{"id":766978,"date":"2026-06-28T15:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/766978\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T15:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:16:12","slug":"reds-recall-tj-friedl-place-blake-dunn-on-injured-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/766978\/","title":{"rendered":"Reds Recall TJ Friedl, Place Blake Dunn On Injured List"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Reds are placing outfielder Blake Dunn<\/a> on the injured list with an elbow injury, according to Charlie Goldsmith of Charlie\u2019s Chalkboard<\/a>. Taking his place on the active roster is TJ Friedl<\/a>, who\u2019s being recalled from Triple-A.<\/p>\n

Friedl was optioned to Triple-A on June 3rd amidst profound struggles at the plate. Through his first 178 plate appearances in 2026, Friedl was batting just .179\/.259\/.256 with a wRC+ of just 42. Part of that was due to bad luck. Friedl has just a .230 average on balls in play this year, which falls below league average and Friedl\u2019s .278 career BABIP. However, the bigger culprits for Friedl\u2019s downturn were his strikeout and walk rates trending in the wrong direction. Friedl walked 11.8% of the time in 2025 but just 7.3% of the time this year. His 23.6% strikeout rate is easily a career high.<\/p>\n

Friedl was an above-average hitter as recently as last year, so the Reds were hoping that a brief detour to the minor leagues could help get him back on track. That has mostly come to fruition. Friedl is batting .271\/.370\/.471 with a 122 wRC+ in 81 plate appearances at Triple-A. While that\u2019s a small sample, Friedl is back to walking at an above average rate and has also shown more typical power. His 21.0% strikeout rate is still high for him, but on the surface, it looks as though Friedl has corrected the issues that were plaguing him early in the season.<\/p>\n

Having established himself as a big league regular in August 2022, Friedl entered this season with well over three years of service time. Although this optional assignment was unexpected, the three weeks and change Friedl spent in the minors won\u2019t affect his timeline for free agency. The 39-42 Reds have played exactly half of their schedule, so there are more than enough games for Friedl to reach four years of service in 2026. Assuming he doesn\u2019t get optioned again, Friedl remains on track for two more years of arbitration in 2027-28 before reaching free agency.<\/p>\n

Dunn, who\u2019d been covering for Friedl in center field, heads to the IL for the time being. The 27-year-old Dunn left Friday\u2019s game against the Pirates in the sixth inning with elbow discomfort. It\u2019s possible he sustained the injury in the bottom of the fifth. Dunn caught a Brandon Lowe<\/a> fly ball in center and threw hard to home plate in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Henry Davis<\/a> from scoring on the sac fly (video<\/a> courtesy of MLB.com). Dane Myers<\/a> took over in center in the bottom of the sixth.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds are placing outfielder Blake Dunn on the injured list with an elbow injury, according to Charlie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[254421,49,48,462,82,31179],"class_list":["post-766978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-blake-dunn","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-tj-friedl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}