That was supposed to be a showcase night for Paul Skenes and Hunter Greene. Instead, Great American Ball Park got a little bit of everything Friday, July 31 - shaky pitching, a bullpen collapse, a strange finish and an 8-7 Reds win over the Pirates.
The biggest difference came from the middle of Cincinnati’s order, where Sal Stewart kept delivering in the kind of game that kept changing hands every inning. Stewart drove in four runs, including a two-run homer in the fourth that put the Reds ahead 5-4 and a two-run single in the eighth that helped turn the game back Cincinnati’s way.
It ended on an odd note, too, with Nathaniel Lowe in the middle of another late-game twist. With the bases loaded and two outs in the eighth and the game tied 7-7, Lowe hit a grounder to third baseman Nick Gonzales. The easy out was right there at first, but Gonzales took two deliberate hop steps and threw to second instead of first, and his errant throw allowed Stewart to score the go-ahead run.
The Reds had already put themselves in position with a rally that started with Noelvi Marte, who went 3 for 4 and led off the inning with a single to left after working a full count against Wilber Dotel. Matt McLain, who came in hitting 1 for 20, followed with another single, moving Marte to third. After Elly De La Cruz struck out, Stewart jumped on Dotel’s first pitch and ripped a hard single to right that scored both runners and tied the game.
Pittsburgh then intentionally walked Tyler Stephenson to load the bases, setting up the left-on-left matchup with Lowe that produced the error and Cincinnati’s second straight one-run win over the Pirates. The Reds have now won seven of their last 10.
The finish came after Cincinnati’s bullpen let a lead slip away. When Hunter Greene exited after six innings, the Reds were up 5-4. But Caleb Ferguson and Pierce Johnson were tagged for three runs in the eighth, and Pittsburgh moved ahead 7-5 before Cincinnati answered against Dotel.
Greene’s final line wasn’t clean - four runs and seven hits over 91 pitches - but he said he kept battling through it.
“I had to battle through the night trying to make pitches to keep my team in the game,” he told reporters. “It was a roller coaster ride from the first pitch to the last pitch.
“I felt I was making good pitches and, yeah, they had some hard hit balls, but for the most part I felt I was making really good pitches,” he added. “They had three or four hits that were something like 60 miles an hour.
Nothing I could do about that. I can’t control that. . .just weak hits.”
The Pirates jumped on Greene early for a 2-0 lead in the first, taking advantage of a messy sequence that started with a bobble by Matt McLain and included Greene being late to cover first on Ryan O’Neill’s grounder. Nick Gonzales finished that inning with a two-run single and extended his hitting streak to 15 games.
Cincinnati answered immediately against Skenes, doing its damage with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the first. JJ Bleday walked, Tyler Stephenson doubled him home and Lowe singled Stephenson in to tie it 2-2.
From there, the game kept seesawing. Bleday later gave the Reds their first home run off Skenes in his career, turning on a first pitch in the third. Then in the fourth, after Elly De La Cruz’s one-out triple, Stewart launched a first-pitch 409-foot homer to put Cincinnati in front again.
Skenes, who had been 5-0 with a 1.38 ERA in his career against the Reds, had a rough night by his standards. He allowed five runs and seven hits in four innings and threw 100 mostly uncompetitive pitches. The Pirates have now lost 14 of his 23 starts this season, and he is 9-9 with a 3.90 ERA.
Stewart’s big night also pushed his RBI total to 84, the most in MLB history for a rookie at the end of July. Afterward, he kept his answers short.
“There’s a lot of camaraderie in our clubhouse, we know what we can do and we’re going to keep going out there and playing hard,” he told reporters.
On the eighth-inning winner, he was even simpler.
“I was looking for a good pitch to hit,” he said. “That’s pretty much it.”
Asked about reaching 84 RBI, Stewart made his feelings clear without saying much.
“Uh. . .I mean, it’s great, but I just want to win.”
Greene also addressed the trade chatter swirling around him with Monday’s deadline approaching. His name has come up as trade bait, and when asked whether Friday could have been his final start for the Reds, he brushed it aside.
“I have nothing to say about that. I have no control over it.
“I’m not on the business side,” he added. “I can’t do anything about it. Obviously, I’ve grown and have a strong connection with the city and with my teammates here and the staff over the years.
“But I’m not going to wrack my brain over something I can’t control to put energy and stress into it,” he continued. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
And on a night like this, maybe that was the only sensible approach.
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