Barnhart's walk-off hit lifts Reds over Rockies

CINCINNATI -- Tucker Barnhart delivered a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth to give the Reds a wild 6-5 win over the Rockies on Wednesday and two of three games in the series.
It was a 5-5 game when Brandon Phillips notched his second hit of the game with a single up the middle against Christian Bergman. Jay Bruce followed with his second hit, a broken-bat single that blooped into short right field and sent Phillips to third.
With Colorado bringing in an extra infielder and going with two outfielders with one out, Barnhart laced a first-pitch single into right field to end the game. He was mobbed by teammates before he could reach second base.
• Barnhart saves game with arm, wins it with bat
"I was lucky enough to get a good swing on a pitch over the plate and hit it pretty good," said Barnhart, who had two hits and two RBIs. "Anytime, whether you win 20-19 or 1-0, any win is a win. We'll take every single one of them."

Ross Ohlendorf, who was the loser in his previous two relief appearances, rebounded with a 1-2-3 top of the ninth inning for the victory.
• Reds to go with closer-by-committee
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED
Back-to-back homers: For the first time in 2016, the Reds' lineup produced back-to-back home runs. In the second against Chad Bettis after Phillips' leadoff single, Bruce hit a 1-1 pitch to right for a two-run homer, his fourth of the season. On a 2-2 pitch to the next batter Adam Duvall, he hit a drive into the left-field seats for his second homer. Bettis retired the next 15 batters in a row.
"They would've been good pitches in the sense of the ball was down, but to Bruce, that's kind of where his bat path was on that changeup and the slider to Duvall just didn't get out there," Bettis said. "Both of those pitches were executed poorly from my standpoint. I feel like everything is dialed in the way I want it to be, other than those two pitches."

1,000 for CarGo: Rockies right fielder Carlos Gonzalez's 1,000 hit was much like some of his first. He lofted a Raisel Iglesias pitch into center, and it bounced just under a diving Billy Hamilton's glove. Gonzalez, a willing runner before battling knee injuries, took second when he noticed Phillips wasn't covering.
"That's something especially nice to do, especially from a kid from Maraciabo [Venezuela] -- I never thought I was going to be here and now I'm doing some special things," Gonzalez said. "I'm proud and I'm sure my family's proud, too." More >

APPEAL AND A CHALLENGE
Pinch-hitter Ryan Raburn hit a single to right field, scoring Dustin Garneau in the top of the seventh, chasing Iglesias. After reliever Blake Wood finished his warmup, he made an appeal throw to third base, where umpire Adrian Johnson called Garneau out for missing the third-base bag while rounding to score. The Rockies then challenged the call, but the call stood.
Garneau insisted he touched the bag -- tripped over it, even -- no matter what replay officials ruled.

"I didn't hit it solid, but I hit it, tripped over it and ran home," Garneau said. "I don't know what the guys saw back in wherever they're reading the play, but I know I hit the base."
Under scoring rules, Wood was credited with the assist and the out on his ledger, and Raburn's hit still counted after originally being changed to a fielder's choice. That left Iglesias with 6 2/3 innings pitched and allowed two earned runs and five hits with one walk and eight strikeouts.
"Fortunately, we ended up coming up on the right side of that deal," Price said. More >

Back-to-back RBI doubles: Cincinnati added two runs in the seventh when left fielder Ben Paulsen lost Duvall's drive in the sun, turning a potential third out into a double. The Reds capitalized as Barnhart and Ivan De Jesus Jr. followed with back-to-back RBI doubles. It gave them a short-lived 5-2 lead.
"He's doing a nice job," Reds manager Bryan Price said of Duvall. "He's not just a matchup against left-handed pitching type guy. He did a nice job in spring. He's got good splits. He hits right-handed pitching and he's played better defense in left field than I anticipated."

QUOTABLE
"What are you going to do? A couple weird things happened. That's baseball." -- Rockies' Mark Reynolds, who took third on Paulsen's tying double in the eighth, but was picked off when a Tony Cingrani pitch bounced off the brick wall behind the plate straight to Barnhart. Reynolds had taken a couple of steps plateward, and had no chance to make it back

SOUND SMART WITH YOUR FRIENDS
The two homers off Bettis ended an 18-inning homerless streak for Rockies starters.

With his double in the seventh inning, De Jesus snapped an 0-for-32 streak that dated back to last season.

SAVING HIS 'MATE, SAVING HIMSELF
After Garneau was ruled to have missed third, Paulsen opened the door to the Reds' two-run seventh. But Paulsen forged a 5-5 tie with his two-out double in the eighth.
"It's a tough loss, but the guys did keep fighting, even after some crazy stuff happened, fought back to tie it up," said Rockies manager Walt Weiss, whose team went 3-3 on its first multi-city road trip. "That's what you like to see -- guys keep competing and trying to find a way to win a game."

STALWART UNAVAILABLE
Weiss went to Bergman in the ninth because righty Miguel Castro, who has eight strikeouts against two hits and two walks in six innings, was experiencing right shoulder inflammation. Castro said the problem showed up after a dominant eighth inning in Sunday's 2-0 victory against the Cubs. More >
WHAT'S NEXT
Rockies: Right-hander Jon Gray will make his 2016 debut, after missing the early weeks with an abdominal strain, against the Dodgers at Coors Field on Friday at 6:40 p.m. MT. Gray struck out eight in 4 2/3 innings against the Dodgers last September.
Reds: The homestand moves on with a four-game series vs. the Cubs that begins at 7:10 p.m. Thursday. Brandon Finnegan gets the ball and will have another crack at Chicago, the team he carried a no-hitter against for 6 2/3 innings on April 11 at Wrigley Field.
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