Sunday's finale at Great American Ball Park caps a 3-game set between two clubs that desperately needed a soft landing. Arizona showed up at 34-34 and Cincinnati at 32-35, and the rotation matchup is the whole ballgame — both bullpens have been overworked, both lineups are short bodies, and Sunday's starter is the one who probably gets to hand off a lead instead of trying to claw one back. The D-backs come in losers of 4 of their last 5, including a brutal Miami sweep where they got outscored 20-6 and were shut out twice in 3 games. The Reds aren't doing much better — they've dropped 6 of 7 across road series against the Cardinals and Padres, and as Field Level Media put it, they're "stumbling" into this matchup after climbing as high as 9 over .500 in late April. Two punchless teams, same vibe. Personnel is where this gets interesting. Arizona is reinstating Jordan Lawlar from the 60-day IL for the series, which is a real lineup boost with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. still rehabbing the hamstring and Carlos Santana not back yet. Corbin Burnes is shut down with a teres major strain on top of the elbow stuff — that rotation hole isn't getting filled anytime soon. For the Reds, Elly De La Cruz is the story: his MRI was pushed up to Friday and Francona has openly wondered if he could play, though Cincinnati is being cautious. He's almost certainly not on the field Sunday, but "close" matters when you're trying to stop a slide. Cincinnati's bigger problem is the back of the rotation and the bullpen. Hunter Greene is still 60-day IL'd with the elbow (Francona said a possible return before the All-Star break), Pierce Johnson and Emilio Pagan are both down with hamstring/elbow issues, and Graham Ashcraft just got a PRP injection. That's a lot of high-leverage arms on the shelf for a team that keeps losing one-run games — 3 of the last 5 losses were by a single run. The angle for Arizona is straightforward: they're a better road team than their record suggests when they get a starter into the 6th, and they finally get some lineup reinforcement back. The angle for Cincinnati is they're home, the Diamondbacks haven't scored a run in 18 innings, and Great American plays small enough that one swing changes a game. Sunday's a coin flip with the day-game-after-night-game wrinkle thrown in, which usually favors whichever bullpen still has a fresh arm.