PHOENIX -- The road back toward October hit a significant pothole for the Reds on Sunday afternoon as they dropped their series finale vs. the D-backs, 5-3, at Chase Field after leading 3-0 going into the sixth inning. It marked just the club’s eighth loss in 55 games this year after which it was leading through six.
Exactly one year ago, the Reds were -- physically -- in the same place. Amid their series in Arizona, they sat on the outside looking in of the playoff picture and a stretch of eight losses in nine games sent them to five games out of a playoff spot on Aug. 30. Their playoff odds per FanGraphs spiraled to a season-low 1.3 percent on Sept. 4. And look how that turned out.
While there are far more suitors at the National League Wild Card ball this time around, the Reds (62-69) remain within “one elite run” range. By virtue of a Padres win Sunday, Cincinnati now sits nine games out of the final spot with 31 contests to play. While FanGraphs’ playoff probability model has had them pegged at 0.0% since Thursday, that’s not completely a death knell; in 2024, the Tigers sat eight games under .500 on Aug. 10, and despite their 0.2% odds, they snuck into the postseason.
But the Reds are facing the reality of a dwindling schedule. In addition to having the most difficult remaining strength of schedule in the Majors based on their opponents’ winning percentage, they have limited opportunities to specifically hop the teams ahead of them in the Wild Card chase. The next time they return home is Aug. 31 for a three-game set with the Padres -- they’d almost certainly have to sweep that, after taking care of business in San Francisco and Chicago this week, to stay in the mix.
After getting timely knocks from MLB RBI leader Sal Stewart and Eugenio Suárez in the third inning Sunday, the Reds were unable to scratch a run across vs. the D-backs’ bullpen over the final six frames. It was endemic of a difficult August in which they have the lowest batting average (.206) in all of baseball, having entered the day with a .242 batting average on balls in play, also 30th in the bigs.
Which puts an even larger onus on the starting pitching. If the club is to make a second consecutive late-season surge, it’ll likely be on the back of its staff. Through six innings, Andrew Abbott looked like a key rotation cog, deftly neutralizing the D-backs’ heavily right-handed lineup during his first time working with catcher Will Banfield, who got his first start of the year on the one-year anniversary of his Major League debut.
After flummoxing Arizona batters early on, Abbott’s undoing came during a three-batter stretch in the seventh in which the D-backs stacked a flare single, a bloop hit and a four-pitch walk.
“I thought I threw the ball well, better than the box score at the end,” Abbott said. “They didn’t really hit the ball hard, it just fell in the right spot. But I can’t put our bullpen in that situation and expect a good hitting team like that not to come out of it [ahead]. I’ve got to do a better job of mitigating that and making pitches to try to get out of it myself or give [the bullpen] a better time.”
Despite being hung with the loss after all three runners came around to score after right-hander Luis Mey entered the game, Abbott consistently made pitches early on, especially when turning to his changeup. He peppered it three straight times to get catcher James McCann to strike out with a runner in scoring position in the fifth, before turning to the hard stuff to punch out the following batter, left fielder Ryan Waldschmidt.
The 27-year-old southpaw has relied heavily on his cambio as of late. He’s thrown 20 or more changeups in six consecutive starts, the longest such run of his career. Abbott got a 50 percent whiff rate on the offering Sunday (6-for-12), utilizing it to neutralize a D-backs lineup that has mashed left-handed pitching this season with the second-highest OPS (.798) in baseball.
“Me and [Banfield] had a really good game plan early on and then they started to adjust a little bit,” said Abbott. “It’s the constant chess match. … That’s just how baseball is sometimes.”