Nick Senzel has been absent in the daily Cincinnati Reds intrasquad scrimmages the past few days. Manager David Bell told the media on Sunday that the outfielder hyperextended his elbow swinging late last week.
“He took a swing, I believe it was Thursday or Friday and he just kind of hyper-extended his left elbow,” said Bell. “It’s kind of a day-to-day situation. He should be back out playing tomorrow (Monday) or the next day (Tuesday). There’s no long term concerns or anything like that. If it was the season, he’d be playing as early as today (Sunday). Initially he was playing the next day, there hasn’t been any real concern. We’ve just played it safe each day.”
It was Thursday that Senzel homered into the upper deck in the scrimmage against Michael Lorenzen. It will be just under two weeks before the Reds kick off the season on Friday, July 24th as they welcome in the Detroit Tigers for opening day. The Tigers will be getting to town a few days early and are set to play two scrimmage games against the Reds on the 21st and 22nd before both take a day off the day before the season is set to begin.
What will the Reds 30-man roster look like?
For the first two weeks of the season, teams around Major League Baseball will get to play with a 30-man roster. That’s going to give everyone a lot of wiggle room on not only who they have in the big leagues, but how many options they get to choose from on both the bench and in the bullpen. David Bell didn’t get into specific names when asked about the potential roster break down this weekend, but he did discuss the strategy behind how the roster could look when it comes to pitchers and position players.
“Even though we have position players that will play every day, and play regardless of who the opposing pitcher is, you can create good match ups – we have the 3-batter minimum rule which creates pinch hitting opportunities,” Bell said. “If you can have more position players, in some ways that can allow you to pull out all the stops and try to win a game. Pitching is obviously very important. We have to make sure we’re covered every day there. I would say it’ll probably be closer to 15-15, 16-14 with 16 position players, 14 pitchers.”
The expectation has been that teams would load up the bullpen early on in the season because most starting pitchers won’t be ready to go out and give you a full starters workload the first couple of weeks due to the short “ramp up” period between when teams were allowed to get back to work and the start of the season.
“If you look at a typical season, you’re never really carrying more than 8 relievers,” said Bell. “Maybe you carry a 9th. You have a shorter season – we feel really good with our starters and where they are with being ready so we might be able to get away with carrying less pitchers and more position players.”
The team seems to be confident in their starting staff as a whole, but even beyond that, it seems that the Reds are feeling good about options in their bullpen that can play “long reliever” if needed. Last week David Bell mentioned situations like that for several of the teams relievers who could get some work in multi-inning appearances if needed.
Updated Cincinnati Reds Top 25 Prospects
Over at RedsMinorLeagues.com this morning the Cincinnati Reds Top 25 Prospect List was updated for the first time since things were published in November of 2019. While there hasn’t been much baseball played since then by most of the minor leaguers – there were some transactions that took two players out of the organization, a few transactions to brought new players into the organization (the draft helped here, too), and one new addition based on the improvements shown since the start of spring training.
With the 3 batter minimum, expanded rosters, and the new extra innings format, the role of manager becomes magnified significantly. Let’s hope our guy is up to the task!
I didn’t think of the 3 batter minimum rule as a factor in roster construction. Having more bats to take advantage of a relief pitchers weakness is smart.
BTW I hate the 3 batter minimum rule. It is bad for the game. You have a tight game and your reliever comes in and gives up a dinger to the first 2 batters, and you still have to keep him in to face a third. Some days a pitcher just won’t have his stuff.
I will happily take the occasional reliever not having it in exchange for the atrocity of making a pitching change on 2 or 3 consecutive hitters. Sometimes those pitchers don’t have it either. The latter, in my opinion, is just as big a travesty, and makes the late innings boring as heck to watch or listen to.
How can you hate something you haven’t even seen in action yet?
I hate starting pitchers who are considered gods if they throw 200 innings.
I hate something being called a quality start with 3 earned runs in six innings, a 4.50 ERA pace.
I hate the DH, which is nothing more than a way to pay huge salaries to over-the-hill, or never-reached-the-hill players who cannot play baseball, so they sit in an air conditioned clubhouse recliner studying video rather than having to actually analyze a game in real time.
There are a lot of things I hate, but they are all things I have seen in action over many years; none of them are things that have not ever happened yet.
“If horses can’t eat it, then I ain’t playing on it.”
I think Dick Allen hated artificial turf
Touchy about the word hate. I think it’s completely valid to have a strong opinion one way or the other about an idea.
I didn’t hate the idea of the pitch clock, it was more of an innocuous rule change.
I liked the 26 man Roster.
I love that each league will be under the same advantage (DH) instead o the NL being hamstrung in every away game.
Senzell, different season same news.
Will the Reds be televising a scrimmage again today? If so, what time?
Yes.
5:20pm. Reds.com will have it.
These guys are scheduled to pitch:
Anthony DeSclafani
Michael Lorenzen
Sal Romano
Amir Garrett
Pedro Strop
Justin Shafer
Raisel Iglesias
Will you have a link for it today on RLN like yesterday with the lineup?
Yesterday Reds.mlb TV did not have that option. Only you did, so thanks for the link to watch yesterday.
Good news about Disco & Lorenzen. Was a little concerned about them.
Doug,
Can I just go to reds.com and watch the game today, or do I have to have a subscription?
Thanks
Ed Booten
Right now, it’s free to watch the practices/scrimmages. Once they start they are on the front page below the “main story”. But you can also click on the “video” tab at the top of the site (or the side navigation part if you are on mobile) and the video should be available there, too. Once the regular season starts, though, you’ll have to pay to watch the games online (and that only works if you are out of market and not blacked out).