The Reds head into Tuesday night’s meeting with the Dodgers carrying a long season and a tough matchup, and the spotlight falls quickly on the mound. Cincinnati sends Nick Lodolo against Los Angeles left-hander Tarik Skubal in the second game of the series, with first pitch set for 10:10 PM EDT in Los Angeles.
Lodolo’s 2026 has been uneven from the start. He has worked just 85.0 innings, and the numbers have moved in the wrong direction: his strikeouts are down to 18% from 24.3% last season, his walks have climbed to 9.1% from 4.8%, and he has allowed 16 home runs.
Still, he did show something last Tuesday against the San Diego Padres, turning in a quality start with two runs allowed on five hits, five strikeouts and two walks across six innings. That outing offered a small bright spot, even if the assignment tonight is a much steeper one.
The Dodgers’ lineup is a brutal follow-up test, but Lodolo at least enters off that steadier showing. He has been especially vulnerable to right-handed hitters, who have posted a .270 average and .500 slugging percentage against him with 14 home runs.
Lefties have also had success, hitting .346 with a .513 slugging percentage. Lodolo’s pitch mix has stayed balanced - four-seam, two-seam, curve and change all sitting in a fairly tight usage range - but the results haven’t consistently followed.
Skubal, meanwhile, brings the kind of profile that can make a lineup uncomfortable from the first inning on. Since being traded from Detroit to Los Angeles, he has kept rolling as one of baseball’s premier arms, even if his surface numbers with the Dodgers show a 3.03 ERA in 35.1 innings compared with 2.79 in 96.2 innings with the Tigers. His FIP has actually improved, from 2.60 with Detroit to 2.17 with Los Angeles, and the underlying traits that make him so difficult haven’t gone anywhere.
He strikes out hitters at a high clip against both sides of the plate, but the real separator is how rarely he gives away free passes. His 4.2% walk rate in 2026 is the lowest of his seven-year career and sits among the top 1% of all MLB pitchers.
Add in Chase%, Whiff% and K% all landing in the top 90th percentile, and it’s easy to see why he’s so highly regarded. His changeup and curveball are the pitches most likely to miss bats, with both carrying a whiff rate above 40%.
The curveball doesn’t show up often, but when it does, it can be a problem.
Against right-handed hitters, Skubal has allowed a .204 average and .320 slugging percentage, while lefties have hit .271 with a .449 slugging percentage. His mix is led by the four-seam fastball and changeup, with a slider and two-seam fastball also in the rotation, plus the occasional curve.
The game also arrives with a bit of off-field news around the Reds’ organization. Two of Cincinnati’s minor league teams already made the playoffs this season, and two more are set to begin their postseason run this week.
In the division picture, Milwaukee sits at 89-56 and has already clinched with 100.0% playoff odds. Chicago is next at 81-64, followed by St.
Louis at 72-73 and Pittsburgh at 71-73. Cincinnati, at 69-75, is listed with 0.0% playoff odds.
In Other News...
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Carlos Jorge now adds another layer to the conversation after his recent promotion, and his minor league track record suggests there is real upside waiting in the pipeline. The speed is there, the offensive promise is there, and if his development keeps moving in the right direction, the Reds could enter 2027 with something they have not had in a while at the position - actual depth and maybe even a legitimate strength in center. [Read more 🡒]
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Franconas view lines up with the organizations recent roster moves to keep affiliates eligible for the playoffs, a sign that the Reds are treating development and competition as connected goals rather than separate tracks. He also believes in keeping clear boundaries with minor league coaching staffs while still staying involved and showing respect, a balance that fits his bigger idea that winning habits should be formed in the minors and carried all the way to the majors. [Read more 🡒]
Reds Pitching Collapse Made Hunter Greene's Lost Season Even Harder To Ignore
Hunter Greenes 2026 season never really got a chance to become anything. After elbow surgery early in the year, he returned briefly before a torn UCL ended the comeback and sent him toward Tommy John surgery, wiping out the rest of the season and likely all of 2027 as well. In a year when Cincinnati desperately needed stability on the mound, Greene managed just 27 innings with a 6.83 ERA, a line that says plenty about how hard the season turned on him.
The bigger problem was that the Reds could never quite stop the bleeding around him. Injuries piled up across the rotation, forcing the club to keep patching together innings in a way that made every Greene setback feel even heavier. By the end, the pitching situation had gotten so thin that Cincinnati was even turning to position players like Jose Trevino in blowout losses, a reminder of just how far the staff had fallen from the kind of depth the Reds hoped to lean on. [Read more 🡒]