Reds Erupt Early, Survive Goodman's Historic Three-Homer Night

Cincinnati put up 8 runs before the third inning was over and never looked back, beating Colorado 9-6 on July 19. The story of the night was a collision between two forces: a Reds offense that detonated immediately and a Hunter Goodman performance that, in any other game, would have been the headline.

The game was effectively over before most fans had settled in. Nathaniel Lowe opened the scoring with a 420-foot blast to right that plated De La Cruz and Bleday, swinging Colorado's win probability from 53% to 28% in a single swing. That three-run shot was immediately followed by Tyler Stephenson launching a 435-foot homer to left center, scoring Suárez to make it 5-0 Cincinnati — all in the first inning. Colorado answered with a Goodman solo shot to center (425 feet), but the damage was already severe. In the second, Sal Stewart crushed a 456-foot center-field bomb that scored Myers and De La Cruz, pushing the lead to 8-1. Stephenson added his second homer of the night in the fifth — 418 feet to left center — and Cincinnati's 9-1 advantage looked like a formality.

Then Goodman decided to make things interesting. He went deep again in the sixth (435 feet, left center, scoring McCarthy), then again in the eighth (442 feet to center, scoring Moniak), and Willi Castro added a solo shot to right in the ninth. Colorado scored five times over the final four innings, but the deficit was simply too large. Final: Cincinnati 9, Colorado 6. Goodman finished 3-for-4 with 3 home runs, 5 RBI, and 3 runs scored — a genuinely remarkable individual line that came entirely on the losing side.

On the pitching side, Hunter Greene was efficient and clean for Cincinnati: 6.0 innings, 4 hits, 3 earned runs, zero walks, and 7 strikeouts. Tanner Gordon absorbed the loss for Colorado, going 5.2 innings and allowing just 1 earned run — a stat line that looks deceptively solid given the 8-1 hole he left behind. Brock Burke threw a scoreless inning for Cincinnati; Jordan Romano did the same for Colorado. The Reds offense was the story here, with four different players going deep and the lineup doing its most damaging work in the first two innings. It appears Cincinnati's early aggression set a tone that Colorado's late-game power surge — as impressive as Goodman's night was — could never fully address.