Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

It’s been an eventful start to June for Matt McLain. Fresh off the worst calendar month of his major league career, the Reds’ 26-year-old infielder snapped out of a 1-for-29 slide on June 1 against the Royals, the same day he began what the team hopes will be a brief residency at shortstop in place of the injured Elly De La Cruz. He homered in back-to-back games on June 6–7 against the Cardinals, with the second two-homer game of his career on the latter day. Then on Monday, McLain became the first player to win three ABS challenges in a single plate appearance, resulting in a base on balls. His brief binge hasn’t been enough to stop the Reds from slipping below .500, but it has offered some hope that he’s finally on the upswing after a prolonged struggle since tearing up his left shoulder in March 2024.

In the wake of De La Cruz straining his right hamstring while running out a single on May 31, McLain has started seven of the Reds’ eight games at shortstop. He has a fair bit of experience there, having played the position at UCLA and in the minors, then for about two and a half months as a rookie in 2023 before De La Cruz took over. Rookie Edwin Arroyo, who had primarily been playing shortstop at Triple-A Louisville, has been called up to cover second base.

I’ll get to the team’s infield picture below, but first, McLain. Monday night’s ABS adventure happened with two outs in the top of the eighth inning against Padres reliever Jason Adam, who was protecting a 3-2 lead. McLain challenged three sliders that were below the zone on 1-0, 2-0, and 3-1 counts, all of which home plate umpire Lance Barrett called strikes:

Only the second of those pitches, the 2-0 on the outside corner, was particularly close — just 0.2 inches outside — while the other two were respectively 1.6 and 1.3 inches outside. McLain, who previously had challenged just one pitch (overturning a low called strike on May 12), was just the second player to challenge three pitches in a single plate appearance; the Dodgers’ Miguel Rojas did so in the fourth inning of a June 1 game against the Diamondbacks’ Eduardo Rodriguez, winning the first two but losing the third and being called out on strikes. According to MLB.com’s Theo DeRosa, McLain was the fourth batter to win three challenges in a single game, along with the Astros’ Cam Smith (May 3), the Angels’ Nick Madrigal (June 5), and his own teammate, Sal Stewart (June 6).

It wasn’t Barrett’s night, as 10 of his calls were challenged and seven overturned, five in Cincinnati’s favor. But while McLain’s walk put the tying run aboard, it wasn’t the Reds’ night either, as Tyler Stephenson followed by striking out, and then the Padres rallied for three runs in the bottom of the eighth, sending the Reds to a 6-2 defeat, their fifth loss in a row and their ninth in 11 games. With Tuesday night’s 11-inning, 5-3 victory over the Padres, the Reds are now 32-34, including 12-23 since May 1.

McLain has contributed to those woes. He hit just .175/.241/.325 (53 wRC+) in May, surpassing his .194/.279/.286 (57 wRC+) showing in May 2025 for the worst calendar month of his career. He bookended this past month with slumps, with an 0-for-13 on the front end (part of a 2-for-27 stretch from April 26 to May 5) and a 1-for-26 on the back end (part of the aforementioned 1-for-29, which began on May 19). In between those two grim stretches, he hit .317/.404/.610 over a 12-game span. Those ups and downs are just the latest in a seemingly endless series as McLain has tried to recapture the promising form of his rookie season:

A 2021 first-round pick out of UCLA, McLain debuted on May 15, 2023 and hit .290/.357/.507 (129 wRC+) with 16 homers in 89 games before an oblique strain ended his season in late August. The following spring, on March 18, he tore the labrum of his left shoulder and suffered additional cartilage damage while attempting to make a diving catch during a spring workout. He underwent surgery later that month and missed the entire season, save for a 13-game stint in the Arizona Fall League.

While McLain was healthy enough to play 147 games for the Reds last season, he was one of the majors’ least productive regulars, hitting .220/.300/.343 (77 wRC+), with all of those numbers except the on-base percentage ranking as the fifth-worst among qualifiers in either league. Good defense at second base, at least according to Statcast (5 FRV, but -6 DRS), boosted him to 1.4 WAR, but it was a disappointing season nonetheless. He hit a ridiculous .509/.559/.981 during spring training this year, fueling optimism that he’d turned the corner, but through the end of May, he was even worse than in 2025, with a .196/.294/.320 (72 wRC+) line. Thanks to his recent hot streak, he’s up to a more respectable .209/.312/.372 (90 wRC+). That sudden shift is a sign that we aren’t talking about huge samples, but it’s worth looking at what has changed from last year, and what it might mean for McLain going forward.

