they’ll be doing it from every spot in the lineup. Nice!
Yeah, he sputtered a bit in the final two games of the series and, on Sunday, his stretch of consecutive games reaching base finally came to an end.
He also did this on Friday, though, and has spent the better part of the last two weeks showing the world what he’s really capable of when cooking.
110.8 mph
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) April 13, 2024
449 ft
We'll say it again, he's elite. pic.twitter.com/KiB9mHJfDl
30/60? 35/80?
Whatever his season tallies end up, they’re going to be eye-popping.
Sorry.
Or, leadoff batter, at least.
He walked 4 times in Friday’s game and added another walk on Saturday, and while he’s being forced to play more defense at 2B than I think we’d all truly like, he’s begun to flash the kind of rock-solid OBP skills that made him a perfect leadoff guy before the leg and foot injuries began to sap him in recent years.
The power hasn’t shown up just yet, but if he continues to flirt with being on-base 40% of the time, this lineup is going to drive him in again and again and again. That’s something to be damn excited about each and every time he’s atop the lineup regardless of where he’s being forced onto the field defensively.
