SAN DIEGO – Another series, another heartbreaker for the Cincinnati Reds, whose playoff hopes are flickering like a candle flame in its last puddle of wax.
After blowing a three-run lead in the sixth, the Reds managed just one hit against the top bullpen in the majors and opened the most urgent road trip of the season with a 4-3, 10-inning loss to the San Diego Padres on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s game-ending sacrifice fly at Petco Park on Sept. 8.
“I don’t think you can flip a button and say we’ve got to have extra urgency. I don’t know that it works that way,” manager Terry Francona said before the game. “I understand the math, and you start looking at how many games are left, so, yeah, we need to win.”
When they didn’t win on this night, they missed a chance to gain on the New York Mets in the race for the final National League playoff spot, remaining four games out. They also got passed again by the San Francisco Giants, who have a one game lead over the Reds, three back of the Mets, after beating the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Reds have 18 games left, including eight more on a road trip that continues to Sacramento and St. Louis.
“It was a hard-fought game. We put up a good fight,” said centerfielder TJ Friedl, who led off the game with home run off Yu Darvish and scored again in the third on Elly De La Cruz’s two-out single. “We just didn’t close it out.”
After Austin Hays added a solo shot in the sixth, the Reds took a 3-0 lead into the bottom of the sixth. But reliever Scott Barlow gave up three in the sixth, including two after he left two men on with two out for Brent Suter.
Jackson Merrill greeted Suter with a game-tying triple to right-center that glanced off the glove of a diving Friedl. Suter struck out Jose Iglesias to avert further damage.
“Off the bat, I thought I had a bead on it, and as I was closing I knew it was going to be a dive play,” Friedl said. “And just right off the end of my glove. I thought maybe I kept it in my webbing. I felt it hit the tip of my glove, and I was kind of sliding when I looked and it wasn’t there.”
That’s how close much of this season has looked for a Reds team that fell to 3-11 in extra-inning games and 18-21 in one-run games.
When they turned this one into a bullpen game, it made a tough task especially improbable against the parade of hard-throwing, high-leverage arms the Padres’ bullpen features.
“They keep bringing them out. That’s part of why they’re good,” said Francona, who watched six Padres relievers retire 13 of 14 Reds batters faced. “They’re pretty deep out there.”
That lone hit against the San Diego bullpen a two-out double by Matt McLain in the seventh off right-hander Jeremiah Estrada. After a pitching change, Friedl lined out to right off Adrian Morejon to end the threat — the first of 10 straight outs for the Reds to end the game.
Reds starter Nick Lodolo, making his first start in 12 days because of a flu-like bug that prompted the Reds to scratch him from a start Sept. 2, shut out the Padres on two hits over five innings in a 79-pitch return.
“I thought he threw the ball extremely well,” Francona said. “I don’t think it was surprising he was out of gas after the fifth.
“In a perfect world, we’d send him right back out. But not a perfect world.”
Lodolo, who had only one start since Aug. 4 before the Padres game because of a finger blister, didn’t allow a hit until Gavin Sheets’ two-out double in the fourth. The Padres’ other hit against him was Jake Cronenworth’s bunt single with two out in the fifth.
“Definitely hurts to lose that one for sure,” Lodolo said. “But overall I thought I threw the ball solid.
“Good to get back out there and build off that one,” he added. “I was definitely running a little bit on fumes there. but that’ll be good. The next time I take the ball I’ll be in a good spot.”
Lodolo is unbeaten in his last three starts against the Padres with a 1.04 ERA across 17 1/3 innings.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Reds blow lead, drop series opener to San Diego Padres
Reporting by Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
