Derek Dietrich homered and had three RBIs for all the support Chris O’Grady needed as the Marlins defeated the Reds, 4-1, Thursday night at Marlins Park.
The Marlins have now won five of their last seven games and three of their last four against the Reds, who’ve lost four straight and are 2-12 since the All-Star break.
O’Grady’s craftiness played well against Cincinnati hitters, who entered hitting an MLB-low .210 in the second half. The rookie southpaw turned in the best outing of his career, tossing seven scoreless innings while striking out five and walking two en route to his second victory.
“I think he had better command today,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “He was having some trouble with his command over in Cincinnati, he got himself in trouble. For him to be successful, he’s gonna have to be able to command the ball, throw strikes when he wants, throw balls that look like strikes that end up being balls, he needs to be able to do that off the edges. And I thought he was able to do that.”
The Reds left 12 men on base in the game, including seven with O’Grady pitching. It was the eighth time in 14 second-half games Cincinnati was held to two runs or fewer.
“I think we had about 11 balls in play hard over the course of the game, several baserunners, and didn’t do anything with those opportunities, unfortunately,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “We just haven’t run into a couple of guys in the lineup that can really do the damage we need to have done. We had some RBI opportunities that just never came to fruition.”
Robert Stephenson walked a career-high seven batters during his 4 1/3 innings. He allowed three earned runs, the last two of which came after Drew Storen entered for him in the fifth, then walked Dietrich with the bases full and yielded a sacrifice fly to Tyler Moore.
Junichi Tazawa allowed an eighth-inning RBI single to Scooter Gennett, but Marlins closer AJ Ramos came on for four outs to earn his 20th save.
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