The Cincinnati Reds made their first trip away from Goodyear Ballpark on Wednesday afternoon. They headed north to take on the Chicago White Sox at Camelback Ranch and they took care of business thanks to several home runs and quality pitching on the day, picking up a 3-2 victory.
The Highlights
Cincinnati got on the board first in this one. The first pitch of the 2nd inning to Sal Stewart was a 95 MPH fastball and it went out at 108 MPH and didn’t land for another 440 feet as Stewart crushed his first home run of the spring to make it 1-0.
Nick Lodolo, after striking out the side in the bottom of the 1st returned for the 2nd inning and picked up another strikeout, working around two singles to complete his day with two shutout innings.
Hector Rodriguez would line a single into left field in the top of the 3rd inning. He would come around to score when JJ Bleday clobbered a 464-foot home run six pitches later as the Reds extended their lead to 3-0. That’s where the lead remained until the bottom of the 4th when Colson Montgomery connected for a long home run off of Lyon Richardson to get the White Sox on the board and make it 3-1.
After four innings of shutout relief from the Reds bullpen, Chicago broke through in the 9th against Julian Garcia when the White Sox picked up a leadoff single then then got an RBI double from Dustin Harris to make it a 1-run game. But that was all they would get as Cincinnati held on for a 3-2 win to pull themselves to the .500 mark on the spring at 2-2.
You can see the box score for this game here.
News and Notes
The two teams combined to walk twice and strike out 19 times. The Reds pitchers had 12 of those 19 strikeouts. Nick Lodolo (4), Luis Mey (3), Julian Garcia (3), and Darren McCaughan (2) all had multiple strikeouts in their outings.
Lodolo was throwing a lot of strikes, but he also threw a lot of pitches. He threw 2.0 innings and 40 pitches, resulting in 30 strikes on the day. He had the four strikeouts as mentioned above, and his other two outs were recorded on ground balls.
No hitter for Cincinnati had more than one hit, but Nathaniel Lowe did have a hit and a walk.
JJ Bleday is hitting .500, going 3-6 in his two games so far. He’s had five batted balls this spring. Their exit velocities are as follows: 92.5 MPH, 100.1 MPH, 109.0 MPH, 109.2 MPH, and 110.2 MPH.
The Reds bench players once again struggle to hit, going 2-10 on the day. With the exception of going 4-5 in the 9th inning of yesterday’s game, the bench is now 5-41 this spring.
Tomorrow the Cincinnati Reds are back at home as they host the San Diego Padres. Scheduled to pitch for Cincinnati in the game: Chase Burns, Chase Petty, Graham Ashcraft, Connor Phillips, Tejay Antone, and Zach Maxwell. The game is slated to begin at 3:05pm ET.