CINCINNATI -- Friday night came oh-so-close to an overwhelming amount of baseball history being made by the Reds at Great American Ball Park. How close? Nick Martinez came one inning shy of a no-hitter and Spencer Steer had a shot at a four-homer game.
“It would have been nuts if both of those happened. That would’ve been a hell of a night," Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson said.
Martinez carried his no-hit bid into the top of the ninth inning, while Steer slugged three home runs in his first three plate appearances as Cincinnati rolled to an 8-1 win over the Padres.
By the way, a no-hitter's never been thrown in the same game as a three-homer night. Per Elias, the Reds are the first team in at least the expansion era (1961) to have an eight-plus inning no-hit bid and an individual three-HR game in the same contest.
Following a two-out walk of Jackson Merrill in the first inning, Martinez retired the next 22 batters in a row before walking ninth-inning leadoff batter Trenton Brooks. Elias Díaz followed with a double off the wall in left-center to end the bid for the first Reds no-hitter since Wade Miley did it at Cleveland on May 7, 2021.
“From the very beginning, his stuff was very crisp and he was in command of all his pitches. That’s as nervous as I’ve been in a long, long time," manager Terry Francona said.
Martinez tied a career-high with 112 pitches (75 strikes) as he finished with one earned run allowed on one hit with two walks and six strikeouts. He threw six different pitches with his changeup leading the way.
San Diego hitters made weaker contact much of the night, averaging an exit velocity of 88.6 mph.
“Just being able to get guys off balance, make pitches, changing speeds," Stephenson said. "He’s got so many pitches in his arsenal that he just has so many options at any point in a situation where he feels, and he did command any pitch at any time. It makes hitting so hard.”
Nine of Martinez's outs came via ground balls and nine more via fly balls -- including some line drives.
“It was like the fourth, I saw no hits," Martinez said. "I was like, keep going, try to talk to yourself about one pitch at a time, executing whatever Stevo calls. Stevo did a great job of mixing it up, communicating in the dugout and getting some close calls for me.”
Cincinnati was leading, 2-0, with one out in the second inning when Steer lifted Dylan Cease's 2-2 fastball the opposite way for a solo homer to right field.
“I was obviously pulling for him," Martinez said of Steer's night. "That's awesome. He played golf yesterday [on the day off] and kept shanking balls to the right. That was the talk around the clubhouse.”
Said Steer, who now has nine homers on the season: "I shanked every ball I hit on the front nine. So maybe that locked me in.”
Leading off the bottom of the fourth, Steer drove a 1-0 Cease slider into the left-field seats.
Against lefty reliever Yuki Matsui, Elly De La Cruz led off the fifth with a single to left field and scored on Austin Hays' RBI double to the left-field corner. Hays came home on a Gavin Lux RBI single to right-center field. With one out, Steer did it again when he sent Matsui's 1-1 splitter into the first row of left-field seats for a two-run homer and an 8-0 Reds lead.
It was Steer's first three-homer game of his big league career and the first time a Cincinnati batter did it since Jesse Winker went deep three times on June 6, 2021, at St. Louis.
The crowd of 26,746 fans wanted a curtain call, but Steer did not oblige.
“It’s not about me. It was the fifth inning at the time, we still had a lot of ballgame left. If I hit a fourth, maybe," Steer said.
As the Reds batted each inning, Martinez paced the dugout and looked at ease as the zeros kept piling up. He often whistled, a usual habit.
“That’s what he does. His little whistle he does is a little annoying," Steer said. "I love it. He’s a bulldog out there. He wants the ball. Seeing that intensity, I think guys feed off of it for sure when he’s out on the mound and when he’s in the dugout pacing like he does.”
There were a couple of moments when the no-hitter appeared over earlier in the game. Right fielder Will Benson made two tough catches -- one off Gavin Sheets in the fifth inning and a running catch by the warning track against Merrill in the seventh. Center fielder TJ Friedl also caught a long fly ball by Manny Machado during the seventh.
“I didn’t know it was a no-hitter until the seventh inning," Benson said. "I guess I was really locked into the game. I happened to look up and wondered why he was still in the game with so many pitches. I was like, ‘OK, that makes sense.’"
It was the opposite of Steer's situation.
“I’m on deck for Spencer’s at-bats," Benson said. "I’m fully aware of what’s going on and I’m definitely in awe.”
Steer led off the bottom of the eighth inning against Padres reliever David Morgan.
“With the score being 8-0 and it being the eighth inning, I can say for the first time in my life I didn’t want to walk," Steer said. "I was trying to get a good pitch to hit and give myself a chance to hit a fourth because you never know how many opportunities you’ll get at that. I was kind of going for it there.”
Steer went down swinging on a 2-2 curveball, which denied him a chance at the rare four-homer game. It's only been done once in Reds history by Scooter Gennett vs. the Cardinals on June 6, 2017.
Fans gave Steer a standing ovation anyway.
“I soaked that one in for a little bit. That was pretty cool," he said.
Through six innings, Martinez had 81 pitches but worked a nine-pitch seventh on three flyouts to improve his chances of finishing what he started. To finish the eighth inning, the former Padre struck out Jake Cronenworth as he whiffed on a changeup in the dirt to set him up for a shot at history in the ninth.
“I was jacked up," Martinez said.
Francona was going to give him every chance.
“Until he gave up a hit," Francona said. "We had [Taylor] Rogers playing catch in between the innings. And then we had him throwing out of sight so if he did give up a hit, we could go get him.”
Martinez walked Brooks before the Díaz double, and Francona lifted Martinez for Rogers. Once again, the crowd got on its feet to salute Martinez.
Rogers issued back-to-back two-out walks -- including Bryce Johnson with the bases loaded to break up the shutout.
Martinez had been struggling in recent starts and came in with an 8.35 ERA in four June starts with eight homers allowed. He made two relief appearances since and retired all nine batters he faced, including a scoreless inning on Monday vs. the Yankees.
“Coming out of the ‘pen allows you to simplify things, use that adrenaline to be a dawg out there," Martinez said. "That definitely helps me, it helps my mentality and it definitely helped me tonight.”