Tucker Barnhart haunted his former team by starting a game-winning rally with two outs in the eighth as the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks completed a three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, 5-4 on Thursday afternoon.
Corbin Carroll broke a 4-4 tie with a two-out hit off reliever Fernando Cruz (1-3) in the eighth to score Barnhart – who played for the Reds in 2014-21 — and give Arizona its season-best fourth straight win. Barnhart had walked and advanced to second on a wild pitch before Cruz walked Pavin Smith.
Kevin Ginkel (2-0) pitched a scoreless eighth — recording a strikeout, allowing a single and coaxing a double-play flyout to get out of the inning. Paul Sewald pitched a scoreless ninth to earn his first save in his first chance after missing the first month with an oblique injury.
Joc Pederson homered with two outs in the first to snap Cincinnati starter Hunter Greene’s career-high scoreless streak at 14 2/3 innings and stake Arizona to an early 1-0 lead.
Elly De La Cruz went 2-for-3 with an RBI for Cincinnati, which lost its eighth straight and finished its six-game homestand without a win. De La Cruz had two more steals to give him a Major League-leading 23 for the season.
Arizona starter Slade Cecconi retired the first seven batters he faced before walking Will Benson with one out in the third.
The Reds had just one hit through four innings — the fourth time in six games on their homestand that they had less than two hits through the first four innings.
Cincinnati managed to tie the game, 1-1, in the fifth when Jeimer Candelario homered to the first row of seats in left with two outs.
Arizona immediately responded in the sixth, knocking Greene from the game. Pederson singled to open the inning and Christian Walker walked, prompting Cincinnati manager David Bell to pull Greene in favor of reliever Nick Martinez.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. doubled to right-center to score Pederson, and former Reds player Eugenio Suarez lifted a sacrifice fly to left that scored Walker for a 3-1 Arizona lead. Greene was charged with three runs on four hits, striking out six but walking a season-high five batters.
Arizona made it 4-1 in the seventh on a triple by Ketel Marte and a single by Walker. The Reds scored three in the bottom of the seventh off Logan Allen on a two-out single from De La Cruz and a two-out, two-run single from Spencer Steer.
The three-run seventh was Cincinnati’s biggest since a three-run sixth in a 4-3 loss at Texas on April 28 — a span of nine games and 82 innings.
