Nick Martinez, Reds can’t hold 7-run lead vs. Brewers who win 13th straight
Cincinnati Reds starter Nick Martinez had an 8-1 lead in the second but “lost focus” and couldn’t get out of the third in a 10-8 loss to the Brewers.
The Reds Aug. 15 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers ranked with the worst of the season.The Aug. 15 loss to Brewers was sure to test Terry Francona’s mantra of move on to the next game.
They all count the same in the final standings.
But add this Aug. 15 goat rodeo to the Aug. 2-3 Speedway Crapshow on the short list of losses that felt like they hurt the Cincinnati Reds in their bid to overtake the New York Mets — or anyone else — for a National League playoff spot.
After jumping on All-Star Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski and taking an 8-1 lead Into the third inning, Nick Martinez and the Reds blew all of it by the fourth, and then the Brewers bullpen silenced the Reds in a 10-8 loss to the hottest team in baseball.
As if the huge blown lead wasn’t deflating enough, the Mets lost again on the same night, making this an especially big missed opportunity to leap-frog the fading Mets for the final NL wild-card position.
And as if that wasn’t deflating enough, the wild loss came on the heels of the move earlier in the day to put high-powered rookie pitcher Chase Burns on the injured list because of a flexor strain near his elbow.
And then there were the errors that led to two runs — the margin of defeat to a team the Reds haven’t beaten in a series in more than three years.
Pick your demoralizing poison.
“Tonight’s a missed opportunity but we can’t let it define us,” said Martinez, who said he “completely lost my focus” with the big lead when a couple of bloops and soft line drives started landing on the grass in the Brewers’ five-run third.
“I started leaving the ball over the plate and lost the focus of just executing,” he added. “Against a good team like that, we can’t give them second life. The good thing is we’ve responded well to tings like that throughout the year. We’ve just got to keep going and playing our style of baseball.”
A team like that?
There’s arguably never been a team like these Brewers, at least in Milwaukee history. That crazy comeback win was the Brewers’ 13th in as row, tying a franchise record set when Robin Yount and Paul Molitor were in the lineup (1987).
They haven’t lost this month; they also had an 11-game winning streak last month; and they’ve won 28 of their last 33 games – and 52 of their last 68.
Of course, it was the Brewers who would pull off a game like this against these Reds – Cincinnati’s great white whale that has now won 43 of the last 59 meetings and with one more win this weekend will make it 13 consecutive series against the Reds.
This one looked like it hurt.
“At this point they’re all important,” said Gavin Lux, who committed one of the errors that led an unearned run. “I know we all probably feel like we should have won this game. We didn’t play clean enough, didn’t make enough plays, gave them too many chances. We knew going into this game that we needed to play clean baseball to beat that team over there, and we just gave them too many chances.”
The Reds in their first 16 trips to the plate went 9-for-12 with four walks and a hit batter for their eight runs. The 23 trips after that: 23 straight outs with 10 strikeouts.
“Their bullpen did a very good job,” Francona said.
The Reds remain a half-game out of playoff position with 39 to play and the toughest remaining schedule in the game.
“They’re all important down the stretch here,” said Lux, the former Dodger with more playoff-drive experience than anyone else in the clubhouse. “I think they’re all created equal at this point with 40 left. It doesn’t really matter who it is. We’ve got to go out there and win.”