Matt Mclain opened the Cincinnati Reds’ offense Thursday with a two-run home run to center field, then kept driving the ball in a 15-1 win over the Washington Nationals in the series finale. His homer left the bat at 104 miles per hour, and he later added a double over third baseman Brady House that came off at 102.2 miles per hour.
Mclain finished 2-for-3 with three RBIs and a walk, a line that stood out even in a game the Reds controlled from the start. Over his last seven games, he is hitting.292/.393/.500 with six RBIs and three extra-base hits, and he has walked more often than he has struck out during that stretch. He has also put 11 balls in play with hard-hit contact over those seven games, a sharper trend than what he showed earlier this season.
That matters because Mclain was supposed to be a cornerstone of Cincinnati’s young core after a 2023 rookie season that included 3.6 WAR, 16 home runs, a 127 OPS+ and a fifth-place finish in Rookie of the Year voting. He has not matched that level since. After posting a 72 OPS+ last year, he entered Thursday with a 71 OPS+ this season and a slow start that raised questions about how much of his rookie breakout would carry forward.
Thursday’s game did not answer those questions on its own, but it did show the kind of impact the Reds have been waiting for. The ball jumped off his bat twice, the box score was clean, and the Reds’ offense buried Washington early in a game that never became close.
The pressure on Mclain is also tied to what is happening behind him. Edwin Arroyo has dominated in Triple-A this season, giving the organization another name to watch if the big-league second-base job stays unstable. Arroyo is fifth in the International League in OPS at.998, fourth in batting average at.342, 10th in home runs with eight, seventh in RBIs with 29, second in runs scored with 33, first in hits with 55, first in triples with four and fifth in slugging percentage at.590. He has also played two games at third base in Louisville, where manager Pat Kelly said Arroyo was learning the position on the fly during the season.
For now, Mclain’s best argument is the one he made with the bat on Thursday. The Reds got the win they needed, and he gave them the kind of production that has been missing for much of the season. If this stretch holds, Cincinnati’s infield picture gets simpler. If it does not, the organization already has another name forcing its way into the conversation.
