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The Cincinnati Reds will have their ace on the mound for the first time in over a month when they go for a sweep against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday afternoon.

Right-hander Hunter Greene (9-4, 2.83 ERA), who has been sidelined with a sore elbow, last made a major league start on Aug. 13, allowing one run on four hits in seven innings in a 4-1 win against the St. Louis Cardinals.

“It’ll be controlled,” manager David Bell said of Sunday’s outing. “We don’t have an exact number of pitches. It speaks to who he is. It was important for him to get back out on the mound for the team. We’ve gone through a really extensive process of making sure he was healthy and built up and able to do this.”

Greene, who earned his first All-Star selection this season, is 0-3 with a 3.00 ERA in six career starts against the Pirates.

The Reds (76-80) head into the series finale having won three of their past five games and five of eight. They’ve built big leads in each of the first two games of the three-game set against Pittsburgh while outscoring their division foe 15-4.

And though long out of the playoff chase, the Reds don’t plan on just going through the motions to close the last stretch of the season.

“We’ve got to continue to strive for greatness as a team and for the people of Cincinnati,” Greene said. “Hopefully, we’re going to do that starting next year.”

Less than 24 hours after becoming the third player in MLB history to steal 100 bases over his first two seasons, Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz added his name to the books again Saturday with his 25th home run of the season. Upon doing so, he became the first shortstop in major league history with at least 25 homers and 65 stolen bases in the same season.

The Pirates (72-83), meanwhile, head into Sunday’s game having lost seven of their past nine games.

Rookie Jared Jones took the defeat on Saturday, surrendering six runs on six hits over five innings.

“Terrible,” he said of his performance. “Everything was terrible today.”

Pittsburgh’s other rookie starter will get the nod on Sunday as the team looks to turn things around.

Paul Skenes (10-3, 2.07 ERA) is 2-0 with a miniscule 0.75 ERA in two starts against Cincinnati, striking out 16 while yielding only one run on eight hits. Nine of those strikeouts came in his most recent outing against the Reds on Aug. 22, when he tossed six scoreless innings in a 7-0 win for the Pirates.

The Pirates, who have dropped three straight series, have allowed at least five runs in five of their past eight losses. Only once during those defeats have they scored more than three runs.

In both games against Cincinnati, they’ve fallen behind by seven before finally getting on the board.

“I think we just need to swing at better pitches,” Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. “It looked like we chased out of the zone in those situations.”

–Field Level Media