Cincinnati Reds rookie Anthony DeSclafani hasn't allowed a run since his season debut, beginning a scoreless inning streak at Wrigley Field last week.
The Chicago Cubs' Jake Arrieta is also off to a solid start to the season, though his worst outing came opposite DeSclafani.
DeSclafani looks to continue his dominance in a rematch with Arrieta and the Cubs on Sunday at Great American Ball Park after Saturday's scheduled contest was postponed by rain.
Eight starts into his professional career, DeSclafani (2-0, 0.86 ERA) is one of the majors' leaders with a 0.62 WHIP and has allowed only two extra-base hits in 76 batters faced.
The right-hander threw eight shutout innings in Monday's 6-1 victory over Milwaukee, holding the Brewers to two hits and a walk to extend his scoreless innings streak to 15. He also yielded two hits while shutting down the Cubs for seven innings in a 3-2 win on April 14.
"In my mind, I haven't thrown any shutout innings," he told MLB's official website Monday. "It's just going to be the same approach. Just take it inning by inning and just try to put up zeros. That stat doesn't really cross my mind. I don't care about that. I just want to put up zeros. As long as the team wins, then I'm happy."
The Reds (8-9), who have won all three of his starts, fell to the Cubs 7-4 in 11 innings in Friday's opener.
Anthony Rizzo homered, doubled, singled and scored the go-ahead run on Jonathan Herrera's single as the Cubs (9-7) bounced back after losing back-to-back games for the first time this season.
Chicago now has a chance to complete a shortened six-game trip with four wins after Saturday's contest was its second this season to be postponed because of rain. The Cubs still have to make up an April 7 game against St. Louis.
The Reds, meanwhile, have had four of their eight home games affected by rain, with the delays totaling 8 hours, 36 minutes.
"It looked like we were going to get to play at 1:30, then at 2:30," Reds manager Bryan Price said. "We thought we were going to play at 4:35, but by the time we got out there and got the pitchers stretched out, it was still raining.
"We didn't have a desire to keep the players or the fans here for four hours."
Rizzo is 10 for 19 during a five-game hitting streak and batting .379 with six home runs and nine walks in his last eight contests in Cincinnati. However, he is hitless in six career at-bats against DeSclafani.
The teams combined for 30 strikeouts Friday, and the Reds stranded eight runners and went 0 for 14 with runners in scoring position.
"We had opportunities to pull it out," said Jay Bruce, who went 0 for 5 and left six men on. "We just couldn't come through. The writing was on the wall."
Bruce is 0 for 11 with seven strikeouts in the last three games and has struck out six times while going 2 for 11 against Arrieta (2-1, 1.74).
Arrieta has a 0.64 ERA in his two wins but gave up three runs in 6 2-3 innings to take the loss against the Reds last week. Joey Votto, who is 0 for 7 in his last two contests after four straight two-hit games, was 2 for 3 against the righty.
Arrieta bounced back by allowing one run and four hits while striking out seven and walking none over seven innings in Monday's 5-2 victory at Pittsburgh, improving to 5-1 with a 1.29 ERA over his last seven starts. This stretch began immediately after he permitted six runs in four innings in his only start at Cincinnati on Aug. 28.
