Infielder Matt McLain was expected to return from injury rehabilitation this afternoon, according to the Cincinnati Reds. If all went according to plan, McLain would have been activated today ahead of the Guardians series in Cleveland after the team sent him to Triple-A Louisville for a 2-game trip over the weekend. The situation wasn’t good. Before today’s game, it was revealed that he would miss the entire season due to an MRI-verified grade 2 oblique strain (originally reported by Mark Sheldon of Reds.com).

The fact that McLain did not finish the game in Louisville on Sunday may have been the first indication that things were not looking well, though it is also possible that the team pulled him because they didn’t want to risk injury and believed he had “got his at-bats.” When the lineup for Cincinnati was announced earlier today and McLain wasn’t on it, it was the second indication that things weren’t looking good. Despite the fact that he has undoubtedly been the team’s best hitter this season, it wouldn’t make much sense if he had simply been waiting to come off the bench.

Before tonight’s game in Cleveland, McLain described his Saturday and Sunday with Louisville as “just kind of like ‘this really aches’, then the next day it really hurt and I was taken from the game.

It is undeniably bad. I was aware that returning would be difficult. I was aware that returning to the original level would take a lot of time, but I genuinely wanted to do it for our team. Sadly, it just wasn’t meant to be.

Even if Matt McLain’s debut season didn’t end the way he had hoped it would, you can still consider it to have been a great success. After being called up in the middle of May, the infielder appeared in 89 games while batting.290/.357/.507 with 23 doubles, 4 triples, 16 home runs, 14 stolen bases, 65 runs, and 50 RBI.