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Friday, Aug. 25 7:05pm ET
Reds fire on all cylinders | |||||
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RECAP
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BOX SCORE
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GAME LOG
MIAMI (AP) -- Solid starting pitching, clutch hitting and errorless baseball. At times, the Cincinnati Reds make it look so easy. On Friday, the Florida Marlins certainly helped. Ken Griffey Jr. had three hits and Elmer Dessens ended his losing streak at four as the Reds beat the Marlins 6-0. "This is the way we played last year," Reds manager Jack McKeon said. The win moved Cincinnati to within 7½ games of the NL-Central leading St. Louis Cardinals. Griffey singled in the first, third and fifth innings, helping stake the Reds to an early 3-0 lead. Dessens (6-4) gave up seven hits in seven innings for his first win since July 28. He struck out five and walked one. "I've got my confidence back," Dessens said. "I'm throwing the ball over the plate and I'm back to challenging the hitters. Before I was trying to spot the ball." The Marlins, losers of six of their last eight, continued to struggle offensively. They extended their scoreless streak to 23 innings with their seventh shutout of the season and third in the last four games. "We're having trouble in the red zone," Marlins manager John Boles said. "When we're in the red zone, we're not punching it over the goal line. We're getting guys on second and we're not getting them over and in. Why? I don't know. It's the darnest thing. It's hard to put a finger on it." Florida has not scored since the fourth inning Tuesday against San Francisco. The club record is 27 innings, set in 1993. "It's not like everybody out there's not giving an effort. Everybody's giving an effort," Preston Wilson said. "Maybe they're trying too hard. Hopefully, this won't last long." The Reds, who won for the fourth time in 11 games, scored a pair of runs in the third inning off Reid Cornelius. Chris Stynes led off with double and moved to third on Barry Larkin's single. Griffey and Sean Casey followed with RBI singles. Larkin and Griffey each finished 3-for-5. Cincinnati made it 3-0 in the fifth when Larkin scored on Casey's sacrifice fly. Larkin led off with a single and moved to third on Griffey's third single of the night. Cornelius (3-7) lost his fifth consecutive decision. He allowed nine hits and three runs in five innings. The Marlins had their best scoring chance in the fifth inning when they loaded the bases with one out. Andy Fox singled with one out, and Ramon Castro and pinch-hitter Mark Smith followed with singles. But Luis Castillo, who has just nine RBIs in 409 at-bats, hit into a 1-2-3 inning-ending double play. "I don't know what's going on," Castillo said. "It's too much pressure." Cincinnati scored twice in the eighth to make it 5-0, getting an RBI single from Jason LaRue and an RBI groundout from pinch-hitter Dante Bichette. Alex Ochoa hit his sixth homer of the season, a solo shot in the ninth to make it 6-0. "We got an early lead and Elmer just held us in there," Casey said. Game notesDessens got what would have been a base hit in the sixth inning, but he lost the ball off the bat and thought it was foul, so he didn't run to first base and was thrown out by right fielder Mark Kotsay. ... Wilson, without a home run in his last 34 games, just missed a pair of homers with two deep, high flyouts. ... Castillo stole his major league-leading 48th base. ... The crowd of 25,042 was Florida's seventh-largest turnout at home this season. | ALSO SEE Baseball Scoreboard Cincinnati Clubhouse Florida Clubhouse Griffey's day off unrelated to argument with broadcaster
Rose says Selig's office giving his lawyers the cold shoulder
RECAPS Baltimore 4 Tampa Bay 3
Los Angeles 3
Cincinnati 6
San Francisco 16
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