It was St Louis 1, Cincinnati nothing when Diaz trudged to the mound. He hit the first batter, Wilson Contreras and gave up a two-out single to Yohel Pozo.
So he was one out away from keeping it 1-0. Then it was spontaneous combustion.
It was home run, home run, home run. . .three straight home runs by number nine hitter Victor Scott II, a three-run rip, then solo blasts by Lars Nootbar and Masyn Winn, his second homer of the game.
And it was 6-0 and boos rained down from a nearly empty Great American Ball Park in the make-up game from Tuesday night’s rain-out.
That ended the Reds five-game losing streak and they lost to a struggling St. Louis team that was 2-and-12 in road games and had lost eight of its last 11.
Asked to assess Diaz’s season-long failures, Francona said, “How about today? He just left some pitches over the plate. He hit a guy to start the inning, then he just left some pitches over the plate.
“It was tough because you like to keep it 1-0 and give yourself a chance, make them use their closer (Ryan Helsley). He got the two outs. . .then it was slider, slider, fastball and he got hit pretty hard. He just didn’t locate very well.”
Until the ninth, the game was a picturesque pitcher’s clinic — Cincinnati’s Brady Singer against the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas.
Mikolas entered the game 0-2 with a 5.70 earned run average and the Cardinals were 0-5 in his five starts. But they hadn’t scored more than three runs for him in any of those starts.
And thanks to Singer, the Cardinals only scored one while Mikolas was in the game. That one run came in the first inning, a home run by Masyn Winn.
Normally the number nine hitter, he was batting second for the first time in his MLB career. He picked on Singer’s first pitch and lashed it into the upper deck in left field.
“I was trying to get ahead there, trying to get strike one and he jumped on it,” said Singer. “I thought it was a pretty good pitch.”
Singer gave up only one other hit during his six innings and walked three, but was tagged for his first loss after four wins.
The Cardinals had runners on base in five of his six innings and Singer said, “Definitely it was a grind...too many walks and getting behind in counts. I was just trying to figure out a way to keep us in the game.”
That he did.
“He battled like crazy because I looked up in the fifth inning and he was only about 50/50 in strikes-to-balls,” said Francona. “But he’d only given up the solo homer and that’s all he ended up giving up. That speaks a lot to his competitiveness.”
The Reds offense was like a dull steak knife. Mikolas gave up only three singles and that’s all the Reds got. They got nothing but a couple of walks in the last 3 2/3 innings off Kyle Leahy, Jo Jo Romero and Matt Svenson.
Mikolas was constantly ahead in the count, throwing first-pitch strikes to 15 of the first 18 hitters and Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said, “That’s what he does. He does pound the zone, he does get ahead of you.”
Elly De La Cruz extended his career-best hitting streak to 13 games and his on-base streak to 18 games with a two-out single in the first. But Gavin Lux flied to center.
De La Cruz was hit by a pitch with one out in the fourth, but Lux lined to third and Noelvi Marte flied to left.
Lux was batting fourth in place of Austin Hays, out of the lineup with a mild hamstring strain. Lux went 0 for 3, ending his 12-game hitting streak.
The Reds best scoring opportunity surfaced in the sixth and De La Cruz was in the middle of that one, too.
TJ Friedl led with a single and with one out De La Cruz hustled on a ground ball and reached on a fielder’s choice. Matt McLain flied to center and Friedl took third. De La Cruz stole his second base of the game and leads MLB with 12 thefts.
That put runners on third and second, but Lux flied to center and Marte grounded out. After that, silence was the buzzword for Cincinnati’s bats and it wasn’t golden.
Before the game, the Reds placed Jeimer Candelario on the injured list with lower back issues and called up Tyler Callihan.
He made his major league debut in left field and went 0-for-2.
Both teams spent most of the afternoon barking from their dugouts at home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman’s balls and strikes calls.
St. Louis manager Marmol was ejected in the eighth after Dreckman called a dubious strike on a 3-and-0 count on Winn.
“I’d rather get thrown out than one of our players,” he said. “It was more to do with a couple of calls that ended up as punchouts (strikeouts) that should have been walks,” said Marmol.
“In a one-run game, you get frustrated and I’d rather sit in the clubhouse rather than one of our players who can contribute to the game.”
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