Lodolo's Rehab Start at Louisville May Slip Due to Blister, Weather

Nick Lodolo's path back to the Cincinnati Reds rotation runs through Louisville, but a recurring blister and a week full of rain may reroute it entirely.

The 26-year-old left-hander was placed on the 15-day injured list March 25, retroactive to March 23, with a blister on his left index finger. The original plan called for a bullpen session Sunday and, if that went cleanly, a controlled rehab start Wednesday at a Louisville Bats home game. That Wednesday date was chosen with specific roster math in mind: it would give Lodolo exactly five full days of separation before his earliest possible reinstatement from the injured list, April 7. Move the rehab start, and April 7 moves with it.

Both legs of the plan are now uncertain. The blister status entering Sunday's bullpen session remained unclear, and even if Lodolo threw without incident, the forecast for Louisville calls for persistent rain from Wednesday through the weekend. The club was in a wait-and-see posture as of Sunday, monitoring the finger and the weather simultaneously.

What makes the situation particularly awkward is the minor-league calendar. The Louisville Bats are the only Triple-A team scheduled to play Wednesday. Dayton and Daytona open their seasons Thursday; Chattanooga waits until Friday. That makes the Bats' Wednesday home game the lone credible option for a same-week Triple-A rehab appearance. If rain scrubs it and the finger is ready, Cincinnati would need to find an alternative site or simply push the start to the following week, likely sliding Lodolo's activation to April 10 or later.

This is the second time in less than eight months that the same finger has interrupted his ramp-up. A blister on the left index finger cost Lodolo three weeks at the end of August 2025, the one disruption in an otherwise career-defining campaign: a 3.33 ERA, a 1.08 WHIP, and 156 strikeouts across 156.2 innings. Blisters in pitchers form through the repetitive friction of gripping a baseball's raised seams at high velocity, and treatment typically requires a brief skin-hardening protocol using agents like benzoin tincture to toughen the raw tissue before full-effort throwing can resume. The pace of that healing process is what is governing the entire timeline right now, not a new structural problem.

For fans who bought tickets to a Louisville Bats home game this week expecting to catch Lodolo's return: the Reds are not staging this outing as a showcase. A Triple-A rehab start is a diagnostic exercise in level-appropriate conditions, and if those conditions are not right, the club moves on without ceremony.

For Cincinnati, the downstream cost is real. Every delayed day means additional innings absorbed by a bullpen that cannot stretch indefinitely, or a spot starter occupying a turn that Lodolo would otherwise own. If his activation slips from April 7 to mid-April, that is two rotation turns the Reds must cover without one of their better starting pitchers from a season ago.

The forecast, not the finger, may be the final word.