Red Reposter - Roster churn!

Thursday links!

Alan Busenitz.

Casey Kelly.

Evan Kravetz.

Casey Legumina.

You can officially add Brandon Leibrandt to the list of pitchers the Cincinnati Reds have rushed to promote this August in the wake of the decimation of their pitching staff. Brandon, son of longtime big leaguer Charlie, was called up by the Reds earlier on Thursday to add depth after the litany of injuries to other 40-man roster arms.

Brandon’s roster spot comes at the expense of Kelly’s, who was bonked around for a trio of earned runs in 2.1 IP in last night’s bullpen game. Kelly, son of Louisville Bats manager Pat Kelly, only got his roster spot when Busenitz was designated for assignment back on the 24th, but it appears that Busenitz has cleared waivers and was outrighted to AAA Louisville where he’ll likely get recalled again at some point in this endless churn.

If this all sounds familiar, well, it’s precisely what happened this time last year, too. You may recall the likes of Daniel Duarte, Brett Kennedy, Busenitz, Lyon Richardson, Legumina, & Co. being tasked with finishing the season for the otherwise injured Cincinnati pitchers. Such is apparently life when you build your starting rotation around young arms that have never pitched full seasons before, I suppose.

Anyway, Leibrandt is now 31 and a former 6th round pick out of Florida State, and he’s logged 5 games at the big league level in his career...all of which came back in 2020 with the Miami Marlins. He spent time pitching for the High Point Rockers of the independent Atlantic League as recently as (/checks notes) this season before the Reds scooped him up, sent him to AAA, and watched him surrender 36 runs in 72.2 IP across 15 starts.

In slightly more exciting news, the Reds made official what rumors had suggested yesterday in that top pitching prospect Rhett Lowder will make his big league debut in tomorrow’s doubleheader against Milwaukee. That’s cool!

Lowder has absolutely buzzsawed his way through AA/AAA over the last month and a half, and he’ll get a chance to show the Reds just how big of a piece he can be for 2025 over the coming weeks.

In case you missed it, Stuart Fairchild is done for the year and will have surgery on a UCL sprain in his thumb that he’s apparently been trying to play through for awhile. Despite the tremendous defense he’s shown at times in CF, he’s out of options at the moment, so the odds of him breaking camp with the Reds next spring are a bit of a long-shot even if he did predictably hit LHP pretty well overall this year (.786 OPS in 124 PA).

That’s just about all for today. The Reds are 13.5 games back in the NL Central and 10 games back of the final NL Wild Card spot despite Rob Manfred doing his best to expand the playoffs so that every team can participate. There’s college football on at least four different television channels tonight, and the Reds game starts at 5:10 PM ET.