Baseball Tuesday night gave the Reds another opportunity to look really good, belting the Marlins in Miami for a second straight night, the score this time 8-2. Cincinnati pounded out 13 hits, which included home runs by Tyler Stephenson and Ty France, and TJ Friedl also drove in a pair of runs, with a double and a sacrifice fly. Elly DeLaCruz had a huge game Monday, another biggie last night, again with 4 hits, 2 of them doubles. He drove 2 runs in, and Stephenson added an RBI single. France hit a homer for the second straight night. Left-handed Nick Lodolo started as the Reds’ pitcher and went 6 solid innings, earning his 9th win of the season.
When the Reds play well, as they have the last 2 nights, they and a lot of folks would like to see them in the playoffs. The wild card race has the Braves dropping a bit, having lost 2 straight, and the Reds who are 5 ½ games back get 2 more against the Marlins, so they may be able to edge a little closer to the post-season. The 3rd of the 4 Miami games is on the way tonight. Join us for the broadcast, beginning at 6:10, only on the Sports Voice, 103.9 WRBI.
Catcher Tucker Barnhart, who started his professional career with the Reds, has signed a minor-league contract, back with Cincinnati. He’d been designated for assignment and then cut by the Diamondbacks. Barnhart had been the Reds’ 10th-round pick in the 2009 major-league draft. He won 2 Gold glove awards over 8 seasons. Since 2021, he’s bounced around to the Tigers, Cubs, and most recently, Arizona.
Indianapolis Cathedral High School grad Cole Hocker ran brilliantly at the Paris Olympics Tuesday, winning gold in the men’s 15 hundred meters. Hocker achieved special speed for the event as well, setting a new Olympic record of 3:27.65. He beat both favorites Jakob Ingebrigsten and Josh Kerr to the finish, Hocker quickly moving from 5th place to the front in the last 300 meters. He wound up surpassing his own personal best by more than 3 seconds. Hocker was 14 hundredths of a second faster than Kerr, while Ingebrigsten, who’d set the pace for the first 80 percent of the race, ended up in 4th place, behind fellow American Yared Nuguse. Congrats again to Cole Hocker.