Even as he retired batter after batter in order — 15 Cardinals in a row to begin his night — Reds pitcher Bronson Arroyo knew he couldn’t relax on Tuesday night.
“To be honest with you, I hate being in ballgames when you have a no-hitter and you’re only winning 1-0,” Arroyo said. “I always feel like the guy with the no-no always loses it. I’ve seen that happen so many times, it’s ridiculous.”
This time it happened to him. Arroyo took a perfect game into the sixth inning only to give up four runs during Cincinnati’s 5-1 loss to the Cardinals.
Holding a narrow 1-0 lead on Brandon Phillips’ fourth-inning sacrifice fly, Arroyo lost the bid for perfection when Daniel Descalso led off the sixth with a double to right field.
With one out in the sixth, left-handed pinch-hitter Matt Adams spoiled the shutout by launching a 1-1 curveball into the right-field bullpen.
“He was throwing the majority of offspeed all game,” Adams said. “With the tying run at third base, I had a pretty good idea that I was going to get an offspeed pitch sometime during that at-bat.”
The hits kept coming as Jon Jay hit a single to left field and Matt Carpenter slashed a single to right field to put runners on second and third. An intentional walk to Matt Holliday loaded the bases. Another run crossed when Jay scored on Allen Craig’s groundout to second base. Carlos Beltran added an RBI single to center field that scored Carpenter. Holliday tried to score on the play, but Shin-Soo Choo snagged the ball on one hop and fired a perfect strike to the plate for the third out.
“It happened so quickly,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “Then the pinch-hitter came up and deposited one over the fence. After that it was boom, bam, boom. That’s what they do. They can score a lot.”
Arroyo finished with four runs and five hits allowed over six innings with the one intentional walk and two strikeouts. He is now 8-14 in his 34-game career against St. Louis.
Cardinals starter Lance Lynn matched Arroyo early by retiring his first 10 batters until Zack Cozart hit a one-out single to left field in the fourth. Following a Joey Votto single to right field, Cozart scored from third base on Phillips’ sacrifice fly.
The Reds scored 51 runs through their first seven games, including 13 vs. the Cardinals in Monday’s win, but offense was tough to come by Tuesday. After Lynn departed, the St. Louis bullpen faced the minimum number of batters — nine.
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