HOUSTON (AP) — The Cincinnati Reds got in an early hole on Sunday and couldn’t put anything together to climb out of it.
Evan Gattis and Luis Valbuena homered, driving in two runs each, to help the Houston Astros to 6-0 win over the Reds.
Gattis drove in a run with a double in the second and Valbuena followed with a single in that inning to put Houston up 2.
Valbuena added a solo home run in the fifth inning off Brandon Finnegan (3-5) and Jose Altuve added a sacrifice fly in that frame. The home run by Gattis came in the seventh to make it 5-0.
“There really weren’t a lot of opportunities for us to bust ourselves open and get back in that game once we fell down,” manager Bryan Price said. “There was nothing there.”
Mike Fiers (5-3) allowed four hits and struck out five in 5 2/3 scoreless innings. He left the game when Jay Bruce’s line drive hit him in the thigh for a single with two outs in the sixth. Chris Devenski took over and allowed one hit in 3 1/3 innings to complete the shutout and pick up his first save.
Finnegan yielded five hits and four runs in five innings to snap a streak of five straight games where he lasted at least six innings.
“He could have gone back out there and stayed out there but he just wasn’t real sharp,” Price said. “It just wasn’t very clean and this is a guy whose innings we’ll be concerned with as we get into August and September so it just didn’t make any sense at all to keep running him back out there.”
Finnegan said nothing was bothering him physically.
“I just wasn’t making good pitches,” he said. “They only had two actual good hits — the home run and the double. It just wasn’t my day.”
Danny Worth singled with two outs in the second before scoring on the double by Gattis to make it 1-0. Valbuena followed with his single to center field to push the lead to 2-0.
Fiers plunked Eugenio Suarez to start the fifth before a one-out single by Tucker Barnhart. But the Reds came away empty-handed when Suarez was caught trying to steal third and Fiers struck out Tyler Holt.
Valbuena sent the first pitch of Houston’s fifth into the seats in right field for his eighth homer to make it 3-0. Jake Marisnick walked before George Springer grounded into a force out that left Marisnick out at second. Springer stole second base and took third on a wild pitch before Marwin Gonzalez walked.
Altuve’s sacrifice fly came next to make it 4-0.
