To err is human unless you're the Reds, who beat Marlins for 4th in row

MIAMI – Don’t expect much of a verbal response these days from Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona if you start talking about the clean baseball and the fact they’re the only team in the majors that hasn’t committed an error.

Most likely, he’ll find the nearest surface that remotely looks like wood and start rapping his knuckles against it.

But there the Reds were again in the opener of a four-game road series against the Miami Marlins, leaving them at a loss for words again to describe how they keep producing all these low-scoring wins – or at least to predict how long they can keep doing it.

The final score of this one: Reds 2, Marlins 0 in an another clean, errorless performance.

Ten games without an error is the longest streak they’ve ever had to start a season, which isn’t hard to believe for anyone who’s seen the last few seasons of catching and throwing by Reds fielders.

Clean baseball?

“We kind of have to right now,” Francona said. “Every game is kind of a tug-of-war. If you make a mistake you may lose. So I’m glad out guys haven’t made mistakes.”

Tug-of-war?

They’ve won four games when scoring exactly two runs (three by 2-0 scores) and a fifth when scoring three.

Their 28 runs scored in those 10 games is among the fewest of any team in the majors – including just six in their last three games, all on the road, all victories. They entered the week tied for last in scoring with the Giants at 26 runs each.

And yet, here they were, the Reds off to a 7-3 start that was their best in five years, since before the bosses blew up the roster and started the youth movement that led to the acquisitions of players such as the dominant starter in that 2-0 victory to open the Marlins series, Brandon Williamson.

Which brings up one of the biggest keys: All that clean baseball that leads to low-scoring wins doesn’t happen without some of the best pitching in the league so far.

Much of that has come from a starting rotation that has had its depth tested to its limits in the early going with ace Hunter Greene out until at least July (bone chips surgery) and Nick Lodolo fighting through a finger blister that’s had him on the IL since the season started.

And the youngest part of that depth just pulled off a three-part harmony of exceptional starts capped by Williamson’s 6 2/3 scoreless innings against the Marlins – the longest outing of the young season for the Reds so far.

His three-hit performance followed a pair of six-inning starts by rookie Rhett Lowder (scoreless) and last year’s rookie sensation, Chase Burns (one run) – both victories in Texas during the Reds’ weekend sweep of the Rangers.

“He came out tonight and really pitched – and he had to,” Francona said, pointing out only two balls hit deep against him in the game. “Other than that, he changed speeds, he spun it, he threw his fastball, he worked ahead. He pitched.”

The Reds entered the week with the fifth-best team ERA in the majors and lowered that to 2.93 after Game 1 against the Marlins.

The depleted starting rotation has a 3.00 ERA.

Backing Williamson on this night was a run in the fourth manufactured in part by Elly De La Cruz legging out a one-out double on a ball that was cut off in the right-center gap. Sal Stewart, playing in front of 150 of his closest friends and family in hometown Miami, followed with a run-scoring single.

“It was awesome,” Stewart said. “Everything I dreamed of as a kid.”

Tyler Stephenson added a run of insurance in the eighth with his second home run of a 4-0 road trip that had three games in Miami to go.

The Reds have had a better 10-game start in their history only three times, the last time in 1990 when they started 9-1 on the way to a wire-to-wire division championship and eventual World Series title.

The last time the Reds started 8-3 was 2011.

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