Three Reds Homers Seal It as Castillo Takes the Loss

Cincinnati sent three different players deep against Luis Castillo and walked out of Seattle with a 4-2 win on July 22. The Reds built a 3-0 lead before Seattle could answer, and a ninth-inning insurance shot slammed the door.

Elly De La Cruz set the tone immediately, homering to right center 395 feet in the first inning to put Cincinnati ahead 1-0. The Reds weren't done with Castillo early — Eugenio Suarez went 405 feet to center in the fourth to make it 2-0, and a fifth-inning sacrifice fly from Stewart, scoring Friedl, pushed the lead to 3-0. Castillo finished with 7.0 innings pitched, allowing 4 hits, 3 earned runs, 2 walks, and 3 strikeouts — a workmanlike line that still wasn't enough to keep Cincinnati off the board.

Seattle clawed back in the seventh and eighth. Weston Wilson launched a 411-foot shot to left in the seventh to make it 3-1, and then Julio Rodriguez followed with a 409-foot homer to left center in the eighth, cutting the deficit to one. That Rodriguez blast was the single biggest momentum moment of the night — the home win probability swung from 16% to 33% on that swing, a 17-point jump. For a moment, it looked like Seattle had life. But Cincinnati answered immediately: Nathaniel Lowe homered to left 362 feet in the ninth to restore the two-run cushion at 4-2, and that was the ballgame.

The story of the night was the long ball — five home runs total, three belonging to Cincinnati — but the pitching split tells the real tale. Chase Burns gave the Reds 5.0 innings of zero-earned-run ball, scattering 3 hits with 6 strikeouts against 2 walks. That's a quality start in everything but length, and it appears Burns did exactly what Cincinnati needed him to do: keep the game manageable while the offense did the heavy lifting. Emilio Pagan added a clean inning of relief, and the Reds closed it out. Josh Naylor went 3-for-4 for Seattle and looks like the one Mariner who refused to quit, but three hits with no runs scored is a frustrating footnote when your team drops a game at home. Cincinnati takes the 4-2 final.