McCoy: Reds break away from Cardinals in late innings, pull within 2 games of Mets

The Reds only led, 7-6, after breaking a 6-6 tie with a run in the top of the eighth.

Reds manager Tito Francona sent young Connor Phillips to the mound for some protective duty.

He struck out Lars Nootbar. He struck out Nolan Arenado. He coaxed a routine ground ball from Thomas Saggase.

One, two, three. Nothing to it.

“When he first came up, he was spiking balls in the dirt,” Reds manager Tito Francona told reporters after the game. “Now he is throwing them for strikes and it’s a good one. He has plenty of velocity.

“He’s confident, too, and he should be,” Francona added. ‘He is growing into responsibility. We need that from some of these kids, what we’ve been dying for.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

The Reds then, and only then, scored four runs in the top of the ninth against a battered and tattered St. Louis bullpen to put it away.

The New York Mets were idle, so the Reds chopped a half-game off their wild card deficit to two games. Arizona buried San Francisco Monday in Phoenix so the three teams chasing the Mets stand this way: Arizona -1 1/2, Cincinnati -2, San Francisco -2.

After the Reds built a two-run lead, 3-1, St. Louis scored three in the sixth to take a 4-3 lead.

But the Reds scored eight runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth, a run barrage after scoring only nine runs total in three straight losses to the Athletics in Sacramento.

Catcher Tyler Stephenson’s three-run double in the ninth put the finishing touches on the Cardinals and he knows how to dissect a box score.

Of Phillips he said, “That’s huge. It has been kind of impressive some of the situations at hand that he and (Zach) Maxwell have done. We used both those guys in San Diego in that situation and they came through.

“I’m proud of them, they’ve come a long way,” he added. “Their stuff is electric and we’re going to need those guys down the stretch.”

Rookie and recent call-up Sal Stewart continues to make loud noises with his bat. He got the Reds started with a one-out 417-foot home run off the McDonald’s sign on the upper deck facade with one out in the second inning. He had three hits, drove in two and scored three.

It was a Battle Royale all the way. It was 1-1. The Reds led, 3-1. The Cardinals led, 4-3. It was tied, 6-6, when pinch-hitter Will Benson broke the tie in the eighth with a sacrifice fly for a 7-6 lead.

To show the miserable state of the St. Louis bullpen, when it was 6-6 Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol sent Ryan Fernandez to the mound, a pitcher with a 0-3 record and an 8.73 earned run average.

And the inevitable happened. With one out Stewart singled and Fernandez walked Stephenson on a full count.

Marmol brought in left-hander John King and he walked Elly De La Cruz on a full count to load the bases.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

De La Cruz was dropped from third to seventh in the batting order, “Because I believe in consistency and I believe in Elly De La Cruz. This was to take the glare away from him, plus they started a left-hander (Matthew Liberatore) and it enabled me to put Miguel Andujar up there with a chance to do some serious damage.”

When Marmol brought in King, Francona called on Benson and he lofted the sacrifice fly to give the Reds a 7-6 lead.

“They punched us and we punched right back,” said Stewart. “That’s what this team is about, so I’m excited about the rest of the push.”

Stewart has homered four times in the last eight games and has seven hits in his last three games.

“I just try to put a good swing on them and if it goes, it goes,” he said of his home runs. “Home runs are just miss-hits. I try to hit a hard line drive through the middle and if I get under it, it goes.”

A long way.

And he has the right focus.

“We’re just focused on ourselves right now,” he said. “We gotta take care of what we can take care of and whatever happens, happens. We just have to go out there and play hard.”

Francona, who usually talks about and emphasizes on that day’s games, nothing about yesterday and nothing about tomorrow. But he knows what’s at stake every day as the season shrinks to 12 more games.

“We need to win, we need to win desperately, to say the least,” he said. “We found a way today, which is really good. We answered back, which was really good.

After going 1 for 21 with runners in scoring position in the three losses to the A’s, the Reds were 7 for 14 against the Cardinals.

“If I had a recipe, or an answer, it would never happen,” said Francona of all the runners the Reds constantly strand in scoring position. “All those things are kind of cyclical. Teams can get hot and can get cold.

“I hope for about 13 games (12, actually) we get hot in that situational hitter, because it’s huge for us.”

It’s huge for any team, especially one with playoff aspirations.

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