After team meeting, Reds pass first must-win game test 

CINCINNATI -- Reds players filed out of a clubhouse meeting room Sunday morning looking pretty loose. It certainly didn't look like a team mired in a five-game losing streak with losses in eight of the previous nine games, which put a big dent in their playoff hopes.

“It’s not always the coolest answer to hear, but it boiled down to: ‘Stop trying so hard.’ Stop trying to force things and just kind of support each other," closer Emilio Pagán said. “You’re constantly trying to do more than what the game is allowing you to do. And it can get dark pretty quickly. There’s no way to hide it or run from it. It got dark for us there for a little bit. Today was a reminder we’re all in this together."

Ahead of another critical week against tough teams, the Reds earned a 7-4 victory over the Cardinals at Great American Ball Park to salvage the final game of their three-game series.

The Reds (69-68) are four games behind the Mets for the final National League Wild Card spot after New York lost an afternoon game to the Marlins.

The American League East-leading Blue Jays visit next for three games beginning Monday, followed by the Mets. For next weekend's games to have any meaning for the Wild Card race, the Reds must stack wins.

“From here on out, they’re all must-win games," said Matt McLain, who hit his second homer in two days, and 13th overall, with a leadoff drive to left field in the eighth inning. "Every day is as important as the next and the one before it. Good win today, but [we] got to win tomorrow.”

It was a 3-3 game in the fifth inning when Elly De La Cruz, batting lefty with the Cardinals’ defense shifted to the pull side, chopped a grounder near the foul line over an unattended third base for a leadoff double.

Austin Hays followed by hitting a 3-2 slider from Cardinals starter Andre Pallante to left field for a two-run homer -- his 12th of the season. In the seventh, Hays hit a leadoff double to right-center field and scored on a Ke'Bryan Hayes two-out RBI single up the middle.

During the losing streak, the Reds were 4-for-37 with runners in scoring position.

“This has a chance to be a pretty memorable month for us," said Pagán, who collected his 26th save with a scoreless ninth inning. "It’s not going to be easy. We shot ourselves in the foot a little bit and made it difficult, but we’re not incapable of going on a run. We have to play good baseball. If you’re trying to do too much, it makes playing good baseball that much harder.”

The game could have gone awry quickly in the first inning. Reds starter Brady Singer's first batter of the game, Lars Nootbaar, hit a popup near the left-field line that three players pursued before the ball dropped between them for a single. As Nootbaar moved to second base, a slow grounder by Iván Herrera got through the right side for another hit. Both plays led to St. Louis taking a 2-0 lead.

“Just keep trying to make pitches the best you can. You can spiral that thing by making bad pitches or walks or anything like that," said Singer, who overcame the early misfortune to pitch six innings and allow three earned runs with five hits, no walks and eight strikeouts.

Against Pallante, the Reds scored three unearned runs in the second inning after Gavin Lux reached on an error to second base. Hayes hit an RBI single into short right field, and TJ Friedl provided a two-out, two-run single to left field.

"I did think today we had really good energy, because it wasn’t an easy game to win," manager Terry Francona said. "It’s easy to … not ‘Woe is me,' but something goes wrong, [it’s] ‘here we go,’ especially the way the first inning started to unfold. But they kept fighting, and that’s a good trait.”

Now that fight must continue for the 25 games remaining over the final month.

“You want the other teams to know that we’re still here. Obviously, we’re not going to quit," Pagán said. "It’s been the M.O. of this team all year. We don’t quit, we keep fighting. I think we’ve been kind of written off by some people a couple of times and find our way back into it. That alone should help us for right now.”

“It kind of feels like people are starting to write us off and saying, ‘The Reds, they had a cute little season, but this is what they do.’ [We have to] keep fighting and keep going.”