CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Reds went down to their 11th consecutive loss on Saturday and who more fitting to send them there than Dakota Hudson?
The Cardinals’ right-hander blanked the Reds on two hits for 6 2/3 innings as he beat them for the sixth time in six career decisions. Paul Goldschmidt, gradually emerging from an early-season slumber, doubled in two runs as the Cardinals whipped the Reds, 5-0, at Great American Ball Park.
Hudson, after disappointing outings in his first two starts this season, offered up free runners in each of the first four innings with three walks and a hit batsman. But he also forced former Cardinal Tommy Pham to ground into two double plays, catcher Andrew Kninzer threw out a runner trying to steal and center fielder Harrison Bader cut down a runner trying go first to third on a single.
Hudson’s effort tied the longest by a Cardinals starter this season as Miles Mikolas had gone that distance in beating Milwaukee on April 15.
Rookie Andre Pallante, fast rising in the pecking order in the bullpen, fanned Nick Senzel on two curveballs and a slider to finish the seventh after Hudson had thrown 92 pitches. Pallante had a scoreless eighth, also, and Kodi Whitley wrapped up the Cardinals' second shutout on the trip.
It was the sixth time in the first nine games of the trip and that the Cardinals had held their opponents to two or fewer runs — twice each here, in Milwaukee and in Miami. They won all six games to clinch a winning trip, with just one game remaining.
The Cardinals forced Reds starter Tyler Mahle into throwing 50 pitches over the first two innings in which the Cardinals had five runners. But only one of those runners scored, on a bloop single by Andrew Knizner, plating Bader, who drew one of Mahle’s two walks in the inning and also stole second.
But, with runners at first and second and one out, both Tommy Edman and Goldschmidt flied out. In the first, with runners at first and second and one out, Nolan Arenado struck out on a slider and Corey Dickerson flied out.
Knizner then threw out his first base stealer of the season in the second, catching Kyle Farmer, who had been nicked by a Hudson pitch.
The Cardinals’ defense showed up again in the third. After light-hitting second baseman Alejo Lopez worked an eight-pitch walk with one out, he was off on a 3-2 pitch to No. 9 batsman Aramis Garcia.
Garcia singled to center but Bader unleashed a strike to third baseman Arenado to erase Lopez.
After 88 pitches and one out in the fifth, Mahle was done for right-hander Art Warren, whose task was estimable. Dylan Carlson’s second single had moved Edman, who had walked, to third and Arenado, one of baseball’s hottest hitters, was at the plate.
For the second time in the game, Arenado went down fishing for a slider. But Dickerson slapped a single past third baseman Colin Moran to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead.
Senzel doubled to right for the first extra-base hit of the day in the fifth. But Hudson ended that threat with his third strikeout — second of would-be Cardinal Colin Moran — — and Lopez’s groundout.
Knizner got the Cardinals’ first extra-base hit in three games when he deposited a double over the head of center fielder Senzel, who didn’t play the ball well, with two out in the sixth. Edman was hit by a Lucas Sims pitch and Goldschmidt struck a more legitimate double off the left-center-field wall to score both Knizner and Edman and create a four-run cushion.
The hit gave Goldschmidt five hits in the first two games of the series.
Another highlight was a career-high three stolen bases in a game by Bader, most by a Cardinal in 10 years since Beltran swiped three against Pittsburgh in 2012. The second and third of those stolen bases set up an eighth-inning run driven in by Edman's single.
The Reds haven't led after the end of any inning since April 10, when they scored their most recent victory.
