The Battle of Ohio, or the Ohio Cup, or whatever other silly name they want to attach to this series starts tonight in Cincinnati between the Reds and Cleveland. Cincinnati will send Jeff Hoffman to the mound at 7:10pm ET to face off against Logan Allen.
Starting Lineups
Cincinnati Reds
|
Cleveland
|
| Jesse Winker – LF | Andrés Giménez – SS |
| Nick Castellanos – RF | Cesar Hernandez – 2B |
| Eugenio Suárez – SS | José Ramírez – 3B |
| Joey Votto – 1B | Eddie Rosario – LF |
| Nick Senzel – CF | Amed Rosario – CF |
| Jonathan India – 2B | Josh Naylor – RF |
| Kyle Farmer – 3B | Roberto Pérez – C |
| Tyler Stephenson – C | Jake Bauers – 1B |
| Jeff Hoffman – SP | Logan Allen |
Starting Pitchers
Jeff Hoffman
Two starts for Jeff Hoffman with the Reds this year and he’s posted a 3.86 ERA in 9.1 innings with three walks, one home run allowed, and he’s struck out eight batters. He’s hoping tonight goes more like his first outing when he allowed one run in 5.0 innings with six strikeouts rather than the last time out when he gave up three runs in just 4.1 innings with three walks and just two strikeouts out in Arizona.
Pitch usage from 2021
| 4-Seam | Change | Slider | Curveball | |
| Velo | 93.3 | 85.1 | 82.6 | 76.7 |
| Usage | 57.9% | 12.6% | 15.7% | 13.8% |
Logan Allen
The lefty has also made two starts this season, throwing 10.0 innings for Cleveland with five walks and eight strikeouts to go with a 2.70 ERA. He’s only thrown 48.1 innings in the big leagues in his career, and he’s struggled to throw strikes in that span as he’s handed out 25 walks with just 32 strikeouts.
Pitch Usage in 2021
| 4-Seam | Change | Slider | Curveball | |
| Velo | 92.9 | 82.4 | 81.1 | 75.5 |
| Usage | 48.8% | 18.9% | 28.7% | 3.7% |
When and Where
- Game time: 7:10pm ET
- Where: Great American Ballpark, Cincinnati
- Watch: Bally Sports Ohio (formerly Fox Sports Ohio), MLB.tv
- Listen: 700 WLW AM (Cincinnati area)
- Forecast: 60°, partly cloudy, 0% chance of rain
News and Notes
Mike Moustakas is a late lineup scratch
Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer was the first to report that Mike Moustakas was a late scratch from the Reds lineup just after 6:20pm. It’s a non-COVID related illness. Kyle Farmer in at third, lineup shake up from the originally posted lineup.
Aristides Aquino has surgery
While on the west coast road trip outfielder Aristides Aquino suffered a hamate bone injury in his left hand and had surgery this morning to have the bone removed. The general timeline to return from this is 4-6 weeks. The team recalled Max Schrock to replace Aquino on the roster. We wrote about both moves earlier today if you want to take a bit of a deeper dive.
Shogo Akiyama continues to work his way back
Some good news on outfielder Shogo Akiyama, from C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic earlier this afternoon
Shogo Akiyama just wrapped up his BP by putting one in the right-field stands. Joey Votto waited around to watch him take his BP
— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) April 16, 2021
NL Central Standings
Playoff odds via Fangraphs
| Team | W | L | GB | Playoff % |
| Reds | 7 | 5 | 0 | 27.9% |
| Brewers | 7 | 5 | 0 | 54.9% |
| Cardinals | 6 | 6 | 1.0 | 22.3% |
| Cubs | 5 | 7 | 2.0 | 13.1% |
| Pirates | 5 | 8 | 2.5 | 0.3% |
Winker in leadoff spot vs. LHP … two thumbs up. He is his prime now. Ride him.
.440 OBP to start season … until he proves he can’t hit LHP or the OBP falls off the table … play him every day he can go, have him hit leadoff.
If Votto/Suarez are going to remain 3/4 … Winker/Castellanos every day as 1/2 makes a lot of sense.
Hoffman feels like he is living on borrowed time as an SP … but only Rosario/Ramirez feel scary. No Franmil Reyes to start is a break.
Go Redlegs.
Show of hands – who think either team has nerves because the Ohio cup is on the line?
Because you can “throw the stats out the window” because of this according to Barry
I don’t think anyone actually cares about the Ohio Cup, but commentators hyping up the games is a good thing. We’ve had years of thom and others talking about how much better baseball used to be. Their job is make the game sound fun and exciting. Finally doing that is what we want.
First inning: swinging at everything.
95 right down the middle goes a long ways.Tribe up 1-0. I like Hoffman coming right after the hitter though.Sometimes when you miss they don’t
5 straight heaters to their #5 hitter though? Guys wouldn’t be batting 5th if they couldn’t hit the heater. They wouldn’t even make the bigs. Now if its DeGrom or Thor and its coming 99 then thats another story, but everyone else needs to mix in breaking stuff
Thought with the off day and returning home to face a soft tossing lefty we may hit but so far we look just as bad as we did the last game out west.I will check back later and hope they are doing better.
Not watching but ESPN is showing we are chasing balls out of the zone and the guy is just soft tossing everything.
That’s exactly right. The strategy seems to be “swing at everything, or at least take a half swing.”
I don’t have to look up stats to know that Arizona, SF, and Cleveland weren’t hitting at all coming into the series with us and yet another bottom feeder will try to outhit us. No Beiber so no excuses if we fail to win this series.
Dangerous spot here with Rosario up.
Already at 52 pitches in the 3rd. Cross our fingers tonight when the bullpen comes into play.
He got out of it! There we go!
