We still might see Matt McLain with the Reds this year

The latest in a series of injury updates regarding the depleted Cincinnati Reds.

The depth of the argument for Matt McLain’s injury being the single biggest thing that derailed the 2024 Cincinnati Reds season wouldn’t need to get out of the shallow end to convince me. Matt McLain’s injury is the single biggest thing that derailed the 2024 Cincinnati Reds season is all you’d need to say for me to nod in agreement.

There have been other issues, sure. TJ Friedl’s repeated freak injuries sure helped the unfortunate cause, as has the health implosion of the otherwise brilliant starting rotation. Still, losing the guy who was the single brightest spot on the 2023 vintage for the entirety of the season* just seemed to turn the lights out on this season before they ever got warm.

(Entirety of the season so far*)

As Reds manager David Bell relayed to reporters yesterday, McLain is now ‘pain free’ and resuming baseball activities with the chance of him making his way back to the big league Reds beore season’s end not yet ruled out. That was just one of a litany of updates from his meeting yesterday, as Mark Sheldon of MLB.com helped convey, with notes that each of Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Martini, and Ian Gibaut may well find their way back into action before season’s end, too.

With just 21 games left on the regular season schedule and actually making the playoffs a complete pipe dream, that doesn’t leave much time for each to work their way back into the kind of peak form needed to compete at the highest level, especially for a guy like McLain who has been off for the entire year. It’s also a short enough window that the likes of Nick Lodolo, Graham Ashcraft, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand won’t have time to make it back at all this year; however, it does appear that at least one or two of them may have some winter ball action in their future to help prepare more for a 2025 big league return.

While the devastation of injuries this year certainly was a definitive bummer, at least it appears that most of the most serious injuries are all firmly in the rear-view mirror. In other words, at least the bigguns happened early enough in 2024 to not leave a lasting mark on the 2025 season, too.

Here’s to getting them back in action sooner than later.