Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds Monday Night Preview

The Arizona Diamondbacks and Cincinnati Reds play a three game series starting Monday night at Chase Field in Phoenix. First pitch is 6:40 P.M. The two team just faced each other last week in Cincinnati, with the D-backs sweeping the Reds three straight.

For Cincinnati it's been a disaster stretch. They lost eight straight, including the series finale against the D-backs May 9th. They finally broke that losing streak with a win over ver the Giants on Friday night. But then they lost the next two games, including getting walked off in 10 innings Sunday.

The D-backs are coming off a tough series against the Baltimore Orioles. They dropped two close, hard fought games against the best team in the American League. But then rebounded with a 9-2 win on Mother's day behind Zac Gallen.

Wild Card Standings (Per Baseball-Reference)

The D-backs are 7.5 games back of the Dodgers in the NL West. Their path back to the Postseason most likely will come via the Wild Card. They're currently 2.0 games behind the Padres who hold the third Wild Card seed at the moment.

NL Standings on May 13 | Baseball-Refrence.com

Pitching Matchup

Graham Ashcraft, RHP: 3-2, 3.86 ERA, 4.14 FIP 39.2 IP

Ashcraft started May 8th against the D-backs giving up three runs in five innings, taking the loss in a 4-3 Diamondbacks victory. Ashcraft doesn't strike out a lot of batters, just 7.3 per nine innings, well below league average. But he has a low 2.7/9 Walk Rate

Ashcraft uses his Cutter, Slider, Sinker mix to induce a 51.2% ground ball rate, well above the MLB avg 44..6%. Accordingly his Double Play per Opportunity rate this year and last is 17%, vs. a league average 10%.

Jordan Montgomery LHP : 2-2, 4.70 ERA, 4.74 FIP, 23 IP

Montgomery was the winning pitcher in that May 8th game, going seven innings and giving up just two runs to save a tired bullpen. Montgomery has been solid in three of his four outings with just the one poor outing against the Dodgers the day after the Bee Swarm game. There are a couple of red flags potentially to keep an eye on however.

Montgomery's sinker velocity is down 1.8 MPH from last year (91.5 vs. 93.3). He has just 10 strikeouts in 23 innings, giving him a K/9 rate of 3.91, less than half his career average. While he's never been velocity/strikeout dependent, he'll need a better K-rate than that to stay successful.

Who's Hot, Who's Not

Kevin Newman went 4-11 with two doubles and a triple in the Orioles series. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. broke a slump by going 4-14 and drawing his first walk since April 16th. Ketel Marte had two homers in the series and extended his hitting streak to 13 with one hit in each game.

Christian Walker went 1-14 over the weekend, and Corbin Carroll went 2-14, but both hits came on Sunday in key situations. Eugenio Suarez continued his tough season by going 2-13 and is batting just .223 with three homers this year.

Full Diamondbacks hitting table HERE

Jake Fraley, Jonathan India, and Spencer Steer each had four hits over the weekend, but just one extra base hit among them, a double by Steer. Elly De La Cruz hit a homer, his 9th of the year and stole two more bases against the Giants. That brings his league leading total to 25 while getting caught just 4 times.

Mike Ford and T.J. Friedl each went 1-11 and Tyler Stephenson went 1-9 in their last three games. Friedl has an injured thumb and is being evaluated and is unlikely to play Monday.

Stuart Fairchild is 3-9 with a homer in his career against Montgomery and had pinch hit homer in the Reds Friday night victory.

Full Reds hitting table HERE

Bullpens

The Diamondbacks "A" bullpen of Paul Sewald, Ryan Thompson and Kevin Ginkel got a much needed day off Sunday and should be gassed up and ready to go tonight.

The Reds had to use six relievers in Sunday's 10 inning loss due to a short outing from Frankie Montas. That included closer Alexis Diaz who threw 18 pitches Sunday and 21 pitches on Friday night.