Reds pitcher Andrew Abbott on Cincinnati loss to St. Louis Cardinals
Cincinnati Reds All-Star Andrew Abbott didn’t walk a batter, but high pitch counts in early innings cost him a chance to go deep in loss to Cardinals.
ST. LOUIS – As the Cincinnati Reds look toward next season – which is about to happen sooner than they want – they should at least be able to count on a pretty strong place to start with next year’s roster.
Maybe even enough to dream on the kind of start to the season they didn’t have this year and avoid the season-long game of catch-up they were forced to play after losing six of their first eight games and 24 of their first 44.
The Reds beat the Cardinals 6-2 on Sept. 17 to salvage the final game of a long, losing road trip, pull their season record back up to .500, and close to 2 1/2 behind the final National League playoff position, pending the Mets’ night game.
They cling to tattered, faded postseason hopes with 10 games to play.
But wait’ll next year.
And that aforementioned starting point.
Specifically, the Reds have all but Zack Littell from their current starting rotation – a rotation ranked second in MLB, according to fangraphs.com – under club control through next year, with promising young right-handers Chase Burns and Rhett Lowder projected firmly in the mix for spots next spring.
They also have left-hander Brandon Williamson and righty Julian Aguiar due back from elbow injuries to fight for roles on the staff.
As big as any of the holdovers is the durable, veteran right-hander who pitched the final game their latest meat-grinder road trip, Brady Singer (14-10).
Just by taking the mound in the Cardinals series finale, Singer did something no Reds starter has done since 2021. Not Hunter Greene. Not Andrew Abbott. Not Nick Lodolo or Graham Ashcraft or Nick Martinez.
Singer made his 30th start of the season – the first Reds pitcher to start that many in a season since Luis Castillo and Tyler Mahle tied for the league lead with 33 each in 2021, before the Reds’ big selloff began to start building this core.
For whatever anyone might thing of pitching wins these days, his 14 this year are the most for a Reds pitcher since Castillo won 15 in 2019, and the Reds are 18-12 in Singer’s starts
It’s one of the handful of things that went as planned for the Reds this season, after acquiring Singer from Kansas City in a trade for former Rookie of the Year second baseman Jonathan India.
It was a trade of former college teammates with a year each left of club control, the Royals seeking a top-of-the-order option with on-base skills, the Reds looking for an innings-eating starter.
Whatever the Royals believe they got in the trade, the Reds got exactly what they sought.
Singer is the only Reds starter who has been on the roster all season and hasn’t missed a start.
He leads the staff in wins, innings (161), strikeouts (155), quality starts (15), and in that 30th start he lowered his season ERA to 3.86.
And Singer has come up biggest when the stakes have been highest for the team this season.
The only reason he didn’t earn a career-high seventh consecutive quality start in the Cardinals game was a sixth-inning throwing error by shortstop Elly De La Cruz that cost an unearned run and at least seven extra pitches.
Even in falling an out short of the six requisite innings for the QS against, here’s what those last seven starts look like: 5-1 (team: 6-1) with a 1.73 ERA, 42 strikeouts and 11 walks in 41 2/3 innings.
In his last 10 starts, going back to July 27, he’s 7-2 with a 2.15 ERA.
Spencer Steer note
Spencer Steer returned to the lineup after having a rib high at the back of his rib cage readjusted following a painful ordeal earlier in the week, and then drove in five of the Reds’ six runs against the Cardinals.
That tied his career high for runs batted in.
He hit a three-run homer in the fourth, his 18th homer of the year, and added a two-out, two-run single in the seventh. He has 69 runs batted in this season. He second on the team in both home runs and RBIs, to (19 and 82).
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