Photo: Doug Gray
The Cincinnati Reds don’t play a game on Thursday but that doesn’t mean that they were all going to be taking the day off, either. The club sent right-handed reliever Emilio Pagan to Triple-A Louisville where he will begin a rehab assignment with the Bats tonight.
Seven weeks ago he was in Chicago facing the Cubs and after delivering the first pitch of the bottom of the 9th he hobbled off the mound and then fell to the ground in agony. He remained there for several minutes before a golf cart arrived on the infield grass and hauled him off of the field. It seemed so much worse, both to the viewers at home, and to Pagan himself, at the time of the injury. The injury turned out to just be a hamstring strain and the timeline for recovery was originally announced as 4-8 weeks. We’re a few days away from the 8-week mark and the reliever is about to take the mound.
Cincinnati’s closer was not having the best start to 2026. He gave up a run in his first outing and then four more in his 3rd outing. But after that he had been solid when it came to preventing runs, posting a 4.22 ERA in his 12 outings the rest of the way until his injury. Under the surface, though, he had walked five and only struck out seven of the 45 hitters he had faced in that stretch and only had 11 strikeouts of 62 batters on the season. After having strikeout rates of 28% and 30% in his previous two years with the Reds his strikeout rate this season was just 18%. That’s going to have to improve moving forward if he’s going to return to being a quality reliever.
While Pagan is the starting pitcher tonight for Louisville it likely isn’t going to be his only appearance there. He’s not expected to spend a long time on his rehab assignment, but he will almost assuredly pitch in more than one game before his return to the big leagues.