Trio Of Right-Handers On Right Road To Cincinnati Reds’ Rotation.
Pitching these days is at an all-time premium in baseball. The arms race is greater than anything staged by the USA-USSR regimes in the 1950s and 60s.
The Cincinnati Reds, playing home games in hitter-friendly Great American Ballpark, have been trying to accumulate as many good arms as possible. With right-handers Hunter Greene, 24, Graham Ashcraft, 26, and lefty Andrew Abbott, 25, already in the rotation, they are off to a good start.
Lefty Nick Lodolo, 26, is at Triple-A Louisville trying to recapture the form that made him an exciting rookie in 2022. He missed most of 2023 with a left leg injury and was still experiencing discomfort in spring training. Also at Louisville is Carson Spiers, 26, who could help in the rotation or long relief.
Riding to the Reds’ rescue could be three younger right-handers listed as their No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5 prospects by MLB Pipeline. That would be Rhett Lowder and Connor Phillips, both 22, and 21-year-old Chase Petty.
A Lofty Draft Choice
Lowder had a magical 2023. He went 15-0 with a 1.87 earned run average at Wake Forest. He struck out 143 while giving up only 24 walks and 90 hits in 120 1/3 innings, then got a $5.7 million from the Reds as the seventh overall pick.
Even better in the eyes of the Reds’ scouting department was how he registered other outs with a sinking fastball in the mid-90s (mph) and elite changeup that got plenty of ground balls. His third-best offering, a mid-80s slider, has more sink than sweep, too. If you are going to work half your games in Cincinnati’s launching pad on the banks of the Ohio River, you better keep batters from hitting balls in the air.
