Reds Blast Four Homers in Fourth, Rout Phillies 11-5
Cincinnati sent four different players deep in a single fourth inning and never looked back, handing Philadelphia an 11-5 loss on July 8. The Reds' offense was so relentless that even a pair of solo shots from Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto couldn't make the final score feel close.
Philadelphia actually drew first blood — and then some. Crawford tripled to right to score Rincones Jr. in the second, then Chase Burns compounded the damage by uncorking a wild pitch that scored Crawford, pushing it to 2-0. Burns was clearly laboring: he'd finish with 6 walks over 5.0 innings, a command profile that looks like a disaster waiting to happen. The Reds got one back in the third when Sal Stewart homered to right at 356 feet, scoring De La Cruz — a swing that flipped the win probability from 40% to 61% in Cincinnati's favor and signaled that the offense was just getting started.
The fourth inning was where this game was decided, and it wasn't subtle. Noelvi Marte led off with a 371-foot shot to left center to give Cincinnati the lead at 3-2. Then De La Cruz went the other way, a 387-foot blast to right center that scored Arroyo and made it 5-2. Before Philadelphia's Alan Rangel could record another out, Stewart went deep again — 358 feet to right — and Bleday followed with a 384-foot shot to right center. Four home runs. Four different hitters. One inning. Rangel was done after 3.1 innings, having allowed 3 earned runs on 3 hits and 3 walks. The Reds had turned a 2-0 deficit into a 7-2 lead without breaking a sweat.
Philadelphia made cosmetic repairs — a Stott sacrifice fly in the fifth, a Realmuto solo shot in the sixth — but Cincinnati answered immediately. Bleday singled to center to score Friedl in the sixth, and then Marte delivered the knockout: a double to left that scored De La Cruz, Steer, and Bleday to push the lead to 11-4. Schwarber added a 387-foot solo homer in the ninth to make it 11-5, but that was pure garbage time. The story of the night was Cincinnati's lineup operating like a wrecking crew — Stewart finished 2-for-4 with 2 home runs, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored; Marte went 2-for-5 with a homer and 4 RBI; De La Cruz scored three times. Rhett Lowder came on in relief and tossed 2.0 clean innings to close it out. This appears to be a Cincinnati offense that, when it gets rolling, has the kind of top-to-bottom depth that makes it genuinely difficult to contain.