Late Yoenis Cespedes dinger leads Mets past Reds, 5-3

The Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Game

Adam Duvall had the single biggest blast for the Cincinnati Reds in their Tuesday tangle with the New York Mets, a 2-run homer that was his 30th of the season.  30.  Thirty.  The guy who was a throw-in in the Mike Leake trade next to top prospect Keury Mella launched his 30th dinger of the season, which is nice and tidy and story-creating considering he entered Tuesday's game with an also-tidy 3.0 bWAR to his name for the season.

Did the Reds see this type of production coming?  Probably not.  Did Duvall?  Perhaps, though I wager he'd even crack a smile when learning his name now pops up alongside great Cincinnati OFs of yesteryear like Frank Robinson, Adam Dunn, George Foster, Eric Davis, and Batman himself - Kevin Mitchell.  So, have another trophy, Adam, and rest assured even a precipitous slide from this point forward won't make us forget how prodigious this 2016 campaign has been.

Honorable Mentions are due to:  Zack Cozart, who walked twice, stole a bag, and scored; Joey Votto, who singled and smacked a sac-fly as part of a 1 for 3 night; Hernan Iribarren, who launched a pinch-hit triple; and Raisel Iglesias, who breezed through a perfect inning of relief that featured a K for good measure.

Key Plays

• Dingers were the name of the game in this one, and the Mets jumped out to an initial 1-0 lead on Curtis Granderson's blast into the CF seats in the Top of the 2nd, and Jose Reyes backed that up with a solo dinger down the LF line in the Top of the 3rd to leave the Reds behind, 2-0.
• Those dingers meant the Reds had been out-dingered a remarkable 20-0 in their last 9 games in Great American Ball Park, something so wholly unimaginable that Duvall grabbed a hammer and busted that to pieces, clubbing a 2-run opposite field equalizer in the Bottom of the 3rd.  It scored Zack Cozart, who had earlier walked and stolen 2B, and the game was tied, 2-2.
• Brandon Finnegan's early night ended with a pinch-hit apperance by Iribarren in the Bottom of the 5th, and the current feel-good story on the Reds responded with a triple, his second such in as many days.  Votto later lifted a fly-ball into RF to former Red Jay Bruce that was deep enough to score Hernan, albeit with a less-than-2009 throw from Bruce.  Reds led, 3-2.
• Michael Lorenzen tossed a clean Top of the 6th, but when he came out to pitch the Top of the 7th, the dinger bug bit the Reds yet again.  Asdrubal Cabrera reached on a infield single after Cozart almost made a nifty play to get him out, and Yoenis Cespedes backed that by launching a 2-run blast over the wall in CF.  That left the Reds behind, 4-3.
• Yet another dinger by the Mets left the Reds in a 5-3 hole, as Alejandro De Aza smoked a Blake Wood meatball into the seats beyond the wall in right-center to leadoff the Top of the 9th, and that capped the scoring in the second consecutive - and 13th consecutive overall against the Mets, damnit - loss, 5-3.

Source: FanGraphs