The Reds are going to promote pitching prospect , per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic . The young righty will start for Cincinnati on Friday, making his major league debut. The club will need to open spots on both the active and 40-man rosters to make space for Lowder. Lowder, now 22, Max Meyer Jersey was a standout during his time at Wake Forest. In his final year with the Demon Deacons, he to sed 120 1/3 innings, allowing 1.87 earned runs per nine. He struck out 38.6% of batters faced while giving out walks just 6.5% of the time. He was one of the top ranked players in the 2023 draft and the Reds took him seventh overall, the second pitcher taken after the Pirates took with the first overall pick, with Lowder eventually signing and receiving a $5.7MM bonus. The young righty didnt make his profe sional debut last year, but he was still considered one of the top 100 prospects in the sport based on his college numbers and draft pedigree. Here in 2024, the Reds started him off at High-A, but his time there proved to be short. In five starts, he to sed 25 1/3 innings with a 2.49 ERA, 28.4% strikeout rate, 5.9% walk rate and 49.2% ground ball rate. That got him bumped to Double-A, where he made 16 starts with a 4.31 ERA but better peripherals. He had a 23.8% strikeout rate, 5.6% walk rate and 50.9% ground ball rate. If it werent for a fairly high .333 batting average on balls in play, he would have fared better, which is why his 3.33 FIP was almost a full run better than his ERA. Lowder then got bumped to Triple-A and made one good start there, to sing six shutout innings on Thursday last week. Though Lowders numbers have continued to impre s, he may not have been promoted to the majors if it werent for the club getting devastated by injuries. In the month of August, the Reds have lost , , and to the injured list. Losing a bunch of arms like that would be a challenge for any club, but the Reds already had guys like and on the IL. Also, they have a double-header on Friday and just started a stretch of playing eight games in seven days. The current rotation mix involves rookie and swingmen who have been bumped into starting roles, such as , and Junis. Perhaps this will just be a spot start to help the club navigate this challenging patch of the schedule. Even if Lowder stays a bit longer than one outing, the Reds will surely be keeping his rookie status intact one way or another. The club is now nine games out of a playoff spot and doesnt have a strong chance of cracking the postseason at this point. Lowder is already a consensus top prospect in the sport. currently has him in the #38 slot overall. has him at #73, at #35 and at #55. A suming the Reds dont let him to s 50 innings this year, hell still be a rookie going into 2025 and will likely still be on those lists in some form. That will allow the Reds to potentially take advantage of the prospect promotion incentive. To combat service time manipulation, the collective bargaining agreement awards draft picks to clubs if certain conditions are met. If the player is on two of three top 100 lists at BA, MLB Pipeline and ESPN with le s than 60 days of service time, and then is promoted early enough in a season to get a full year of service, he can earn his club an extra draft pick just after the first round by either winning Rookie of the Year or finishing in the top three in MVP or Cy Young voting during his pre-arbitration years. At this point, the Reds dont have much left to play for in 2024, so they will probably look to keep that PPI incentive on the table. But for now, they can get give Lowder a taste of big league life as they trudge through this viscous portion of the schedule. Though the club is currently in rough shape due to all those health concerns, fans can dream of a future rotation consisting of Lowder, Greene, Abbott, Lodolo and others going forward, as no one in that group is slated for free agency until after 2027. Cristian Pache Jersey