The Reds announced that left-hander Andrew Abbott has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to August 20, due to a left shoulder strain. Right-hander Alan Busenitz has been selected to take his place on the roster. To open a 40-man spot for Busenitz, catcher Austin Wynns has been transferred to the 60-day injured list.
At this point, the club hasn’t provided any information on when Abbott suffered the injury or how long they expect him to be out. He last took the ball on Sunday, tossing 83 pitches over five innings. His velocity was down a bit, per Statcast, with his fastball averaging 91.6 miles per hour. He was at 92.6 mph the previous start, perhaps indicating he wasn’t 100% last time out.
Regardless, it’s an unfortunate development for the Reds and their rotation. Abbott has been a mainstay this year, with a 3.72 ERA over his 25 starts on the season. Him and Hunter Greene are the two team leaders in innings but Greene landed on the IL last week due to elbow soreness. With Abbott now joining Greene on the IL, the club is without the two pillars of their rotation. That’s on top of Graham Ashcraft and Brandon Williamson, who are also on the IL.
Absences have been a key storyline for the Reds this year. In addition to those pitching issues, their position player mix currently has Wynns, Jeimer Candelario, Jake Fraley, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Matt McLain and Nick Martini on the IL. They also didn’t have Noelvi Marté for the first 80 games of the year due to a PED suspension, lost TJ Friedl to the IL for a while, amid other issues.
Despite those challenges, the club is 63-64 and hanging in the playoff race. They are currently five games back of Atlanta for the final postseason spot in the National League, but staying afloat will be more challenging with the rotation in such trouble. Abbott was the scheduled starter today, so the club may have to do some kind of bullpen game, then proceed with a rotation consisting of Nick Lodolo, Nick Martinez, Carson Spiers and Julian Aguiar. Spiers and Martinez are swingmen who have moved into rotation roles due to injuries while Aguiar was just called up and has one major league start to his name.
The club has an off-day on Monday but then plays eight games in seven days thanks to a double-header next Friday, meaning they may have to call upon some depth. Lyon Richardson is on the 40-man roster but has been pitching in relief lately. Connor Phillips has a 9.92 ERA in Triple-A this year and just returned from a two-month stint at the club’s spring complex trying to get back on track. Prospect Rhett Lowder is at Triple-A but was just promoted there and has only one start at that level. Justus Sheffield is around in a non-roster capacity but has a 6.88 ERA in Triple-A this year.
For now, Busenitz will give the club a fresh arm for their bullpen. He signed a minor league deal with the club in January and has logged 55 innings over 40 Triple-A appearances this year. He has a 3.93 ERA in that time, along with a 22.3% strikeout rate and 7.9% walk rate. He is out of options and can’t be sent back down to the minors without first being exposed to waivers.
Wynns landed on the 10-day IL at the end of July due to a lat strain. It seems the club isn’t expecting him back any time soon, as he’s now ineligible to return until the final days of the regular season.
Beats the dreaded Forearm Strain. Barely.
Shoulder strains are pretty bad too. Woodruff for the Brewers is out with a Shoulder injury and his 2024 has been wiped out.
Reds can’t catch a break
You are muted, dork.
Wasn’t it 2014 or so no one in the entire rotation missed a start the entire season? Cueto, Latos, Bailey, Leake and Simon if memory serves.
maybe 2012? but you are correct there was one year the same 5 didn’t miss a start
Arroyo instead of Simon and you got it…2012
Thank you
Lowder incoming? There is no one really left healthy.
Chase Burns! Let’s get crazy!
Crazy would be both.
There are options out there outside the Reds organization, just not sure how desperate your Reds are to sign a pitcher like Dallas Keuchel…
Pretty desperate right now.
Williamson, Ashcraft, Greene and now Abbott, like too much to overcome.
Elly stealing bases left and right to go along with that young offensive core of players. Reds will be tough next year, Hoyer better do a good job in the offseason if he doesn’t want the Cubs to flop again…
How else to limit innnibgs but a pain here or there. Yes I know they can be called out for faking it. I’m sure Abbott said hey my arm feels a little fatigued. Did you say your shoulder is sore. DL time.
He cannot go to bullpen because he would only be available once a week. That’s not helpful to the oen
Huh?
Even my 7-year-old grandson is surprised to read McDonald’s sentence: “Him and Hunter Greene are the two team leaders in innings….” I stopped reading right there. How can a reader take a guy seriously, unless him missed that day in second grade when him’s class learned about pronouns.
Upgrade to Front Office subscriber status, and maybe you’ll get a grammatically correct version of McDonald’s post.
I was just pleasantly surprised to read of the improvement in the Reds’ season record.
Beat me to it. We’ll have to deal in perpetuity with the “loose” for “lose” crowd, the use of apostrophes for plural last names, etc., etc
But “him” for “he”? Good grief. Remedial English may be in order here.
I wonder why Abbott hasn’t been that good at striking batter out this year, last year it felt like he was getting 8 K’s every night
62-66
Stick a fork in the Cincinnati Reds, they’re done for the year. Bell isn’t the single reason this year has gone in the crapper, but he’s a big piece. Instead of managing by instinct or knowledge he uses all kinds of analytics. Pulling pitchers when there’s nothing wrong because a left handed batter is coming up, or running a struggling reliever out there because the numbers say he should pitch well against this guy. Leaving pitchers in to get pounded for 8 or 9 runs.Running Will Benson out there every day when the man isn’t hitting his weight is ridiculous. How do you play guys hitting under .200 every day. How about firing the pitching coach. This guy wants to be their buddy and a manager can’t do that and be an effective manager. These guys need a guy like Lou Pinella who will kick them in the ass, but still have their back when upper management or others criticize them. Bell is a great Cincinnati baseball name but this guy is not Buddy. How about Barry Larkin, Chris Sabo, even Corky Miller ( catchers usually make good managers)
Cool beans man
To get to 85 wins the Reds need to go 23-10 (.696).