Reds Rookie Hurler Gets Second Chance

Petty regained his composure and took frustrations out on International League hitters. He pitched six hitless innings against Omaha.

When Hunter Greene injured his groin in his last start, Petty was chosen to plug into the rotation and drew the Houston Astros on Sunday. While it can not be viewed as a success, Petty pitched into the fourth inning of the 6-0 loss. The Reds' bullpen needed longer. He wasn’t hit that hard, but his walks added up, and he left in the fourth inning with bases loaded and no outs, trailing 3-0.

Brent Suter stopped the bleeding. He gave up a sacrifice fly to Christian Walker, but that’s it. The run was charged to Petty.

Petty walked three in the first two innings but posted scoreless frames. He gave up a double to Isaac Paredes, one out in the third. Walker reached on an infield single, then the big blow of the game, a three-run home run by Yainer Diaz.

He walked two more batters in the fourth to load the bases. Terry Francona went to Suter.

“He’s trying to soften it up to start the hitters up because everything is pretty hard, and he wasn’t really commanding anything,” Cincinnati manager Terry Francona said to the postgame media. “The line ended up being three innings, six hits, six walks. Probably fortunate he competed so well that it wasn’t worse than that. That’s a ton of traffic. A lot of deep counts. When you’re around 90 [pitches] in the fourth inning, that’s a pretty good indicator.”

Petty struck out four, but knows it wasn’t acceptable to issue six walks.

“Can’t give up the free bags,” Petty said. “I can’t walk six guys. I’m going to work on it in my bullpen this week and build off that.”

The Reds' offense, after scoring 13 runs on Saturday, was shut out for the second time in the series and the third time on the seven-game road trip.