After missing all of the 2024 season, Matt McLain was able to get healthy just in time for the season to have ended. But the Cincinnati Reds infielder didn’t go home and begin his offseason. Instead he joined the Glendale Desert Dogs in the Arizona Fall League to get some time on the field for the first time since March when he tore the labrum in his shoulder.
A late addition to the roster, McLain was put on the taxi squad for the team. That’s a designation that allows an organization to send an 8th player to the Arizona Fall League, but that player is only eligible to play in two games a week. In the first week of the season, McLain picked up two hits in each of his games, and he had three extra-base hits overall.
He was initially in the lineup on October 14th, but he did not play in the game and was a late scratch to the lineup. He didn’t get back into the lineup again until Saturday afternoon – a stretch of 10 days since he had last played. There was nothing reported about why he wasn’t in the lineup, and the report after the game by the MLB.com’s Sam Dykstra, who wrote about how Matt and his brother Sean McLain played in the same game didn’t have a clear answer as to why he hadn’t played in more than a week other than noting he was still “ramping up” to playing shape.
As for the game itself, Matt McLain went 0-3 with a strikeout in each of his plate appearances in the scheduled 7-inning game (the AFL was playing a triple header at Goodyear Ballpark, so all three games were scheduled as 7-inning contests for this day). None of the other seven players from the Reds organization played in the game for the Desert Dogs.
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