Back-to-back losses already made the series vs. the D-backs a lost cause for the Reds by Sunday, but the three-city, eight-game road trip is far from that. That made leaving Phoenix with a win heading into Monday’s off-day a little more paramount.
Boosted by first-inning home runs by Shin-Soo Choo and Brandon Phillips, Mat Latos tied a career high with 13 strikeouts before the Reds hung on for a 4-2 win over the D-backs.
“It was very important,” Phillips said. “You never want to get swept. Just getting that win, we showed that we’re still here. I felt like we should have won yesterday. All you can do is learn from your mistakes and stay hungry. I’m glad we got the job done today.”
The Reds quickly put the tough walk-off loss from Saturday behind them in the top of the first inning. Against Randall Delgado, Choo hit an 0-2 pitch to right-center field for his 11th homer, and fourth leadoff homer, of the season.
Zack Cozart followed Choo with a double to left field. With one out, Phillips drove a 1-0 pitch into the left field seats for a two-run homer and 3-0 lead.
In the top of the second, Xavier Paul led off with a double to the gap in right-center field. Later, with the bases loaded and one out, Cozart hit a long sacrifice fly to the warning track in left-center field. Cincinnati’s lineup was kept largely silent the rest of the afternoon.
“We scored early; we’ve still got to work on scoring some more, some add-on runs,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “We hit the ball and didn’t have anything to show for it.”
Fortunately for Baker, Latos had the D-backs missing — a lot. He pitched 7 2/3 innings with one run, six hits and two walks allowed.
“Latos, he was dealing,” Baker said.
Making his final strikeout total a little more impressive was that Latos had zero K’s through two innings.
“In the first inning, it took me a little while to get into a groove,” said Latos, who also struck out 13 Brewers on June 25, 2012. “The first inning didn’t feel too good. I didn’t feel too great with my command. I came back out in the second inning, made a little bit of an adjustment, and it worked.”
In the third and fourth innings, Latos struck out all six batters.
“He was really good; he’s been good his whole career,” D-backs first baseman Paul Goldschmidt said. “He went right after us; he didn’t miss much. We tried to be aggressive, but he got the ball down. When he got ahead, he had great putout pitches. We just weren’t able to get anything going.”
No Arizona hitters reached second base against Latos until the bottom of the eighth. That’s when Latos showed some fatigue as he crossed the 100-pitch mark.
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