As soon as Paul Goldschmidt connected on a full-count fastball, Wade Miley clenched his fist, stared at the ground and he shouted in frustration.
Goldschmidt hammered his second home run of the afternoon to the "Red hits sign, fan wins Tundra" advertisement between the Power Stacks in center field, a 441-foot, two-run blast. Unfortunately for the fan, it resulted in no new car and another loss for the home team.
The two-run homer was the third lead change of the afternoon and it cost the Cincinnati Reds in a 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the first game of their seven-inning doubleheader at Great American Ball Park.
The Reds have lost six of their last eight games, falling out of the driver’s seat in the wild-card race. Entering Wednesday’s nightcap against the Cardinals, the Reds were a half-game behind the San Diego Padres. The Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies are both within 2½ games of a playoff spot.
"It’s a crappy time to go through a bit of a rut," Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart said.
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It was a rough afternoon for Miley, who permitted a season-high 12 hits in four innings. It was his second-shortest start of the season. He threw only 66 pitches, but he gave up five runs and three homers.
Miley threw a first-pitch strike to 17 of his 23 batters, which wasn't by design. He knew the Cardinals wanted to swing early in counts, but when he tried to throw pitches off the corners, they leaked back over the plate.
"I was trying to go 1-0, and I couldn’t do it," Miley said. "I was trying to throw balls first pitch and they were coming out of my hand kind of funny and floating inner-third. They were just peppering that (shortstop) hole. There were times today in the third and fourth inning where I was trying to throw balls in, off the plate, and couldn’t pull it off.
"Just didn’t have it, you know. Just one of those things. I’m not going to be searching for any answers. Just had a bad day."
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Miley was pitching with a one-run lead in the fourth inning, which led to his visible frustration. He surrendered a leadoff single to pinch-hitter Jose Rondón but promptly picked him off first base. Tommy Edman followed with a broken-bat single in a 0-2 count on an up-and-in fastball.
Next up was Goldschmidt, who has been a one-man wrecking crew against Reds pitching and, apparently, stadium billboards. Goldschmidt was in a 1-2 count before Miley threw him three consecutive fastballs. Goldschmidt thumped the final one for a go-ahead homer.
"I wish once I got to 3-2, I would have challenged him with a cutter on his hands," Miley said. "That’s what Tuck called and I shook back to fastball down-and-away, and obviously, we’ve seen what happened."
That's the challenge with facing a red-hot Goldschmidt, who had two homers and two walks in the seven-inning game. He's hitting .406 in his last 19 games with nine doubles, six homers and 19 RBI.
Goldschmidt clobbered Miley's fifth pitch of the afternoon for a 439-foot solo homer to straightaway center that nearly landed on the boat deck above the batter's eye. It was the 19th multi-homer game of his career.
"(Goldschmidt) grinds out an at-bat as good or better than anybody in the league in my opinion," Barnhart said. "He makes you work. He’s really patient and you do your best to get him expanding the strike zone and chasing pitches. When he’s not doing that, he’s a tough out.
"I trust anything that Wade sees or anything he shakes me to. I have full confidence in what he wants to do. We’ve gone back and forth all year on things where he may see one thing and I may see something else. I don’t care one bit that he shook me off. I trust him with anything he wants to throw at any point."
The Reds held a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the third inning. Nick Castellanos reached on an infield single, a ball that deflected off the leg of Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas and off the glove of third baseman Nolan Arenado.
Joey Votto drilled the next pitch in the right-center gap, scoring Castellanos from first base. It was an aggressive send from third-base coach JR House, but the throw to the plate was slightly up the third-base line and Castellanos slid away from catcher Andrew Knizer’s tag.
Castellanos motioned he was safe with his hands as the crowd erupted. Votto raised his arms in the air from second base.
Miley just couldn't make the lead stand on its own.
"One of those things that you just got to keep going and not get caught up too much in the wild-card race or the playoff race," Barnhart said. "If we’re playing the way we know we can play and the way we’ve been playing outside of this last week, I think everybody is confident that we’ll be where we want to be at the end of this thing."
The Reds had their opportunities after Goldschmidt's decisive homer. They had two runners on base and one out in the fourth inning against lefty reliever Genesis Cabrera, using four pinch-hitters in the inning to try to jump on the Cardinals' bullpen early, but the rally fizzled with a pop-up and a groundout.
A double play erased Castellanos’ leadoff single in the fifth inning and nothing came out Eugenio Súarez’s pinch-hit double in the sixth.
As the Reds enter September, with 28 games remaining in their season, the margin for error is gone.
"We’re confident in the group that we have," Barnhart said. "As long as we don’t get wrapped up in this stretch here, as long as we don’t panic, I think we’ll be just fine."
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