Will Benson went 2-for-3 with three RBIs for the Cincinnati Reds, who snapped a three-game skid with a 7-1 win against the visiting Chicago White Sox on Thursday.
Reds starting pitcher Nick Martinez (2-4) was perfect through seven innings, allowing just two hits and striking out three.
Starter Bryse Wilson (0-2) gave up seven runs on 10 hits in 5 1/3 innings for the White Sox, who had won three straight.
Cincinnati opened the scoring in the first and never looked back, adding to the scoreboard in five of the first six innings.
Gavin Lux led off the first with a walk, Santiago Espinal followed with a bunt single and Elly De La Cruz singled to load the bases with nobody out.
Austin Hays drove in Lux on a sacrifice fly for a 1-0 Reds lead. After Spencer Steer lined out, Benson knocked connected for a two-run single that scored Espinal and De La Cruz to make it 3-0.
De La Cruz extended it to 4-0 in the third, leading off with a blast to left-center field for his eighth homer of the season.
In the fourth, Matt McLain doubled, advanced to third on a single from Connor Joe and scored to increase the lead to 5-0 when Lux grounded into a force-out.
Benson pushed the advantage to 6-0 with a 401-foot homer in the fifth. He connected on a fastball and sent it to center field, where Luis Robert Jr. jumped for the catch at the wall, but the ball grazed off his glove into the stands for Benson’s first homer of the season.
McLain delivered the Reds’ third home run of the game in the bottom of the sixth inning to left field to make it 7-0.
The White Sox went out in order through each of the first four innings and didn’t get their first hit until Matt Thaiss knocked a one-out single to right in the fifth.
They broke through for their first extra-base hit and got on the board in the eighth off reliever Taylor Rogers. Joshua Palacios doubled, reached third on a fielder’s choice and scored on Miguel Vargas’ single to cut the deficit to 7-1.
Vargas went 2-for-4 in the leadoff spot.
–Field Level Media
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