The Reds keep finding the same dead end, and Saturday night was another brutal version of it.
Cincinnati launched three solo home runs, put 10 other runners on base and still came away empty in the spots that mattered most, falling 5-3 to the Cubs at Great American Ball Park. The numbers tell the story in plain English: 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position, eight men left on base, and one more game where the big swing never arrived.
The ninth inning summed up the whole night. Trailing by two, Tyler Stephenson came off the bench and lined the first pitch he saw into right for a single.
He moved to second on a wild pitch, then watched Edwin Arroyo send a drive to deep right center that looked headed for the wall before Seiya Suzuki made a running catch. Stephenson advanced to third, but Noelvi Marte struck out.
Elly De La Cruz then stole second, giving Cincinnati runners on third and second with Sal Stewart at the plate. Stewart grounded out to second, and that was that.
The Reds had chances before the ninth, too, and they kept missing them. In the first, De La Cruz singled and Sal Stewart reached on an error to put runners on first and third with nobody out.
JJ Bleday struck out looking, and Spencer Steer grounded into a double play. In the third, TJ Friedl singled and De La Cruz singled to give Cincinnati runners on first and second with no outs, but De La Cruz was picked off by Cubs starter Javier Assad and Stewart and Bleday both flied out to center.
In the sixth, the Reds again had runners on first and second with one out, only for Jose Trevino to hit into a double play.
There were some loud moments in between. Nathaniel Lowe and Eugenio Suarez went back-to-back in the fourth to give Cincinnati a 2-0 lead. JJ Bleday later jumped on the first pitch he saw from Drew Pomeranz in the sixth and sent it over the right-field wall to tie the game at 3-3.
But the Cubs kept answering, and the Reds never delivered the knockout blow they needed.
Nick Lodolo’s night turned in the sixth, and the blister issue on his left index finger showed up again at the worst possible time. Cincinnati was ahead 2-1 when he started that inning.
He threw ball one to Carson Kelly, took a look at the finger, then threw ball two. Kelly followed by crushing a game-tying home run, and Lodolo exited with the blister on his left forefinger.
“Frustration is extremely high,” he told reporters. “We keep trying new things and I really thought what we were doing now that I was going to be in the clear, but obviously not.
“I gotta keep trying to figure it out, whether it is something to do or changing my grip or something. But, yeah, my frustration is really high.”
He explained that he felt something during warm-ups before the inning.
“In warm-ups (before the sixth inning) I threw a pitch and I kinda felt it,” he said. “It didn’t seem to be anything so I threw those three pitches to Kelly.”
Asked whether he considered stopping after checking his finger following the 1-0 pitch, Lodolo said, “You know, you’re competing out there, you don’t want to think that that is what’s happening.
“I could feel it, but I looked at it and didn’t see anything. But after I threw that next one, I knew,” he said.
After Lodolo left, Caleb Ferguson allowed a single to Michael Busch and a run-scoring double to Ian Happ that put Chicago ahead 3-2. Cincinnati tied it back up in the bottom of the sixth on Bleday’s homer, but the Cubs broke through again in the seventh.
Julian Garcia walked Suzuki with one out, and that set up Alec Bregman, who entered the game 0 for 13 and had gone 0 for 4 with three strikeouts in Friday’s 4-0 Reds win. He erased that skid by pulling a two-run home run into the left-field seats, and that proved to be the difference.
The Cubs’ bullpen gave Cincinnati chances, too, even with 13 Chicago pitchers on the injured list. Caleb Thielbar, Jacob Webb, Ryan Robison and Trent Thornton all put men on base from the seventh through the ninth, but the Reds couldn’t cash in.
Over their last 23 games, Chicago’s bullpen has a 6.00 earned run average with seven blown saves. This one wasn’t one of them.
Afterward, Tito Francona didn’t have a simple answer for why the Reds keep stranding runners.
“It’s different every time,” he told reporters. “I don’t think there is just one formula. We had a really good chance in the first inning and we didn’t cash in.
“We also had some really good at-bats and drilled three out of the ball park,” he added. “Arroyo laid into that ball (in the ninth) and I thought it was off the wall.
“When you don’t have a ton of opportunities and don’t cash in, it becomes more of a glare.”
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