Iglesias, Reds slam Pirates, earn DH split
Jose Iglesias hit his first major league grand slam in a six-run first inning, and the Cincinnati Reds earned a split of the doubleheader against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates with a 8-1 win on Monday night.
Derek Dietrich and Yasiel Puig also homered for Cincinnati, which lost the opener of the doubleheader 8-5. Puig and Jesse Winker each had two hits.
Reds starter Sonny Gray (2-4) allowed one run and five hits in six innings. He struck out seven and walked two. Gray threw six shutout innings in his previous start on, a 3-0 victory at Milwaukee on May 21.
Pittsburgh starter Mitch Keller (0-1) made his major league debut and faced 11 batters in the first inning. He settled in and retired nine of 10 while blanking the Reds over the next three innings but still wound up charged with six runs on seven hits in four innings.
Keller struck out seven and walked two.
Bryan Reynolds and Josh Bell had two hits each for Pittsburgh.
The Reds loaded the bases with no outs in the first inning against Keller, drawing two walks around a single by Winker, who went 4-for-7 on the day.
After striking out Dietrich on three pitches, Keller surrendered an RBI single to Puig for a 1-0 lead. With the bases still full, Keller threw a fastball down the middle, and Iglesias cleared the fence in left-center for the first grand slam of the season for Cincinnati.
The Reds weren't through in the first. Nick Senzel came up for a second time in the inning and delivered a two-out RBI single to make it 6-0.
Gray didn't run into serious trouble until stranding the bases loaded in the fifth.
Bell doubled with no outs in the sixth to put runners on second and third. Jose Osuna drove in a run with a groundout to make it 6-1 and end Gray's shutout streak at 12 innings. Gray then struck out his seventh batter of the game to end the inning.
Pittsburgh right-hander Alex McRae, called up from Triple-A Indianapolis on Monday, threw 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief before surrendering back-to-back home runs to Dietrich and Puig in the seventh inning to make it 8-1. He wound up charged with the two runs in three innings.
--Field Level Media
