The Reds will place Eugenio Suárez on the 10-day injured list with a low-grade oblique strain, manager Terry Francona told reporters on Friday. The move comes after Suárez was scratched from Friday night’s game with what the team first called mid-back discomfort.
Cincinnati can backdate the IL placement to April 23, which makes May 3 the earliest Suárez could return. That gives the club a brief window to see whether the injury quiets down after a shutdown and reevaluation, a path Charlie Goldsmith reported the team is hopeful will let him resume baseball activities sooner rather than later.
Suárez’s absence matters because the Reds have been leaning on his bat in a season where he has spent most of his time at designated hitter. He has made only six starts at third base while appearing in 18 games as the DH, a usage pattern that reflected how the club planned to keep his bat in the lineup while managing his workload. Through his first 100 plate appearances, he was hitting.231/.300/.363 with three home runs.
For a lineup that entered the night ranked 24th in MLB in scoring, the timing of the injury is a real test. The Reds were 17-9 after Friday night’s win, and Nathaniel Lowe, starting at designated hitter in Suárez’s place, delivered the kind of swing that can cover for a missing regular by hitting a walk-off two-run homer off Kenley Jansen with two outs in the ninth.
The tension for Cincinnati is that the lineup can survive one night without Suárez, but it has to decide how to handle a player whose role has already shifted between third base and DH. If the oblique strain keeps him out longer than the minimum, the Reds will have to keep piecing together production while waiting for a hitter who had already shown power with six homers in 68 trips to the dish before the injury scare and whose return will now depend on how he responds after the shutdown.
