Reds Beat: Sluggish, Sloppy Reds Drop 8th Straight, Head Out On Daunting West Coast Trip

CINCINNATI — Reds fans can feel Hunter Greene’s pain.

It was so difficult for the Reds right-hander to get into the game Thursday early on that he had to “pop a few smelling salts” to try and wake the heck up and find rhythm. Imagine how hard it is to watch the Reds during their eight-game skid.

Greene’s fastball was sitting in the mid-90s early on, a clear sign that he didn’t have the juice he’s accustomed to having.

He needed something so he turned to Sean McQueeney, Tomas Veras and the Reds medical staff to see if he could use some smelling salts in the dugout to get his blood pumping a bit more.

“It was a sluggish day. I was just trying to wake up,” Greene said. “I haven’t done smelling salts in God knows how long.”

Unfortunately for Greene and the Reds, they couldn’t wake up from their extended slumber as they fell for an eighth straight time, 5-4 to Arizona on Thursday.

Eventually, Greene did find rhythm but his tale early on served as the perfect metaphor for the sleepwalking job the Reds have been serving up to their fans over a winless 0-6 homestand and an eight-game losing streak that provided the tailwind for their cross country trip to San Francisco for the start of a 10-game West Coast trek starting Friday night.

As for Thursday’s latest failure, Tucker Barnhart haunted his former team by starting a game-winning rally with two outs in the eighth as the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks completed a three-game sweep Thursday afternoon.

The mistakes that were written off as growing pains when the Reds were four games over .500 at 14-10 are now turning into costly blunders.

They had two runners thrown out on the bases on Wednesday and two more on Thursday, including Elly De La Cruz in a crucial moment in the sixth inning.

After drawing a leadoff walk against Cecconi, De La Cruz stole second, his Major League-leading 22nd of the year. But in grabbing too big of a lead off second and trying to get a jump for third, De La Cruz was easily nabbed in a rundown for the first out of the inning.

Stuart Fairchild, thrown out trying to extend to a double Wednesday, entered in the eighth inning as a pinch-runner and was doubled up on a routine fly Jeimer Candelario fly ball in the eighth.

Trying to lessen the burden on his team, manager David Bell took responsibility after.

“It’s all my responsibility. Of course it’s a players game. That’s my job,” Bell said. “We came up short today. The big thing is that it’s no more than that.”

Bell is trying to disassociate the losses, not connecting them in a way that would point to a bigger problem having to do with talent, discipline and maturity, like the mistakes of De La Cruz and Fairchild.

Corbin Carroll broke a 4-4 tie with a two-out hit off reliever Fernando Cruz (1-3) in the eighth to score Barnhart and give Arizona its season-best fourth straight win.

Despite giving up a game-tying hit to Spencer Steer, Ryan Thompson recorded the final out of the seventh inning and recorded the win. Paul Sewald pitched a scoreless ninth to earn his first save in his first chance after missing the first month with an oblique injury.

Joc Pederson homered with two outs in the first to snap the career-high scoreless streak of Cincinnati starter Hunter Greene at 14 2/3 innings and stake Arizona to an early 1-0 lead.

De La Cruz went 2-for-3 with an RBI for Cincinnati, which lost its eighth straight and finished its six-game homestand winless. De La Cruz had two more steals to give him a Major League-leading 23 for the season.

Arizona starter Slade Cecconi retired the first seven batters he faced before walking Will Benson with one out in the third.

The Reds had just one hit through four innings, the fourth time in six games on their homestand that they had less than two hits through the first four innings.

Cincinnati managed to tie the game, 1-1, in the fifth when Jeimer Candelario homered to the first row of seats in left with two outs.

But Arizona immediately responded in the sixth, knocking Greene from the game. Pederson singled to open the inning and Christian Walker walked, prompting Cincinnati manager David Bell to pull Greene in favor of reliever Nick Martinez.

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. doubled to right-center to score Pederson and former Red Eugenio Suarez lifted a sacrifice fly to left that scored Walker for a 3-1 Arizona lead. Greene was charged with three runs on four hits, striking out six but walking a season-high five batters.

Arizona made it 4-1 in the seventh on a triple by Ketel Marte and a single by Christian Walker. The Reds scored three in the bottom of the seventh off Logan Allen on a two-out single from De La Cruz and a two-out, two-run single from Spencer Steer.

The three-run seventh was Cincinnati’s biggest since a three-run sixth at Texas on April 28, a span of eight games and 81 innings.

Hope the Reds packed smelling salts for the road trip. After 10 games against the Giants, Diamondbacks and Dodgers, they’ll need them.