Four Reds Homers Survive a Wild Fourth, Hold Off Athletics 6-5

Cincinnati needed four home runs, a challenged double play, and a white-knuckle ninth to put away the Athletics 6-5 on Thursday. The Reds' offense did the heavy lifting, but a two-run Serven shot in the ninth made sure nobody in the ballpark breathed easy until the final out.

The game turned upside down in the fourth inning and never really righted itself. Cincinnati struck first when De La Cruz homered to left center (381 feet) in the first, but the Athletics answered in a big way in the fourth — Tyler Soderstrom singled to center, scoring two runs, and then a Cincinnati-challenged double play call was overturned, allowing a third run to score. Just like that, it was 3-1 Athletics, and Mason Barnett's afternoon looked survivable. It wasn't. The Reds immediately fired back: Sal Stewart crushed a 416-foot shot to center to make it 3-2, and Tyler Stephenson followed with a 406-foot blast of his own to tie it at 3. That Stewart homer was the single biggest momentum shift of the night — Cincinnati's win probability swung from 43% to 57% on that one swing, a 13-point lurch that signaled the Reds weren't going quietly.

The fifth inning finished off Barnett entirely. Two walks with the bases loaded — one forcing in McLain, another forcing in Stewart — pushed Cincinnati ahead 5-3, and the Athletics' starter was done after just 4.1 innings, having allowed 5 earned runs on 5 hits and 3 walks. Seth Johnson came on and stabilized things with 2.0 innings of 1-run ball and 4 strikeouts, but the damage was done. JJ Bleday then put the game on ice in the seventh, going the other way for a 406-foot homer to right center that made it 6-3. Andrew Abbott, meanwhile, worked 6.2 innings for Cincinnati, giving up 7 hits and 3 earned runs while striking out 4 — a workmanlike outing that looks like exactly what the Reds needed from their starter.

The ninth inning was the one blemish on an otherwise controlled Cincinnati finish. Brian Serven launched a 391-foot two-run homer to left center, suddenly making it a one-run game at 6-5 with the tying run on deck. Pierce Johnson came on and slammed the door — 1.0 inning, no hits, no walks, one strikeout — but the fact that it got that close at all appears to be a credit to an Athletics lineup that refused to fold. The story of the night, though, belongs to Cincinnati's power display: four different Reds went deep, Stewart and Bleday each went 2-for-4 or better, and the offense generated enough cushion to survive its own late-game nerves.