One bad inning snaps SF Giants’ win streak at 7 with loss to Reds
Cincinnati scored 3 runs in the third but didn't put another runner on base in Ross Stripling's longest outing of the season.
Despite getting the longest outing of the season from Ross Stripling, the Giants weren’t able to capitalize in key spots Wednesday against the Reds and were done in by one bad inning that ultimately spelled an end to their seven-game winning streak.
San Francisco put the would-be tying and go-ahead runs on first and second in the eighth inning but, rather than the late-game magic that has been so prevalent of late, it only went down in a string of missed opportunities. The Giants’ 26 come-from-behind wins are the fifth-most in the majors, but it wasn’t in the cards Wednesday night.
Luis Matos flew out to end the eighth-inning opportunity, and Reds All-Star closer Alexis Diaz mowed down Blake Sabol, David Villar and Brett Wisely in order to close out the 3-2 win, handing the Giants (54-42) their first loss since the All-Star break. They’ll get another chance to win the four-game series Thursday morning (9:35 a.m. PT) with Alex Cobb on the mound.
Stripling went six innings, his longest outing of the season and first time going five innings since May 7, but was done in by a third inning in which he surrendered all four of the Reds’ four hits, capped off by a three-run homer from No. 9 hitter Will Benson that accounted for all of Cincinnati’s runs. The Reds (51-46) didn’t put a runner on base in any other inning, an encouraging sign for a team looking for a more stable five-man rotation in the second half.
“Overall, it was a step in the right direction,” Stripling told reporters in Cincinnati.
Pleasanton’s TJ Friedl was the only Reds batter to reach base after the three-run homer in the third. He was initially called out trying to stretch a single into a double but the Reds challenged and video replay showed that Friedl’s swim move with his right arm was able to avert Wisely’s tag. It proved inconsequential as Stripling retired the final 11 batters he faced, relying heavily on the junk from his kitchen-sink repertoire — going offspeed on 55 of his 76 pitches — before handing off to Ryan Walker, who went six-up, six-down through the seventh and the eighth.
It was a misplaced slider that Benson took the other way for all three of the Reds’ runs.
Blake Sabol launched an opposite-field solo home run to pull the Giants within one, 3-2, to begin the seventh inning. It was his 11th of the season, tied with three others for the second-most on the team.
“He’s not just using the small part of the park, the pull side. He puts the ball out of the ballpark to the middle of the field,” manager Gabe Kapler told reporters in Cincinnati, via NBC Sports Bay Area. “I actually think as he learns to elevate the ball to the pull side a little bit more there’s even more juice in there.”
The Giants, however, were only able to scratch across one other run, though it wasn’t for a lack of opportunities.
Without getting a hit, they pushed across their first run in the fifth. But they’ll look back on the bases-loaded, no-outs situation as a missed chance. Facing the bottom three batters in the Giants’ lineup, Reds starter Graham Ashcraft hit Villar and threw eight straight balls to Wisely and Casey Schmitt to load the bases for the top of the lineup. The rally amounted to only one run, as Joc Pederson grounded into a double play, allowing Wisely to score, and Mike Yastrzemski popped up to second.
San Francisco similarly wasn’t able to capitalize in the second, putting runners on the corners with no outs and getting no runs out of it. Matos led off the inning with a double and advanced to third on a single by Sabol — a 102.7 mph comebacker that struck Ashcraft — but Villar and Wisely struck out swinging, and Sabol was thrown out at second in a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play to end the inning.
Notable
— LaMonte Wade Jr. (hamstring) and J.D. Davis (illness) were unavailable, Kapler told reporters postgame. “Pretty short bench today,” he said, adding they were intent on keeping Patrick Bailey off his feet, too.