CINCINNATI -- It wasn't just a missed opportunity for the Reds against the Brewers on Friday.
It was a missed opportunity-palooza on multiple levels.
Cincinnati was handed a 10-8 loss by a Milwaukee club that not only has baseball's best record but now also owns a franchise record-tying 13-game winning streak.
The Reds (64-59) had a chance to stop the epic streak, holding an 8-1 lead through two innings, before letting it slip away for one of the season's more difficult losses to absorb.
“At this point, they’re all important," second baseman Gavin Lux said. "I know we all probably feel like we should have won this game. We didn’t play clean enough. We didn’t make enough plays, gave them too many chances and we knew that going into this game that we needed to play clean baseball to beat that team over there."
A Reds win on Friday, combined with the sliding Mets losing to the Mariners on Friday, would have put them into the lead for the third and final National League Wild Card spot. Instead, they remained a half-game back with 39 games left to play this season.
Also missed was a chance to reach a season-high seven games over .500, which would have been the first time the Reds reached that mark since 2023. The Brewers came to town having won each of the last 12 series over the Reds. Closing out a win on Friday would have given them a leg up the rest of this series to break that dubious streak.
“You kind of know the way they’re going right now, they’re going to keep playing," manager Terry Francona said.
It was a 1-1 game when the Reds rallied to knock out Brewers rookie All-Star starter Jacob Misiorowski after he recorded only four outs. All with one out, Misiorowski hit a batter and walked the next three to force in a run. After lefty DL Hall took over, Elly De La Cruz hit a bases-loaded double that scored two runs. Miguel Andujar, Lux, Austin Hays and Noelvi Marte all followed with consecutive RBI singles to make it a seven-run lead.
After that, Brewers pitchers stopped the Reds' offense in its tracks. Six relievers combined to retire the final 23 batters in a row.
“Their bullpen did a very good job on us. Very good," Francona said.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee's hitters added another comeback to that team's remarkable 2025 resume.
Reds starter Nick Martinez, who surrendered the first of Christian Yelich's two homers in the second inning during his 4-for-5 game, gave up six runs (five earned) before exiting in the third inning.
With one out in the third, William Contreras grounded to De La Cruz at shortstop and beat out a double play to keep the inning going. Next, Yelich skied a pop-up to short left field. Both De La Cruz and third baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes got in each other's way chasing it before the ball landed and Yelich had an RBI double.
Then came a three-run home run to left-center field by Andrew Vaughn off a Martinez cutter to shrink the Reds' lead to 8-5.
“I completely lost my focus there," Martinez said. "Just let the unfortunate things, the soft hits, get to me and then just started leaving the ball over the plate and lost the focus of just executing and taking it one pitch at a time, regardless of any outcome.”
In the fourth inning, a one-out fielding error by Lux on a tailor-made double-play opportunity from a Contreras grounder set up Yelich to hit the game-tying two-run single to left field against Brent Suter.
"It wasn’t hit real hard. I just tried to get rid of it and took my eyes up a little bit early. That’s a play I make 99 out of 100 times and it sucks that it came back to bite us," Lux said of his error. "I’ve got to make that play. It’s unacceptable.”
Against Scott Barlow in the top of the sixth inning, Yelich's second homer of the game on a drive to left field put the Brewers ahead for good.
Under Francona during his first season, the Reds have repeatedly had to bounce back from hard losses. Now, they will have to try to do that again.
“When you have a good team like that, you can’t give them a second life," Martinez said. "The good thing is we’ve responded well to things like that throughout the year. We’ve just got to keep going, keep playing our style of baseball.”