CINCINNATI -- After Sonny Gray struggled in his season and a half pitching for the Yankees (2017-18), there was some skepticism about what he would do for the Reds rotation after they traded for him and signed him to a three-year, $30.5 million contract extension this past offseason.

No one is taking a sideways view of that move now. Already an All-Star during his first year in Cincinnati, Gray is putting together a stellar streak of starts. His latest came Thursday vs. the Cardinals, when he allowed one hit over five innings with 10 strikeouts for a 2-1 victory at Great American Ball Park.

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“He was great and he left it all out there,” Reds manager David Bell said. “He worked hard against good hitters, shut them down for those scoreless innings. It took everything he had and that’s what we want. It was fun to watch.”

Gray, who snapped the Reds’ four-game losing streak, is 5-1 with a 1.59 ERA over his last nine starts. Over his last three starts, he worked a career-high 18-inning scoreless streak -- all against top teams in the Braves, Cubs and Cardinals. It’s the second-longest active streak in the Major Leagues. The last Reds pitcher to have three straight scoreless starts was Tom Browning in 1989.

Three times over those nine starts, Gray missed out on wins because of blown saves. However, that stretch of performances has lowered his overall ERA from 4.03 to 2.98, with an 8-6 record over 24 starts.

“He’s throwing so many strikes. I think that keeps guys on the defensive from the start,” Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart said. “Obviously, everybody knows how good his breaking ball is. From a hitter’s perspective, when you’re facing him, you don’t want to get behind. When he’s able to get ahead like that, he’s able to put you away pretty quickly. He grinded tonight. He didn’t have his best command, but he was able to get it done.”

Although he issued three walks and hit a batter, Gray didn’t allow a Cardinals hit through 4 2/3 innings before Dexter Fowler hit a single to center field.

"They came in with a pretty good approach,” Gray said. “They didn't swing the bat a lot. I made some adjustments and tried to attack the zone more with fastballs and my breaking balls. That was a really good executed game on all sides.”

There was still trouble for Gray to navigate through, however. In the third inning, he issued a leadoff walk to Kolten Wong, a two-out walk to Fowler and hit Matt Carpenter on the foot with a pitch to load the bases.

That brought the always dangerous Paul Goldschmidt to the plate. But after a slider missed to make it a 2-2 count, Gray froze Goldschmidt with a 94.4-mph fastball for a called strike three.

"Big spot there,” Gray said. “I fed him predominantly a lot of breaking stuff. I just took a chance with a good heater. Thankfully, it was a two-seam, so I think it came back just enough to get him off of it. That was a huge spot in the game."

“He does a good job not making too many mistakes in the middle of the plate,” Goldschmidt said. “We did a decent job getting his pitch count up, but we weren’t able to get that hit that we needed to get some runs across.”

With 97 pitches through the fifth, following a Carpenter strikeout, Gray did not return to pitch the sixth inning. But he laid down an important sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the fifth to set up the Reds to score both of their runs against Michael Wacha.

“He was gassed,” Bell said. “Sonny has good self awareness, and that’s saying a lot because of how much he wants to be out there and how he loves to compete.”

The bullpen combination of Robert Stephenson, Michael Lorenzen and Raisel Iglesias picked up the remaining four innings. Iglesias gave up a two-out broken-bat double to Wong in the ninth that scored Marcell Ozuna to break up the shutout.

Gray had no issue with giving way after the fifth.

“I thought it was time to turn it over to the bullpen,” Gray said. “They came in and did an amazing job."