Into the wee hours of the morning went the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres after their 9:40 PM ET start time on Tuesday evening in southern California, the second game of their three-game series heading to extras after neither team could quite figure out Chase Burns or Lucas Giolito, respectively.
Tied at 2-2, the two clubs reached bonus baseball just before 1 AM ET, with Eugenio Suarez socking an RBI double to score the Manfred Man and give the Reds a 3-2 lead heading into the Bottom of the 10th.
Not to be outdone, Samad Taylor responded in the back half of the frame with an RBI single to score a fellow Padres and level the score at 3-3, at which point the game headed into the 11th inning.
It was then that Sal Stewart took matters into his own hands.
Cincinnati’s star rookie sat back on a breaking pitch from San Diego lefty Yuki Matsui and launched it over the wall in the deepest part of Petco Park, a 2-run homer that gave the Reds a 5-3 lead that they would not relinquish.
Zach “Big Sugar” Maxwell came on to nail down the first save of his career right after, a nearly perfect 9-pitch Bottom of the 11th that gave Cincinnati a much needed win to bust up their latest stretch of futility.
A win is a win, and the Reds will take them any way they can these days. Still, it was the kind of game where it felt like Cincinnati should have been ahead by several runs the entire way. Burns, to his credit, was once again pretty electric, allowing just 2 ER in 5.1 IP with 7 K against just 2 BB. The Reds, though, coaxed 8 walks, poked 8 hits, and swiped a season-best 7 bases on the night, yet still found themselves needing Stewart’s 2-run blast late in the game after leaving runners stranded just about everywhere imaginable throughout the course of the night.
In the end, though, it was Mustang Sally who rose to the occasion and claimed the night for the Reds. Maybe, just maybe, it ends up the kind of swing that changes the fortunes of this sputtering club.
