They hit three home runs — all three over the center field wall by Elly De La Cruz, Jeimer Candelario and Matt McLain.
The Reds trailed 1-0 in the third inning when De La Cruz came to bat with two outs and two on. He bounced one off the top of the wall, a hit that had to be reviewed in New York before De La Cruz was awarded the three-run homer.
Slump-ridden Jeimer Candelario led the fourth with a 415-foot shot over the center field wall.
In the same fourth inning, Matt McLain came to bat with two on and he cleared that center field barrier with a 414-foot three-run home run and it was 7-1.
So the Reds middle infielders, De La Cruz and McLain, drove in six of the eight runs. They are best buddies and go by Batman & Robin.
“That was very nice,” said McLain. “It’s fun. Obviously, with him in the lineup he can do that at any time.”
All that damage came against Baltimore lefthander Cade Povich, one of the few survivors on the Orioles pitching staff. Six Baltimore pitchers are on the injured list.
And if pitching is poetry, Cincinnati’s Andrew Abbott wrote the verse Friday night.
Abbott didn’t need all the offensive efficiency. Making his second start of the season, Abbott was perfection personified.
He held the O’s to one run and two hits over six innings, striking out 11, one shy of his career best. In the first five innings he struck out two Orioles in each inning.
Abbott used a change-up liberally, which made his fastball, clocked at about 91 to 92 miles per hour, harder to gauge.
“When you are throwing everything in the zone, like tonight, it makes them guessing at what you’re throwing, the odds are in your favor,” he said. “You have to have focus and throw strikes with everything.
“They have to respect every pitch in the zone and then you can get some swings out of the strike zone,” he added.
He wasn’t out of the zone much during his 93-pitch night.
The only run off Abbott came in the second inning, a 345-foot lob from Cedric Mullins that cleared the right field wall.
And that should have been the only hit off Abbott.
After the Mullins homer, he retired 11 straight until Heston Kjerstad hit a routine grounder to shortstop De La Cruz. But as he set to throw, his feet went out from under him and he fell, unable to make the throw.
Kjerstad was credited with a dubious infield hit as Abbott retired 15 of the last 16 Orioles he faced.
Scott Barlow replaced Abbott and pitched a 1-2-3 seventh, but gave up a two-run homer in the eighth to Kjerstad.
The win snapped a two-game losing streak for the Reds and ended Baltimore’s first two-game winning streak of the season.
And the Reds have won seven of their last 10 and climbed back to .500 at 10-10. In their last four games they’ve scored 26 runs on 46 hits.
Reds manager Terry Francona loaded the lineup with all righthanders to face lefty Povich. Righthanders were batting .396 against him.
The Orioles may want to make a trade with the Reds for catcher Jose Trevino. Entering the game, he was hitting .451 with six doubles and two home runs in Camden Yards for his career.
On Friday, he was three-for-four with a walk, two runs scored and an RBI while lifting his batting average to .333, in addition to guiding Abbott through six innings, especially after Abbott’s first seven pitches of the game were out of the strike zone.
“That tells you a lot about this team,” said Trevino, referring to the ugly loss Thursday to Seattle. “It could easily spiral into something you don’t want it to be. That’s a good team (Baltimore), too. Those guys at any moment can turn it on.”
But Abbott kept them turned off.
“Man, I always say this about him...getting ahead with his fastball,” said Trevino. “Staying ahead of the hitters, then getting that big lead gets him a little more comfortable to throw some more strikes.”
About the big swings from De La Cruz and McLain, Trevino said, “They’re stars themselves, man. All they have to do is show up on the field to have an impact. We get them rolling, we have something good happening.”
And Francona had Santiago Espinal playing a rare game in right field, knowing he owned a .361 career batting average against Baltimore, the highest average for any Orioles opponent. He respond by going two-for-three with two walks and a run scored.
Austin Hays, originally drafted by the Orioles and played for them seven years, was given a standing ovation twice by a sellout crowd of 42,587, once when he made his first plate appearance and a curtain call standing ovation between innings. He responded with an infield hit, a bloop hit and a walk.
After his home run, De La Cruz struck out three straight times, but his three-run homer gave him 21 runs batted in, two behind MLB leader Wilmer Flores of the San Francisco Giants.
“Elly is going to get 700 plate appearances this year,” said Francona. “Some nights you don’t hit. It is just the way the game goes.”
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