By Hal McCoy
What began as a perfect night for the Cincinnati Reds turned into a devastating head-on train wreck Wednesday night in Great American Ball Park.
Nick Lodolo struck out the side to start the game and Tyler Stephenson’s grand slam home run in the bottom of the first gave the Reds a 5-0 lead.
And that was it, story over for the Reds.
The Washington Nationals barged back and snatched away an 8-7 10-inning victory.
The dreadful ending was engineered by relief pitcher Tony Santillan, who has pitched in May as if the baseball is square.
With the score tied, 6-6, he gave up a two-run home run in the 10th inning to Daylen Lile.
Graham Ashcraft pitched an efficient ninth inning, but manager Tito Francona elected to send Santillan out for the 10th.
Santillan has pitched five times in May and given up nine runs, nine hits and five home runs in only 3 1/3 innings.
“You go through periods where you make mistakes and you pay,” said Francona about Santillan’s miseries. “Too much plate. We gotta get him going because he is so important to what we do. We can’t run from him, we need to get him going.”
While the floodlights shine on Santillan, the offense, the lack thereoff, stands in the beam, too.
Francona, Tito the Tinkerer, mixed up his batting order for this one. He moved Elly De La Cruz from third to second, moved Sal Stewart from fourth to third and dropped JJ Bleday into the clean-up spot.
And he dropped TJ Friedl from leadoff to eighth and installed Will Benson in the leadoff position.
It worked. . .in the first inning. De La Cruz singled with one out and Bleday doubled with two outs to score De La Cruz.
On a 2-and-2 count, umpire Dexter Kelley called Spencer Steer out on strikes. He challenged and it was a ball. He eventually walked and Nathaniel Lowe also walked on a full count to fill the bases.
Stephenson unloaded his grand slam and Lodolo had a 5-0 lead.
But the offense shut down. After Stephenson’s home run, the Reds collected only one run and three hits through the ninth inning.
De La Cruz doubled to lead off the seventh when it was 6-6, his fifth straight multi-hit game. He advanced to third on a ground ball and Bleday walked.
But Steer hit into an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play.
Matt Mclain doubled to open the ninth and Dane Myers popped a bunt attempt to the pitcher. De La Cruz, given a chance for his first career walk-off hit, lined to leftcand Stewert grounded out.
The Reds, losers in 10 of their last 12 games, were up to their usual problems with runners in scoring position.
They were 3 for 15 and stranded eight while losing to the Nationals for the 13th time in 17 games.
After the Reds gave Lodolo the 5-0 first-inning lead, and after he struck out the side in the first, he gave up four runs and four hits in the second that included a two-run home run to No. 9 hitter Keibert Ruiz, a .205 hitter.
What was the difference between the first and second innings for Lodolo?
“The first inning I did a good job of expanding (the strike zone) and the second inning I just didn’t expand,” he said. “I didn’t expand when I got to two strikes.
“As the game went on I started to throw some better sliders and stuff, but what killed me was in the second being in the zone when I was ahead in the count.”
He gave up another run in the third when he hit the first batter, Curtis Mead, and he scored on a CJ Abrams double to tie it, 5-5.
Lodolo put two on with one out in the fourth and escaped damage, but his day was done — four innings, five runs, six hits, three walks, a hit batsman and six strikeouts.
The Reds barged back ahead, 6-5, in the third on Spencer Steer’s leadoff single and he came around to score on a throwing error by shortstop Abrams.
The Nationals, 15-9 on the road, tied it in the fifth against TJ Antone on Jacob Young’s leadoff single, a single by Lile and a ground ball out.
It stayed 6-6 until the 10th and the ghost runner scored ahead of Lile’s third home run of the series.
There was controversy in the Reds’ 10th.
With ghost runner Stewart on third with one out, Steer drove one to deep left. A fan reached over the yellow line and caught the ball.
It definitely would have hit the padded yellow line atop the wall. Would it have hit the line and bounced into the stands for a game-tying home run?
Nobody will ever know. The umpires huddled and ruled fan interfernce and put Steer on second with a double and allowing Stewart to score.
So the Reds had the tying run on second with one out. Nathaniel Lowe grounded out, sending Steer to third with the potential tying run.
Stephenson walked and Blake Dunn was the potential winning run if he hit a walk-off home run. Or he could have tied it with a single.
He grounded meekly to shortstop.
What did Francona see on the Steer hit, could it have been a home run?
“We’ll never know,” he said. “It looked like they (umpires) probably got it right. They did everything they could. They went and looked. It would have been hard to overturn that, in my opionion. I wish they would have.”
And he probably wish he could overturn his decision to send Santillan out to pitch the 10th.