The Cincinnati Reds finally got the one swing they’d been chasing all weekend, and it came at the exact moment they needed it most.
With the Baltimore Orioles in town Sunday, the Reds were still carrying the weight of a miserable .221 mark with runners in scoring position, dead last in Major League Baseball entering the series finale. That problem had already shown up loudly in the first two games of the set, when Cincinnati stranded 19 runners and went just 4-for-19 with runners in scoring position.
Then came the eighth inning.
Edwin Arroyo opened it with a one-out single, moved to second on a wild pitch while Elly De La Cruz was at the plate, and Sal Stewart - the rookie who had been named to the All-Star team Saturday - came through with the hit that changed the game. Stewart lined a curveball from Kyle Bradish down the third-base line for an RBI double, scoring Arroyo and pushing the Reds to a 3-1 lead in what became a 3-2 win over Baltimore.
That was the first runner in scoring position for Cincinnati all game.
Bradish had been sharp for most of the afternoon. He retired the first 12 batters in order before a walk and Spencer Steer’s home run in the fifth inning broke through. Even after that, he kept rolling, allowing only two more singles before Arroyo reached in the eighth.
Orioles manager Craig Albernaz went to the mound after Bradish struck out De La Cruz for the second out, and he said afterward the right-hander wanted to stay in.
“I wanted to talk to him, and right away when I got there, he was adamant about (staying) in there,” Albernaz told reporters afterward. “He definitely earned the right. Runner on second base, two outs, in the eighth inning, with the way he was throwing, he earned the right to do it.”
Stewart had barely been able to get a look at Bradish before that. Through his first three plate appearances, he grounded out each time and saw only five pitches total, with just a foul ball and a swinging strike on the two offerings he didn’t put in play in the first five innings.
“I like the swings Stewart was taking all day,” Bradish said.
The rookie made the most of pitch No. 4 in the eighth.
“He showed some emotion, but that’s Sal Stewart,” Reds closer Emilio Pagán said. “That’s why we love him.
He wants to be in those spots. He’s an extremely talented player, and he’s motivated to be great.”
Pagán finished the job in the ninth, though it wasn’t clean.
Back in the Reds’ clubhouse afterward, he was sitting in front of his locker, drenched in sweat and peeling off the layers he wears under his uniform when someone passed by and said, “good job.”
“I don’t know how good it was,” Pagán said.
Still, it counted. Pagán picked up his first save since April 17 and his seventh of the season, even while allowing a run on a hit and two walks. He had been activated from the injured list Tuesday after missing nearly two months with a hamstring injury, then appeared in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers the next day, but had not pitched since.
His ninth inning started with two walks among the first three batters he faced, then a single that loaded the bases with one out. Gunnar Henderson followed with a sacrifice fly, but Pagán then got Adley Rutschman to fly out and end it.
“I had an idea that my first save opportunity would be something like that just because of the emotions of it,” Pagán said. “It hasn’t been easy for us, and so it’s human nature to want to come back and make an impact. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but I’m happy I got the job done.”
Afterward, Pagán told manager Terry Francona the next one would be better.
“I believe him,” Francona said. “The one thing about Pagán is, as nervous and sweaty as we get, I think he actually really enjoys being out there. I know he didn’t want to have the bases loaded, but he’s not going to back away from that.”
There was also a strange turn for Tyler Stephenson, whose reputation with the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system has been excellent. Entering Sunday, no catcher with more than 40 challenges had a better overturn rate than Stephenson’s 73 percent, and he had won 54 of his 74 challenges.
In the fifth inning, though, Adley Rutschman successfully challenged two calls against him, turning what could have been a 3-0 count into a 1-2 count. Stephenson took a timeout after the second challenge and reset himself.
“It was definitely weird,” Stephenson said. “Those weren’t egregious - we were talking, and Adley said he caught it weird.”
Stephenson said he used the pause to regroup, and he wasn’t shocked the calls were overturned. He has been on the other side of that kind of ruling before, and he said the real trouble comes when a hitter doesn’t see it coming.
After the reset, Stephenson laid off two more pitches and then singled.
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