Great Starting Pitching Stretches Not Enough For The White Sox And Reds Early This Season

The Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox both got brilliant stretches from their starting rotations - and largely wasted them.

Chicago's starters did not allow an earned run through the first four games of the season, but the White Sox split those games and then lost five in a row once their rotation came back to earth. The Reds lost three straight games 1-0 from Tuesday through Thursday. The only other team in the live ball era to lose 1-0 in three straight games was the 1960 Philadelphia Phillies.

That Philadelphia team finished 36 games under .500, in large part because it batted .239 on the season. Those 1-0 defeats were a better reflection of the Phillies' batting than their pitching.

The Reds will hope for the opposite. Right-hander Hunter Greene began living up to his potential last year and has allowed three runs over his first two starts of 2025. Brady Singer, acquired from Kansas City in the offseason, threw seven one-hit innings in his Cincinnati debut.

Lefty Nick Lodolo has yielded two earned runs in 12 2/3 innings.