Closer Raisel Iglesias and middle relief pitcher Austin Brice both landed on the 10-day disabled list, just when it seemed the bullpen was stabilizing.
There was a game on the road in Los Angeles, May 10, when Iglesias walked off the mound flexing his arm and it looked as if something might be wrong. But he stayed in the game and appeared in five games after that.
“His left biceps has been bothering him for some days and it is tender and he feels as if it is affecting him as he extends,” said manager Jim Riggleman. “He is a little tentative. Rather than contend with it, we just DLed him. He reached for a ball and I didn’t notice it but it was brought to my attention. He felt it and he has been feeling it ever since. And it has not been improving.”
To take Iglesias spot, the Reds recalled pitcher Tanner Rainey from Class AAA Louisville and they also activated relief pitcher Michael Lorenzen off the disabled list, where he has been since spring training.
“As we finish our two games here and then go to Colorado, you have to have a bunch of healthy pitchers for Coors Field,” said Riggleman. “We can’t go in there with people who maybe they can go, maybe they can’t go, maybe they might be limited. We need a full crew.”
As the closer Iglesias was 1-and-0 with eight saves in 10 opportunities over 20 appearances that covered 21 2/3 innings.
So who closes now? It’s the old closer-by-committee scenario.
“We would like to have Jared Hughes and/or Michael Lorenzen or Wandy Peralta — actually, anybody in the bullpen and how the lineup turns over and whatever the need is. I’m comfortable using any or all of them.”
Austin Brice is feeling pain in his upper back and Riggleman is losing an innings-eater who has had recent success. Brice is 1-and-2 with a 4.68 earned run average, but his performance of late has been better than his numbers indicate.
He has pitched two innings three times and eight times he pitched more than one inning. And he retired 13 of the 21 first batters he faced and stranded eight of 11 inherited runners.
ANTHONY DESCLAFANI has spent most of this season getting himself healthy in Arizona and recently he has been in Pensacola, Fla. pitching in games.
On Wednesday, though, he was in Cincinnati wearing a Reds uniform and taking batting practice with the pitchers.
“I’m just glad to be out of Arizona,” he said. “I had a nice condo on the beach in Pensacola and I’d sit on the patio. Real nice. But I’m glad to be out of there, too.”
DeSclafani hasn’t pitched for the Reds since September of 2016. He missed the entire 2017 season with a strained ulnar collateral ligament, although he made a couple of unsuccessful starts on rehab.
Then he strained his left oblique late in spring training this year and has been on the disable list ever since.
He made a 76-pitch appearance Sunday for Pensacola and said, “I felt like my old self. It is nice to feel like myself again.”
He is schedule to start Friday for Class AAA Louisville and if that goes well he probably will make on addition rehab start before settling into the Reds’ rotation.
“I was very encouraged with my last outing, the best I’ve felt in quite a while,” he said. “The ball is coming out of my hand really well and I was throwing strikes. I was just competing instead of worry about everything else. I was able to make adjustments.”
Just competing? No worries? DeSclafani admitted other thoughts were on his mind as he tested his body under game conditions.
“I only worried about whole body soreness that is natural after you pitch instead of injuries,” he said. “It was good. Feeling this way with no worries was, for sure, no question, for a long time something I didn’t feel.
“Everybody was asking me after I pitch how I felt and I would tell them that I was sore but it is a good sore — a full workload sore. I’ve been waiting to feel like that for a long while.”
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