Rowdy Tellez and Tyrone Taylor homered to help the Milwaukee Brewers end a four-game losing streak with a 5-1 win over the visiting Cincinnati Reds on Friday night.
Brewers starter Eric Lauer (8-3) allowed one run and six hits in seven innings in the opener of a three-game series. The left-hander struck out four and walked three on 100 pitches.
Lauer, who also beat Cincinnati on June 17, won back-to-back starts for the first time since late May.
Brewers reliever Trevor Gott threw 1 1/3 scoreless innings. Devin Williams entered with two on and one out in the ninth and fanned both batters he faced for his seventh save.
Reds right-hander Robert Dugger (0-1) made his first start of the season following one relief appearance for the Tampa Bay Rays and one relief outing for Cincinnati. He allowed five runs and four hits in four innings.
Dugger struck out two and walked four while dropping to 0-7 over four major league seasons.
Nick Senzel and Kyle Farmer had two hits each for the Reds, who had won four of their previous five games.
After the Reds stranded the bases loaded in the top of the first, Tellez hit his 22nd homer of the season in the bottom half of the inning for a 2-0 lead.
Christian Yelich walked to start the inning and was still on first with one out when Tellez lifted a 3-1 pitch into the second deck in right field.
The Reds couldn’t take advantage of a leadoff walk in the second inning, and Milwaukee tacked on three more runs in the bottom half on the blast by Taylor.
Hunter Renfroe singled to start the inning, and Luis Urias followed with a walk. After a deep flyout moved Renfroe to third, Taylor hit a slider over the fence in the left-center field for a 5-0 lead. It was his 12th long ball of the year.
Jonathan India, Senzel and Farmer strung together one-out singles in the fifth to make it 5-1, but Lauer got Joey Votto to ground into an inning-ending double play.
Votto hit into another double play in the eighth after the Reds put their leadoff batter on base.
Tellez, a 6-foot-4, 255-pound first baseman, walked to lead off the third and then stole the second base of his career in his 376th game.
–Field Level Media