San Diego also lost Luis Rengifo to a scary-looking right knee injury over the weekend, forcing manager Craig Stammen to shuffle Xander Bogaerts to shortstop and Jake Cronenworth to second. Two more meetings between these teams — Monday and Tuesday — will happen before this one, so whatever bullpen legs and lineup cards show up Wednesday could look different than they do right now.
San Diego has been the hotter club by a wide margin, playing its way back into Wild Card position after spending most of the summer on the outside looking in. Cincinnati's stretch has been the kind of rollercoaster you'd expect from a team with nothing to play for — a blowout win, a blowout loss, and not much in between.
Both rosters are banged up in very different ways. San Diego's list reads like a rotation on the mend — Musgrove, Giolito and Pivetta are all rehabbing toward late-season roles — while Cincinnati's is more season-ending than short-term, with Hunter Greene down for a second Tommy John surgery and Michael Toglia already done for the year. That contrast, urgency on one side and nothing left to lose on the other, is what makes this finale worth watching even with the board not yet up.