<\/p>\n
The Cincinnati Reds and the Kansas City Royals will both be more than happy to flip the calendar to June after forgettable performances across the past month.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the first contest of a three-game interleague set tonight in Cincinnati, each side will be in search of a rare series victory.<\/p>\n
The Reds went 10-17 in May but finished the month with a 6-4 win Sunday against the visiting Atlanta Braves to snap a three-game losing streak. More than a third of the way through the regular season, Cincinnati sits in last place in the National League Central, six games behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers.<\/p>\n
The pitching staff has been among the main issues across the first two months of the season, as the Reds own the second-worst ERA (4.71) in the National League, ahead of only the Colorado Rockies\u2019 5.39.<\/p>\n
An outlier in the group is 23-year-old Chase Burns (7-1, 1.96 ERA), who will make his 12th start of the year in the series opener tonight. Burns went 4-0 with a 1.19 ERA in May and boasts the fifth-lowest ERA in the major leagues.<\/p>\n
Last time out, Cincinnati\u2019s ace went 5\u2153 innings, allowing two runs on four hits while striking out eight and walking a pair in a 7-2 road victory against the New York Mets.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s really good and he\u2019s getting better,\u201d Reds manager Terry Francona said of Burns. \u201cThat\u2019s exciting for us. He just looks, acts and feels like he belongs. You\u2019re seeing that in the way he carries himself. I think the guys did a good job with him this spring, and I think you\u2019re seeing some of the benefits of what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second overall pick in the 2024 draft appeared in 13 games (eight starts) last year, going 0-3 with a 4.57 ERA. Burns will face Kansas City for the first time in his young big-league career.<\/p>\n
The Reds will begin the series without All-Star shortstop Elly De La Cruz, who exited Sunday\u2019s game with right hamstring tightness and will undergo an MRI today.<\/p>\n
The Royals, meanwhile, have lost six straight games after a pair of sweeps at the hands of the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers. Kansas City went 10-18 in May and is a half-game ahead of the Detroit Tigers for the worst record in the American League. Manager Matt Quatraro\u2019s club owns the lowest scoring offense in the majors with 221 runs.<\/p>\n
Adding injury to insult, Kansas City\u2019s reigning All-Star third baseman Maikel Garcia missed Sunday\u2019s 6-3 loss to Texas with a right hamstring strain. Desperately needing an offensive jolt, Quatraro hopes Garcia can return soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s feeling better,\u201d Quatraro said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to IL him right now. We\u2019re going to reevaluate him (on Monday), have him move around some, and see how he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Royals are moving rookie Luinder Avila (0-2, 5.06) into the starting rotation as the team begins its second of three straight series away from home. Avila made his first career start April 4, yielding five runs on eight hits across three innings in a 5-2 home loss to Milwaukee. Since then, the 24-year-old right-hander has split time between Kansas City and Triple-A Omaha.<\/p>\n
Avila, who made his major-league debut in August of last season, will make his first career appearance against Cincinnati.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newstribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Cincinnati Reds and the Kansas City Royals will both be more than happy to flip the calendar to June after forgettable performances across the past month. Ahead of the first contest of a three-game interleague set tonight in Cincinnati, each side will be in search of a rare series victory. The Reds went 10-17 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2441193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2441192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780371616_Reds-Royals-searching-for-answers-ahead-of-interleague-series.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441194,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441192\/revisions\/2441194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2441193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}