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Sonny Gray hopes to bounce back from his poor outing last Tuesday night and help lead the Cincinnati Reds (19-24) to a series win over the Chicago Cubs (25-19) at Wrigley Field tonight.

First pitch is once again at 8:15 ET. The game can be found in all the usual places: Fox Sports Ohio if you’re in the Reds viewing area, MLB.TV for out-of-market fans, and 700 WLW on the radio.

Starting Pitchers

Name IP ERA FIP xFIP WHIP K% BB%
Sonny Gray 42.1 3.19 2.85 3.14 1.18 31.6% 10.2%
Adbert Alzolay 8.2 2.08 2.82 3.95 1.38 31.6% 18.4%

REDS

Gray was pushed back a couple days after he got rocked against the Cardinals at Great American Ball Park last Tuesday. He didn’t make it out of the first inning, giving up six runs on five hits. The good news is that the only other time this season he’s allowed more than two runs (August 9 in Milwaukee, he gave up four runs in 5.1 innings), he rebounded to throw a gem against Pittsburgh, where he allowed just one home run and struck out 10 in 6.2 innings.

Gray has faced the Cubs only once this season, but struck out 11 batters in 6.2 innings while allowing only two runs. Jason Heyward and Kris Bryant both have hit home runs off him in his career.

CUBS

MLB Pipeline ranks Adbert Alzolay as the Cubs #7 prospect, and he’s played like it in the limited innings he’s gotten to pitch thus far this season. In his debut season last year, he made one bad start against the Pirates, allowing seven runs in 2.2 innings. However, aside from that, he pitched pretty well. In the other three games in 2019, he allowed a combined three runs in 9.2 innings. And he’s carried that over to 2020, albeit in a smaller sample size.

Alzolay has faced the Reds once this season. On August 29, he pitched one scoreless inning, allowing a hit and a walk and striking out two. Alzolay relies on four pitches: a curve ball, sinker, four seamer, and change up. He’s only pitched eight innings in 2020, but in those eight innings, he’s thrown the curve almost 33 percent of the time, followed by the sinker at 28 percent.

Bullpens

Since both starters each of the last two nights pitched deep into the game, the Reds bullpen is in good shape heading into the final game of the series. The Reds only had to use three relievers in this series, and all three–Robert Stephenson, Lucas Sims, and Raisel Iglesias–have pitched no more than an inning.

Cubs manager David Ross has used six relievers this series, but none of the six have pitched in both games, and only one pitched more than one full inning. Both teams should have everyone available tonight.

Lineups

REDS CUBS
1. Joey Votto (1B)
2. Nicholas Castellanos (RF)
3. Jesse Winker (DH)
4. Eugenio Suarez (3B)
5. Mike Moustakas (2B)
6. Shogo Akiyama (LF)
7. Tyler Stephenson (C)
8. Brian Goodwin (CF)
9. Jose Garcia (SS)		 1. Ian Happ (CF)
2. Kris Bryant (3B)
3. Anthony Rizzo (1B)
4. Javier Baez (SS)
5. Willson Contreras (C)
6. Jason Heyward (RF)
7. Cameron Maybin (LF)
8. David Bote (DH)
9. Nico Hoerner (2B)

Tyler Stephenson gets his first career start tonight.

News and Notes

A few minor transactions were made this afternoon:

Update on Wade Miley and Nick Senzel:

Here’s a little pre-game reading on Trevor Bauer and his chances to win the Cy Young award:

And finally, a very Happy Birthday goes out to one of the greatest players in Reds history, Joey Votto.

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