Breaking: Cincinnati Reds Connections: Christian Encarnacion-Strand to 60-day IL, TJ Friedl’s Hamstring

With their 2023 team leader in both fWAR and bWAR in the lineup, it’s not too crazy to claim that the Cincinnati Reds of 2024 are a much, much superior baseball club. He is their regular leadoff hitter against both LHP and RHP, and they rely on him as their CF. He is an important two-way player who commands respect between the bases.

The 2024 Reds are sinking toward the bottom of the NL Central for what feels like the billionth season in a row for a variety of reasons, but TJ Friedl’s absence has been a major one. He had to miss more than a month of training in the spring due to a fractured wrist, and a few weeks later he had another setback from a broken finger. It was so easy to feel that the Reds season was once again in danger of falling apart in front of our eyes when Friedl looked foolish after making a great diving grab in CF against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

However, Friedl and the organization are hopeful that they’ve avoided a major setback with this hamstring stiffness, as noted in MLB.com’s most recent injury rundown.

Though I believe I’m still cynical about “hamstring tightness” given that it lost Jonathan India and Donovan Solano half-seasons recently, I’ll try to maintain the same level of optimism in Friedl that he seems to have. Having said that, I’m not sure whether any of these injuries will improve given the constant downgrade of news on Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who was admitted to the 60-day IL earlier this week due to a broken wrist.

For the record, CES last participated in a game on May 7th, thus as of right now, July 7th is about when he may return. That means he will be back in around three weeks, but David Bell’s comments certainly don’t seem like he will return in that time frame:

Before making a judgment, we’re going to give it another four or five days to see if anything has changed.

generally, wrist fractures don’t just, like, “progress” over a few days or weeks; they don’t generally show ligament damage that was previously undetected weeks after the injury. They require surgical repair, and I’ve come to terms with the reality that CES will shortly have that procedure.

In the unlikely event that Friedl misses any more time due to this hammy, the two injury developments of the week should theoretically put even more pressure on Noelvi Marte as he approaches his return from suspension and on ownership and front office to contribute to the struggling attack. Although I mentioned optimism previously in this repost, I still don’t think the latter will materialize.

As of right now, the Reds have an 87 wRC+ on the year versus RHP. That is the fifth-worst team in all of baseball, behind only the enduring Fearsome Foursome of Suck—the Miami, Pittsburgh, White Sox, and Rockies.