A few things are easy to spot. For starters, McLain has moved up in the batter’s box by nearly five inches, from an average of 28.1 inches deep in 2025 to 23.4 inches deep in ’26. He’s also closed up his stance, from 18 degrees open to nine degrees open. Here’s the side-by-side comparison:

And here are a couple of snapshots pulled from plate appearances at Great American Ball Park in which he homered. The one on the left is just prior to his September 6, 2025 shot off the Mets’ Jonah Tong, while the one on the right is from his May 14 homer off the Nationals’ Foster Griffin:

You can see McLain’s closed up — and slightly more upright — stance and the decreased distance to the front of the box on the right, with his bat wrapped a bit further behind his head. For what it’s worth, his average swing length (6.9 feet) hasn’t changed from year to year, though it has ranged from 6.5 feet to 7.5 feet on his home runs.

McLain has also added, or recovered, some bat speed. In late 2023, he averaged 70.3 mph with his swing, with a fast swing rate (75 mph or higher) on 9.3% of his swings. After missing a year, last season his average dropped to 69.7 mph, placing him in the 18th percentile, and his fast swing rate dropped to 5.2%. This year, after reportedly adding 12 pounds of muscle in the offseason — his first in three years in which he didn’t have to focus on rehabbing an injury — he’s up to 71.6 mph, putting him in the 42nd percentile, with his fast swing rate more than doubling to 11.8%. His squared-up rate has improved, from 23.8% (33rd percentile) to 27.2% (66th percentile).

Note that McLain’s intercept point has moved a few inches forward as well, from an average of 4.1 inches in front of the plate last year to 7.3 in front this year. Making contact farther out front means a greater chance of putting the ball in the air and hitting it to the pull side, and indeed, McLain is doing that, with his pulled air rate increasing from 12.9% last year (14th percentile) to 16.6% this year (40th percentile).

All of that represents some progress. A look at his exit velocity and other related stats shows that some of his improvement is getting lost in translation:

McLain’s average exit velocity has barely budged from 2025 to ’26; his barrel rate is up, but his hard-hit rate is slightly down, and across the board, he’s falling short of his expected stats. Among Reds regulars, he’s hardly alone in that category, as six of their nine qualifiers — all except De La Cruz, JJ Bleday, and Eugenio Suárez — are at least 13 points short of their xSLG, though only Spencer Steer (57 points short) and Stephenson (80 points short) are further off the mark than McLain. While McLain’s 2023 performance was somewhat propped up by his outdoing his expected numbers, he’s going to have to hit the ball a bit harder to approach that level.

McLain’s current shortfall at least opens up the possibility of some positive regression ahead, and if there’s one encouraging trend to take from this area, it’s that his rolling hard-hit rate has been steadily climbing:

McLain has improved in other areas relative to last year as well. He’s trimmed his chase rate (from 25.9% to 23.7%), his swinging strike rate (from 11.2% to 9.2%) and his strikeout rate (from 28.9% to 23.8%), while boosting his walk rate (from 9.5% to 12.1%).

All of these gains feel like they should amount to more, though a 13-point gain in wRC+, to the point of where he can at least see league average on a clear day, isn’t nothing. What’s more, the Reds infield is a mess. In addition to the loss of Cruz, the team is without Ke’Bryan Hayes, who has been sidelined by a back injury since May 20 but who was hitting a dreadful .142/.195/.225 (11 wRC+) prior. Suárez, who has been sharing time with Stewart at third in Hayes’ absence, is hitting just .203/.277/.329 (66 wRC+) himself and remains a defensive liability. Stewart (.254/.351/.464, 121 wRC+) has been sharing time at first base with Nathaniel Lowe (.250/.333/.500, 127 wRC+), and Steer (.258/.337/.431, 111 WRC+) has been in the mix at first and second as well, as manager Terry Francona has desperately tried to inject some life into an offense that has averaged just 4.27 runs per game (10th in the National League) with a 93 wRC+ (11th). In the eight games since De La Cruz went down, the team has eked out just 3.25 runs per game while hitting .226/.301/.369 (84 wRC+), hence the 2-6 skid.

Arroyo, a 22-year-old 40-FV prospect, has hit just .227/.280/.227 in 25 plate appearances since being called up. Acquired from the Mariners in the 2022 Luis Castillo blockbuster when he was still just 18 years old, Arroyo also missed all of the 2024 season due to surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder. Upon returning last season, he struggled to elevate the ball, posting a 50.6% groundball rate while batting .284/.345/.371 (107 wRC+) at Double-A Chattanooga. He cut that groundball rate to a more representative 33.1% while raking at Louisville (.323/.383/.562 with 11 homers, three short of his career high) before being called up; Dan Szymborski was quite sanguine about the extent to which that performance improved his ZiPS projection, but as his early numbers indicate, he has yet to find his footing.

With those injuries and underperformances, it’s easier to understand the Reds’ patience with McLain through his ups and downs. Bursts like his one in mid-May and his start to this month suggest he’s worthy of a spot in the lineup, but his inconsistency has been maddening. We’ll see if this current hot streak heralds a return to that rookie form.