Senzel 5-7 in the 2 blowouts vs the Pirates. 3-26 (.115) in every other competitive game where we actually need additional hits
Scrappy Reds.
Set up for big inning now.
Hate to be negative Nancy, but you gotta score from 2nd on that ball? Clear as day that ball was falling in. C’mon? Barry jumped all over it! Great atbat though by Hoff
Great at bat by Hoffman. First pitcher I’ve ever seen take a step forward on the bunt attempt to be at the front of the box.
Allen’s a different pitcher with guys on. They need to put some runs on the board here.
There you go….Hoff 1st to 3rd. Not too many pitchers do that on non 2 out singles.
Way to be a competitor!
There you go baby! I’ve been whining about station to station since Rolen & BP had them running hard and thats been a while. It can’t always be HR derby. Now the only fear is Hoffman will fall apart next inning. Pitchers run the bases and suddenly have nothing on the mound.
This is a fun 3rd inning! Best inning of the season!
Fielding error … HBP … Wild pitch … Hoffman then gets a hit.
That is how it got started.
Kudos to the Reds for (hopefully) putting a game out of reach … when they were gifted such a good start to an inning.
We all having fun now?
And I LOVED Nick C’s aggressive turn and score
Probably shouldve been out, and was sent w no outs. But hey, it ended up all right 🙂
That’s what can happen with aggressive base running. It doesn’t always work out, but it can force errors. I’ll take aggressive ie bang bang plays, not stupid, out by a mile.
Yeah it took a perfect throw and tag to get him. I like the aggressiveness from Nick of course, that call is up to the coach.
This old man is! I yelled on the Suarez double so loud that I am sure my neighbors heard me!
Hoffman was not “on the bench a long time”, he was getting RBIs and taking extra bases……
And once again, the flex-o-zone haunts us. What was a strike an inning ago is not but will be again.
Shut down inning would be nice here
Nice, giving them runs back there would’ve brought them back into the game.
Houdini Hoffman!! I like the guy, but seems to give up alot of fly balls? Thats pretty scary in gabp
I like Hoffman and think he has the stuff to be a starter but I would flip flop him with Antone. I think Hoffman would be good out of the pen and Antone would dominate as a starter.
Straily was a fly-ball guy, he had his career year pitching out of GABP
Good point! Now he’s the Korean Cy Young))) I made alot of $ on DS last year when KBO was on espn. He got ran out of mlb in Florida which is twice the size of gabp. If you pitch well then you can find outs
Cubs lost. Cards down 6-0. Milw has better pitching then the Reds and they’re scary, but Yelich/Cain already hurting. Burnes is nasty, but he’s never pitched more then 60 innings. Reds have a real shot!
This team looks different in GABP. Not surprising, but it’s such a huge difference.
Yep … got to figure things out on the road.
1 more win on the road, and we’d have a different feeling about the Reds. That’s a good sign, right on the edge of what they need to be.
They were in the game most of those losses too, the only ugly game I can think of was opening day.
Ok Al Pacino))
It keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.
This is the game to get Perez and Doolittle in the game and get some work in. Lets hope Bell doesnt waste any of the good relievers.
Let Hoffman go 7, then Perez 8, Doolittle 9. Let’s Go!
Feeling good about tonight. Leg 1 of the Ohio Cup journey!!
How are they not on 2nd there? embarrassing D but I’ll take it
Let’s get Schrock an AB or 2
Whale of a game from Joey all the way around. Props to the old man.
Yeah all the 4-3s in the last 2 years. I miss the shots to left-center. Normally the only time vintage Joey ever pulled the ball was breaking balls in
+1000
Lorenzen coming back as a starter? Shoulder injury plus setbacks, yet Antone can get a chance to save his life. Strange arbitrary shoehorning of pitcher roles.
hm, should be a reply to main thread
Pretty good game from the 5th starter. Especially liked how he shut the door after we went up big. Hats off to Joey Votto, great game. I guess it is good to be home.
Home cures what ails ya.
Stephenson has some kind of bat. Is he Mahle’s catcher plus all lefties?
Stephenson also was the catcher for Castillo’s gem. I’d like Stephenson batting behind Moustakes in the 6 hole.
I knew if I bailed the Reds would get it done or at least I hoped they would.Maybe I should make that an every day thing.Looks like Hoffman got us going and it snowballed from there.Great job by him on the mound and at the plate.
He even hoofed it 1st to 3rd on a single. Hoffman competed hard tonite! He’s got decent stuff. Off speed drops a lot and got him 2 doubleplays. He might’ve given up 3-4 runs in the summer with some of those flyballs, but he’s not bad. I still want Antone in the rotation.
Man I cant remember the Reds ever having a bench like they do this year.
I’m thinking back and there were some years, but this does look very special.
Pack your bags Bedrosian.
Yup
Cam (run) Explosion. Its time to find your lifes work son
can’t say he didn’t get a chance
Just took a look at the box score and Bell is just having so much tonight and so are we.Not complaining but he must be in heaven right now with all the moves he is making.Go Reds.
Arizona, SF, and Clev were all ice cold with the bats. Well SF has been hitting HRs, but everyone is under .200. We really need to sweep to make up for the road trip. Clev really only has 1 scary bat in Ramirez.
Love the game but Bedrosian is a blight. He is not a MLB pitcher but persists.
Yeah right now Bedrosian is close to being lifted with a 7 run lead in the ninth and that is bad.Guy needs to go and work on some things.Sal’s job is to pitch in blow outs anyway.
Pie-Rats up 4-1 over the Brew Crew in the 7th. Could be a VERY good night for us.
Bases loaded 7th and Shaw first pitch fly out to end the inning. We complain about SS but sticking with that guys an a starting 3b man is insanity.
Brewers down to two more chances and lost their best opportunity