Sal Stewart’s Two-Homer Game Lifts Reds Past Giants in Lopsided Affair

The San Francisco Giants came to Great American Ball Park on Wednesday expecting a competitive mid-week matchup. Instead, they got an old-fashioned Cincinnati beatdown, courtesy of a Cincinnati lineup that swung the bats with genuine menace from the opening pitch. The Reds dispatched the Giants 8-3, and honestly, it wasn’t even that close.

Stewart Steals the Show

Sal Stewart was the story here, plain and simple. The Reds’ cleanup hitter collected two home runs, drove in six runs, and essentially put this game on ice before most fans had finished their first beer. His back-to-back three-run shots in the first and second innings told you everything you needed to know about San Francisco’s pitching on this particular Wednesday. Tyler Mahle looked absolutely lost, surrendering eight hits and eight earned runs in just four innings of work. That’s not Major League Baseball. That’s batting practice.

Stewart’s first blast came in the bottom of the first, a line drive to right-center that scored TJ Friedl and Matt McLain along with himself. Two batters later, Eugenio Suárez homered to push the advantage to four runs before the Giants had even batted twice. The message was clear: the Reds came to play, and San Francisco wasn’t ready for the assault.

When Stewart stepped in again in the second inning, you could sense the inevitability. He crushed another three-run shot into the Cincinnati night, extending the lead to 8-0 and effectively ending any reasonable suspense about this game’s outcome. It was Stewart’s first multi-homer game of his career, and he picked the perfect stage to announce it. The Giants couldn’t retire enough hitters to slow the bleeding.

Mahle’s Meltdown, Lowder’s Competence

Rhett Lowder was steady if unspectacular for Cincinnati, allowing just three runs on five hits across 6 and two-thirds innings. He walked one and struck out four, which represents functional, professional pitching. He didn’t need to be dominant when the Reds were already ahead by a touchdown. Lowder got the win simply by not imploding, which is more than Mahle could manage.

The Giants mounted token resistance in the second inning when Daniel Susac doubled to left field, scoring Matt Chapman and Jung Hoo Lee to make it 8-2. But that was essentially the extent of San Francisco’s offensive competence on Wednesday. Heliot Ramos added a meaningless RBI single in the seventh, but by then the Reds’ coaching staff was already thinking about Thursday.

Elly De La Cruz contributed his own fireworks with a solo home run deep to center field, a 442-foot monster shot that showcased the kind of raw power the Reds possess when they’re locked in. That’s the difference between a contender and a pretender, and on Wednesday at Great American Ball Park, there was no pretending about the talent gap.

The Giants return home licking their wounds after getting thoroughly dismantled by a Cincinnati team that looked genuinely dangerous. Sometimes in baseball, you just get outplayed across the board, and Wednesday was one of those brutal reminders. San Francisco will need to regroup quickly before this loss becomes a trend.