Reds beat Brewers on TJ Friedl's walk-off home run robbery

New York Times

04-06-2025

CINCINNATI — The question is absurd and has no correct answer, but what's better, a walk-off home run or a walk-off home run robbery?
'Granted, I don't have a walk-off catch, I don't know the experience with that, but I would say a walk-off home run is the (ultimate) thing you can do in a baseball game,' said Will Benson, whose first career big-league home run was a walk-off homer against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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Cincinnati Reds center fielder TJ Friedl has a pair of walk-off hits, both singles, not homers, but Tuesday he got the chance to walk off the game on defense, robbing Milwaukee Brewers pinch hitter Jake Bauers of a score-tying home run with two outs in the ninth inning in the 4-2 Reds victory.
'This is tops,' Friedl said after the victory. 'This tops my other walk-offs for sure. To end a game like that, you dream of that as an outfielder growing up and in your backyard robbing home runs.'
Of course, either one will do.
Tuesday's victory didn't need dramatics to make it feel significant, even if it didn't hurt. The win not only snapped the Reds' three-game losing streak but also the Brewers' eight-game winning streak. With the win, the Reds have a chance to take a series from the Brewers for the first time in 12 series. Since the start of 2023, the Brewers have won 23 of 32 games against the Reds and 30 of 41 games at Great American Ball Park since Sept. 24, 2019.
Baseball seasons are long, with highs and lows, but sometimes patterns start to emerge. It's not just that the Reds have struggled to win games against the Brewers, it's how they've lost them, losing leads, costly mistakes, hard-hit balls finding gloves — just about everything that could go wrong had, and often it was against the team that's won the National League Central the last two years and made the playoffs in six of the last seven seasons. To make too much of one game is foolish, even in September, much less at the beginning of June.
That said, Tuesday's win, featured a pair of opposite-field homers and a sacrifice fly to go along with Friedl's dazzling defensive play and starter Hunter Greene's pumping in strike one to all 23 batters he faced. The Reds, who still don't have a walk-off hit this year, have the fifth-most runs in baseball through the first six innings of games and the ninth fewest after the sixth inning.
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Tuesday, the Reds not only took the lead in the seventh but also added on in the eighth inning with Benson's sixth home run of the season.
All of that, though, was nearly lost when shortstop Elly De La Cruz made his 10th error of the season, tying him with Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres for the most in baseball. The Reds also lost Greene after five innings when he felt the hamstring that put him on the injured list earlier this year grab on the final pitches of the fifth. He is scheduled to have an MRI on Wednesday.
As Caleb Durbin stood at second base after De La Cruz's attempted game-ending throw sailed well over the head of Spencer Steer at first and into the first-base camera well, it felt like another bad loss for a Reds team that started the season with a blown save on Opening Day. Too often this season, the team has managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
To make matters worse, Reds closer Emilio Pagán got behind Bauers 2-1 when the Brewers pinch hitter jumped on his four-seam fastball and hit it 106.2 mph with a launch angle of 26 degrees. It was, Friedl thought, about as well as you could hit a ball without its going out.
Would it have gone out had Friedl's glove not gotten in the way? After seeing just one replay, Friedl said he wasn't sure, but he knew he got his glove over the wall and then felt the ball hit the webbing. It was a play the team had practiced just the day before, with outfielder coach Collin Cowgill shooting baseballs from a pitching machine for Friedl, Benson and Jake Fraley to practice catching at the wall.
'We literally worked on it yesterday,' Friedl said after Tuesday's victory. 'In 2023 when I robbed that one in center, we worked on it that day. Then it just so happens we worked on it yesterday. … Maybe we should work on it more often.'
Is this the dagger? #ATOBTTR pic.twitter.com/iRxtRtbr1o
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) June 4, 2025
Friedl said he was so excited he initially forgot to show the ball to second base umpire Nic Lentz until he noticed Lentz staring at him.
Reds manager Terry Francona, who might have said some words he wouldn't repeat in the postgame news conference while watching the flight of Bauers' ball, said he wasn't sure whether Friedl caught the ball until he saw his reaction.
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'You may have seen a grown man crying,' Francona said, referring to himself.
It was the type of play that has seemed to go against the Reds so far this year. Just the day before, with the Reds trailing 3-2 in the fifth, Friedl led off the inning with a bunt single and took off to steal with Gavin Lux at the plate. With Friedl on the move, Brewers shortstop Joey Ortiz was standing next to the bag where he fielded the ball and threw on to first for a double play.
Earlier this season, second baseman Matt McLain had what he thought was a go-ahead home run land just short in the ninth inning of a 3-2 loss in Milwaukee. That was the day after the Reds lost their third 1-0 game in a row with the only run scored by the Brewers unearned.
'It's still a long season, there are so many games left, but I feel like this is who we are and we can win in so many different ways,' said Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson, whose fifth-inning two-run home run tied the score at 2.
'I don't know, people will say it's a spark or whatever, but to end the game like that, it's obviously something to build off of.'
Before Tuesday's game, Francona was asked whether he could tell when a team was about to go on a hot streak.
'Believe me, if there were a magical elixir, I would (get) it,' Francona said. 'I think there is a formula — normally you win a close game.'
The Reds did that, and it wouldn't be the first time a Friedl walk-off sparked them. His first career walk-off came April 24, 2023, against the Texas Rangers. That not only snapped a six-game losing streak, but it was the first of a five-game winning streak, including a sweep of the Rangers, who would go on to win the World Series.
In June of that same season, the Reds had back-to-back walk-off wins against the Dodgers, the second won on Benson's walk-off homer. The Reds would lose the next two games but then go on a 12-game winning streak.
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Nobody is saying this Reds team will repeat that. To do that, they'd have to hope McLain started turning it around with a seventh-inning double that set up Connor Joe's go-ahead sacrifice fly. A good MRI on Greene's hamstring Wednesday wouldn't hurt, nor would another stellar outing by Andrew Abbott, who allowed just two earned runs over six starts in May, to take the team's first series from the Brewers since May 2022.
'It's reaffirming to realize that we can win those close games, we don't have to go out and score seven or eight runs and make all the spectacular plays,' Pagán said. 'Yes, we ended it with one tonight, but there's enough talent in here to just play baseball and go win games.'