Cincinnati Reds place Tyler Mahle on 10-day IL, recall Sal Romano

The Cincinnati starter hits the IL with a hamstring injury.

It certainly looked like Tyler Mahle tweaked something while delivering his final pitch of the game on Friday against the St. Louis Cardinals, but since that pitch resulted in an out - and was his final batter faced that day - we didn’t really get to see how impactful it really was. It was revealed later in the weekend that he’d tweaked his hamstring, though the hope was he wouldn’t need an IL trip.

That changed today, unfortunately, as the Cincinnati Reds announced Mahle was headed to the 10-day IL. Sal Romano was recalled to take his place on the roster.

It remains to be seen exactly how Romano will be deployed, seeing as the former big league starter worked exclusively as a reliever in AAA Louisville up until the end of June, but has been starting over the last three weeks. More importantly, his stuff has been excellent since returning to a starting role, as he’s pitched to a tidy 1.59 ERA in 17 IP over his last 4 games.

Of course, the in-house replacement for the rotation may well be Lucas Sims, who seemed to be ahead of Romano on the pecking order, having already gotten a big league start this season and having been called up first. Odds are it’ll be one of the two of them starting in Mahle’s stead on Wednesday, especially since LHP Alex Wood still needs at least one more rehab start to build up his innings.

Hopefully, it’ll be a quick trip for Mahle, and he’ll only miss his lone start. The Reds tweet did not mention it, but his IL stint will be back-dated to his most recent appearance.