Dateline: Cincinnati
Three home runs and a scoreless outing by Chase Burns lifted the Reds to a 4-2 win to improve to 46-54 with 62 games to play.
Elly De La Cruz crushed his 17th home run of the season, leading off the game against former Reds ace, Luis Castillo.
Eugenio Suarez, who was Castillo’s teammate in two cities, hit his 13th leading off the fourth inning.
Sal Stewart’s sacrifice fly added the Reds third run. It was his sixth sacrifice fly of the year and gave him 71 for the season. He is fourth in baseball five RBI shy of CJ Abrams and Jordan Walker who lead baseball with 76. Only Johnny Bench (1970) and Sam Crawford (1901) have driven in that many runs 100 games into the season.
Nathaniel Lowe hit his 12th in the ninth inning to give the Reds some cushion.
Burns pitched five scoreless innings with three hits, two walks and six strikeouts.
The Reds are monitoring his innings as he posted his 12th win against one loss. It is the sixth game in which he put up a scoreless start of five innings or more.
“He gets it. He’s a pretty sharp kid. I know he loves competing but we do have to keep an eye on him, Terry Francona said. “I told him there’s going to be a day where you’ll probably get two more innings but just not now.”
Tejay Antone pitched an inning and gave up the third home run of the season for Weston Wilson. Julian Garcia gave up Julio Rodriguez’ 15th home run in his inning.
Emilio Pagan had one strikeout in a perfect ninth to notch his eighth save.
The Reds have 62 games to pass up five teams and make up 5 1/2 games to slip into the last playoff spot, currently held by the Pittsburgh Pirates, who come to Great American Ball Park to play a four game weekend series, set to start July 30.
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