Late-night baseball at Great American Ball Park turned into a home run contest, and the Reds were the ones who landed the bigger blows.
Cincinnati beat the Milwaukee Brewers 5-3 on Sept. 5, using three solo homers and enough timely work from the bottom half of the lineup to outlast the team with the best record in baseball. The win came in front of 32,778 fans on a rain-delayed night, and it gave the Reds a rare answer to a familiar question: can a power-heavy offense still carry the night against a team built on everything else?
Before the game, manager Terry Francona talked about the shape of his club’s offense and the way teams settle into their own identities over the course of a season.
“I don’t think you can just talk about it like, ‘OK, guys, let’s hit less homers.’ You kind of have who you have and you want your guys to be the best that they can at the all-around game,” Francona said. “I just think sometimes teams morph into things and as the season progresses they start to have patterns.”
The Reds have spent much of the year living in the long ball lane. They entered the night fourth in MLB with 191 home runs, but lagged in several other offensive areas.
Milwaukee, by contrast, has been almost the mirror image: last in the majors in homers, yet second in batting average and on-base percentage. That formula has worked well enough to put the Brewers atop the league standings.
For one night, though, Cincinnati’s version won out.
Elly De La Cruz got the Reds started after Milwaukee struck first, blasting a solo homer to center field in the first inning to tie the game at 1-1. Tyler Stephenson then opened the sixth with a no-doubt drive to left for the go-ahead run, and Matt McLain followed in the seventh with an opposite-field shot off Aaron Ashby that pushed Cincinnati in front for good.
The Reds also squeezed production out of a long, messy fourth inning that included weather interruptions. JJ Bleday singled with two outs to put runners on the corners against Milwaukee starter Dustin May.
Then came a 2-hour, 22-minute rain delay. When play resumed, Jose Trevino delivered an RBI single to bring home the tying run.
"You don't see a guy have a two-hour at-bat and get a hit," Francona said. "That's pretty impressive."
Trevino added: "Just get prepared for it. I was prepared for it before the second rain delay. We were ready."
Cincinnati added an important insurance run in the eighth. Eugenio Suárez lined a one-out double off the wall in left-center, then scored on a wild pitch on the next at-bat.
The bullpen did the rest. After starter Andrew Abbott was forced into an early exit by the weather, he gave up two runs, one earned, over four innings. Cincinnati’s relievers then covered five innings and allowed just one run against Milwaukee’s No. 3 scoring offense.
Tony Santillan ran into trouble in the seventh, when the Brewers strung together three straight singles before Jackson Chourio brought home a run with a sacrifice fly to tie the game. Santillan escaped the inning by striking out William Contreras with the bases loaded. Brock Burke followed with a 1-2-3 eighth.
Emilio Pagán handled the ninth, though not without stress. Milwaukee loaded the bases, but Pagan retired Luis Lara and Contreras to earn his 15th consecutive save. The Brewers finished with nine runners left on base, while Cincinnati pitching piled up 14 strikeouts.
"He (Pagán) has been a stronghold for us back there," Trevino said. "Big at-bats from Lara and Contreras (who homered off Abbott in the first inning).
That's a good hitter right there and he's been pretty hot. For Emilio to come out and do his thing, it was pretty good to see."
The Reds now turn to Sept. 6 with a chance to take the series and keep rolling against another National League contender. Cincinnati is trying to win its third consecutive series against such an opponent, and it already snapped a 13-game series losing streak to Milwaukee late last season on the way to a playoff spot.
Brady Singer, who is 5-13 with a 4.83 ERA, gets the start for Cincinnati. He matched a season high by allowing 10 hits in his last outing on Aug. 31 against the Padres, though he threw seven shutout innings against the Brewers in June.
Milwaukee will counter with left-hander Kyle Harrison, who is 10-4 with a 3.45 ERA.
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