Nick Lodolo joins every other Cincinnati Red on the injured list

Oof.

After a completely lost 2023 regular season, Nick Lodolo has officially headed to the injured list for the fourth time this 2024 season. The Cincinnati Reds placed their talented left-hander on the 15-day IL on Wednesday afternoon, this time with a sprained middle finger on his pitching hand.

This comes precisely one day after I noted that the team’s already depleted pitching staff had become the default problem for the club, and this news only serves to worsen the depth there. You may recall that each of Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, and Graham Ashcraft are already on the injured list after being part of the team’s Opening Day rotation, while Frankie Montas was dealt away at the deadline.

The silver lining in the above tweet, I suppose, is that Brandon Williamson is apparently healthy enough to get back on to a professional mound again. I’m not sure it’s worth rushing him back to help ‘save’ what remains of this dismal Reds season, however, as what remains of the team’s current crop of ‘starters’ is basically relievers Nick Martinez and Jacob Junis - the latter of whom will start tonight’s game against Oakland.

At one point this season, Lodolo was humming along like the one-time future ace we all hoped we’d see when healthy. Of late, though, he’s been pitching as if something was simply off - he’s allowed 38 ER over his last 45.2 IP across 9 starts, which equates to an ERA of you don’t want me to write the number.

Here’s hoping the 115.1 IP that Lodolo did log this year serves as a better platform to 2025 than his lost 2023 served as for this year. That’s because, y’know, the 2024 Reds season is just about as officially kaput as can be right now.