It’s time to be Concerned about Bryan Reynolds
It’s officially time to have a conversation about Bryan Reynolds. Tonight, he went 0-for-4 with a strikeout and a GIDP. That drops him to 3-for-18 (.167) on the early season with 8 strikeouts. Just one walk, no home runs, no doubles, no extra-base hits and one RBI. Three measly singles in 18 ABs. An OPS of .378. He just hasn’t been good enough so far, especially not for the three hole which is where he’s been batting,
We all know about Reynolds struggles last year. I thought with the acquisitions of Brandon Lowe, Ryan O’Hearn and Marcell Ozuna to this lineup, it would help immensely for BRey. Give him some protection in the lineup and take some pressure off of him. I thought he gave the interview early this spring that he fixed his swing. It doesn’t look fixed. Even last season which was one of his worst seasons in his career, he still had a 91.2 average exit velocity which was 78th percentile in MLB. So far this season, he’s at 85.3. I know, I know…it’s early. It’s only been four games. I get that, but Reynolds has struggled for a lot longer than four games dating back to last season. And he’s always been a slow starter which doesn’t help here at all, but he needs to figure something out. I think you need to at least drop him in the order and soon. Let Lowe, O’Hearn, Horwitz, Ozuna all bat in some order around each other. Drop Reynolds to 6th and see what happens. I don’t want to believe that Reynolds is washed at age 31, but he needs to get going.
One quick note on the offense altogether: This was their first shutout of the season. Let’s hope this doesn’t end up being a repeat of last year when they were blanked an absurd 16 times. I think this offense will be much better, but someone besides Lowe and O’Hearn need to show up too.
Ashcraft Solid
Braxton Ashcraft made his highly-anticipated season debut tonight and pitched well with no run support. Ashcraft finished the 2025 season starting against the Reds at Great American Ballpark and starts this season in the same place.
September 25, 2025: 4.1 IP, 8 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K
March 30, 2026: 6.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 3 K
Ashcraft struggled with control, but never was really in too much trouble and limited the hits. Gave up two runs but went six innings to help rest the bullpen as well. He was matching Chase Burns inning for inning through the first three before giving up two runs in the 4th inning after a walk to Reds rookie Sal Stewart then Eugenio Suarez singled, Stewart scored on a sac fly and then Will Benson made it 2-0 with a triple to right field. Ashcraft beared down and got Tyler Stephenson to ground out to strand Benson at third.
Ashcraft could have easily gotten the win tonight if the offense did anything, but instead he’s tagged with the loss despite keeping his team in it all night. Ashcraft will need to get the control dialed in, but I thought this was a stellar start to his season that he can build off of.
Bullpen Trending Up
After a shaky start to the season for the bullpen on Opening Day with walks galore, it’s been a couple of solid games for the pen since. With two scoreless innings from the pen tonight, they’ve now gone the past 7.2 innings without an earned run and just one run allowed (yesterday in extra innings with the ghost runner). Besides that, it’s been lights out for the pen. I think this pen will be a bit of a roller coaster this season. There’s plenty of potential among these arms, but some red flags too. It was nice to see Isaac Mattson have a second consecutive strong outing and then Justin Lawrence comes in and strikes out the side for a perfect 8th inning. That’ll play, that’ll play. I’ll have an updated bullpen breakdown in the morning.
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