The Cincinnati Reds avoided a home sweep on Sunday, and they did it the way close games are supposed to be won: a starter who kept the game in hand, one swing that mattered, and just enough insurance. Cincinnati beat the Baltimore Orioles 3-2 at Great American Ball Park after dropping the first two games of the series.
Nick Lodolo gave the Reds six innings of one-run baseball, scattering six hits with four strikeouts on 97 pitches and outlasting Kyle Bradish, who was nearly as good over 7 2/3 but took the loss. Lodolo is now 3-2, and outings like this one — efficient, unbothered by traffic — are what a rebuilding rotation needs from him in the second half.
The offense came almost entirely from one place. Spencer Steer‘s two-run homer in the fifth, his 14th of the season, scored Eugenio Suárez ahead of him and gave Cincinnati a 2-0 lead. After Baltimore pulled within one in the sixth, Sal Stewart doubled home Edwin Arroyo in the eighth — Stewart’s 21st double, and the run that decided the game.
It decided the game because the ninth got complicated. Emilio Pagán needed 32 pitches to finish it, walking two and allowing a run on Gunnar Henderson‘s sacrifice fly before recording the save. Brock Burke and Tejay Antone had bridged the seventh and eighth without allowing a run, which is why the cushion existed at all.
At 41-48, the Reds are fifth in the NL Central and seven games out of the wild-card picture, so wins like this are about trajectory rather than the standings. The encouraging part is the shape of it — the franchise that invented professional baseball has always measured itself by pitching and timely hitting, and Sunday offered both. Cincinnati is off Monday before opening a home series against Philadelphia on Tuesday.
