Let’s get right to it: Nacho Alvarez Jr. is hitting second and playing second base in his major league debut. Good luck, godspeed, and so on and so forth.
Adam Duvall also returns after a one-game absence.
The Reds have a lineup that looks like this, putting their biggest offensive threats in the top two spots of the order:
It’s a new lineup for the Reds; they’ve actually never had this starting nine before. As mentioned in the series preview, Noelvi Marte and Will Benson are two guys that have had really awful seasons to date, so there’s some chance for Reynaldo Lopez to get a breather at the bottom of the Cincinnati attack before he has to go to work and figure out how to get Jonathan India and Elly de la Cruz out again.
