CHICAGO -- Sal Stewart had already made his presence felt long before the wild sequence in the third inning. He opened the afternoon by turning a hanging slider from Davis Martin into a Statcast-projected 419-foot homer to left for his 26th of the season, then kept driving Cincinnati’s offense from there.
By the time the dust settled in the Reds’ 9-8 win over the White Sox on Thursday at rainy Rate Field, Stewart had scored four times, driven in two runs and been at the center of everything that happened.
The moment that grabbed the most attention came after Martin sent back-to-back fastballs up near Stewart’s head. Stewart said the first one sailed over him, and the second clipped the flap of his helmet.
“You kind of black out a bit when they go up at your head,” Stewart said.
He remembered enough to point at Martin and yell, “That’s two in a row.” After that, both dugouts came spilling out and the bullpens emptied before order was restored. Stewart, though, never made the moment bigger than the game itself.
Martin apologized after the first pitch went to the backstop. Stewart said of the next one, “Things happen.
Maybe it slipped,” he said. “But then the very next pitch came right back at my face.
More than anything, it was just a scary moment.”
Terry Francona didn’t downplay it.
“It’s no fun having somebody throw at your head,” manager Terry Francona said. “But he’s not backing down.”
Francona called the sequence “extremely blatant” and “terrible,” while Eugenio Suárez moved in near the mound to make sure Martin understood what had just happened.
“Don’t hit him in the face or head because it’s dangerous,” Suárez said. “Nobody wants to lose a career because of a hit-by-pitch.”
Once play resumed, Stewart answered the right way. He scored the tying run in the third after Tyler Stephenson singled and Chicago right fielder Braden Montgomery committed an error. Suárez then lifted a sacrifice fly to center to make it 4-4.
Cincinnati kept piling on in the fourth. Stewart lined an RBI single to bring home Ke’Bryan Hayes and put the Reds ahead for good, and Stephenson followed with a three-run homer that stretched the lead to 8-4.
That surge helped turn the page on Wednesday’s nightmarish game, when Stewart was responsible for both of Cincinnati’s hits in a 5-0 loss. On Thursday, he was the spark again, only this time the lineup came with him.
Stephenson was a force too, reaching base four times, scoring twice and driving in three. Suárez added four RBIs, and the trio accounted for every Cincinnati run.
“He kept going and producing,” Suárez said of Stewart. “He’s been really good.
For me, he and Elly have been the best hitters in our lineup. It makes me better, makes Stephenson better and makes everybody better.”
Suárez also strongly backed Stewart for National League Rookie of the Year as his season keeps building.
Andrew Abbott, who labored through 4 1/3 innings, said Stewart’s impact goes beyond the box score.
“He’s one of our sparks,” Abbott said. “He provides energy. That situation with Davis [Martin] was a testament to us knowing how important he is for our team and what he can provide.”
The Reds needed every bit of that cushion. Their five-run lead was down to one by the ninth, and with Emilio Pagán unavailable because of hand soreness, Julian García had to finish it off. Chicago got an RBI single before García induced a game-ending groundout with the tying run aboard.
The victory gave Cincinnati a series win after being swept in Washington, and it left Stewart with the kind of ending he preferred.
“I don’t want to make this a big deal,” Stewart said of the hit-by-pitch. “When you play 162 games, a lot of things happen.”
Asked about the series afterward, he smiled.
“There you go,” Stewart said. “That’s the question I want to hear.”
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