Reds manager Dusty Baker got everything he could have asked for out of starter Johnny Cueto on Sunday. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same for his bullpen.
Reds reliever Logan Ondrusek lost a three-run lead in the top of the eighth inning, and J.J. Hoover surrendered the game-winning run on a Welington Castillo double in the top of the 10th, as Cincinnati dropped the series finale to Chicago, 5-4.
“That’s one that got away,” Baker said. “You hate to lose a game like that.”
Holding a 4-1 lead, Baker turned to Ondrusek in the eighth after Cueto went seven innings, because the usual late-inning pitchers, Jonathan Broxton and Aroldis Chapman, had both thrown in the first two games of the series and weren’t available on Sunday.
The 28-year-old right-hander had no problem with the first two batters he faced, inducing a groundout and a popout. However, Starlin Castro started a two-out rally with a single right up the middle and scored on an Anthony Rizzo double down the right-field line. Alfonso Soriano came to the plate in the next at-bat and tied the game with a two-run shot to left-center field.
The situation was much the same in the top of the 10th, when Hoover retired the first two batters on five total pitches. Then he walked Scott Hairston before Castillo pulled a double down the left-field line, just out of the reach of third baseman Todd Frazier, who thought he had a play on the ball.
“They came up big in the later innings,” Frazier said of the Cubs. “When they had the opportunity, they took off with it. Nothing against us or them. You can’t win them all. That’s just baseball.”
The loss snapped a five-game winning streak and marked the first time the Reds fell to the Cubs in the last seven tries.
For seven innings, though, the Reds seemed to have everything under control, thanks in large part to Cueto.
Toeing the rubber at Great American Ball Park for the first time since April 7, Cueto was masterful for most of his seven innings of work. The 27-year-old right-hander carried a no-hitter into the fourth inning and finished his day allowing just one run on four hits and two walks while striking out two.
Sunday was Cueto’s second outing since being on the disabled list with a strained right lat muscle that forced him to miss more than a month of action. He had no trouble against the Cubs, and Baker said he extended Cueto as far as he could.
Click here to read more of this story.
About Marion Online Sports
