Chris Paddack will take the mound for the Cincinnati Reds at 1:10 p.m. Saturday in the makeup game created by Friday’s rainout, manager Terry Francona confirmed Friday night.
The original game scheduled for Saturday at 7:15 p.m. remains in place, meaning a split doubleheader against the St. Louis Cardinals with the nightcap set for a national broadcast on FOX. Francona said the club lined Paddack up for the 1:10 p.m. start, and that Chase Petty will open the 7:15 p.m. game after returning from Triple-A Louisville — Petty’s second big-league start of 2026.
The Friday contest was postponed after persistent, heavy rain in Cincinnati, forcing the teams to squeeze two games into Saturday. The doubleheader day will still include the planned Ke’Bryan Hayes Gold Glove bobblehead giveaway despite roster shifts.
Roster moves hovered over the rescheduled matchup. Eugenio Suárez is set to return from the injured list after a strained left oblique; he last played April 22 and was a late scratch on April 24. Francona said Suárez had two rehab games and that the club planned to limit him to roughly two of three games this weekend, stressing the need to avoid running him into the ground and to spread playing time across the roster.
At the same time, Hayes was placed on the 10-day injured list retroactive to May 21 with a lumbar bulging disc. The third baseman, acquired at the 2025 trade deadline, had been struggling through back trouble and was batting.142 in 44 games this season when the team made the decision. Francona described Hayes as someone who has long battled back issues and said the spasms have worsened to the point of interfering with his play.
The make-up and the lineup shuffle come while Cincinnati (26-24) and St. Louis (28-21) meet for their first series of 2026 in what the club hopes will be a quick rearrangement rather than a prolonged distraction. Paddack’s start in the early game and Petty’s nightcap assignment give the Reds two different looks on a tightly scheduled day: a veteran arm to open and a youngster to follow on national television.
Petty, who rejoined the big-league club from Triple-A Louisville, made a spot start May 4 at Wrigley Field and will be making just his second start of the season in the 7:15 p.m. slot. Francona emphasized the need to balance usage across the roster, saying the team will likely spread games out and manage workload carefuly across players returning from injury or shaking off time in the minors.
Tension for the Reds is practical: a doubleheader compresses innings and forces quick decisions about rest and matchups, and the club is already balancing Suárez’s comeback and Hayes’s exit. The remote prospect of overworking returning players — a concern Francona raised explicitly — collides with the immediate requirement to field competitive lineups in both games and to present Petty on a national stage.
How Cincinnati allocates at-bats and bullpen innings over the two games will determine whether the weekend helps stabilize a team hovering around.500 or only deepens short-term strain. For now, Paddack’s assignment to the 1:10 p.m. makeup and Petty’s hole start at 7:15 p.m. are the clearest moves the Reds have made to navigate a rain-forced scramble that also rearranged a roster already in flux.
