It’s the Reds. It’s the Padres. It’s Cactus League baseball under the lights and on TV

Mar 22, 2023 - 10:30 PM

The good news is that there’s Cincinnati Reds baseball tonight.

The better news is that there’s Cincinnati Reds baseball tonight that’s watchable on your TV.

The betterer news is that the Cincinnati Reds are rolling out Graham Ashcraft as their starter with a power-packed lineup of regulars that you can look at and envision taking the field on any given regular season day.

That’s all pretty cool news for a Wednesday evening in April.

They’ll be taking on the San Diego Padres in Goodyear for all of this, which is a concept that sounds pretty cool on paper. Only problem is that seemingly the entire Padres club just participated in the World Baseball Classic representing their various countries, and between that and rotational days off their lineup tonight will feature a who’s who of who the hell are they.

Nelson Cruz is in there, which is cool. Rougned Odor is, too, for all those Rougned Odor fans out there.

The big news for the Reds, I suppose, is that Nick Senzel is going to make his Cactus League debut tonight, per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic. He’ll finally get back to action after a toe injury has kept him shelved since November, but as the tweet indicates, he’s not expected back with the big league club for good for some time now and will need a stint in AAA to get back up to speed.

First pitch is set for 9:05 PM ET, and it’ll be carried on Bally Sports Ohio and MLB.tv.

Reds Lineup