Breakout Cincinnati Reds Rookie Matt McLain Gets Placed on Injured List

Just as he was starting to make a push for NL Rookie of the Year, infielder Matt McLain hurt his oblique and will miss time for the Cincinnati Reds.

The Cincinnati Reds have placed rookie infielder Matt McLain on the 10-day injured list with a right oblique strain, the team announced Monday.

Taking McLain's spot on the active roster is outfielder Stuart Fairchild, who got activated from the 7-day concussion list in a related move.

McLain is batting .290 with 16 home runs, 23 doubles, four triples, 50 RBI, 14 stolen bases and an .864 OPS so far in 2023. Before he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts Sunday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the middle infielder was leading qualified NL rookies in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS.

Despite not getting called up until mid-May, McLain still leads all Reds players with a 3.6 WAR on the season.

With McLain set to miss at least the next nine games, he is likely out of the running to win NL Rookie of the Year. Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll probably had the award locked up regardless, but this injury puts McLain's dark horse candidacy to bed for the time being.

McLain and Carroll were supposed to be teammates at UCLA, but Carroll backed off his commitment to the Bruins when the Diamondbacks picked him in the first round of the 2019 MLB Draft. Just one year earlier, McLain had also been selected in the first round by Arizona, although he opted to go to college instead of turning pro out of high school.

The 5-foot-9 shortstop and second baseman wound up going to Cincinnati in the first round of the 2021 MLB Draft, and he made his big league debut less than two years later.

The Reds lost their first game without McLain, falling to the San Francisco Giants 4-1. Dropping a four-game series against Arizona over the weekend already knocked Cincinnati down a peg in the NL Wild Card race, and a series loss to San Francisco would do the same.

At 68-65, the Reds are currently 1.5 games out of the playoffs.

Fellow rookies Elly De La Cruz, Spencer Steer, Noelvi Marte and Christian Encarncion-Strand will hold down the fort in the infield as Cincinnati ramps up its playoff push without McLain.

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