Joey Votto also homered and Jay Bruce doubled and drew a career-high four walks as the Reds recorded a season-high 13 hits to go along with the season-high 12 runs.
“It was just a matter of time,” said Reds starting pitcher Tony Cingrani (1-1), who was the beneficiary of the outburst, earning the win by allowing two runs on five hits over 6.1 innings.
“Winning is the name of the game, so a 2-1 win would have felt just as good,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “But going out there and scoring 12 runs and having a lot of good things come out of it was big.”
Limited to just one run in the first two games of the series – both losses – the Reds grabbed an early 2-0 lead in the second when Zack Cozart delivered a bases-loaded double off Tampa’s Cesar Ramos (0-1), a reliever who was making his first start of the season and just his second in his last 60 appearances in place of the injured Matt Moore.
Cingrani gave up a two-run homer to Ben Zobrist in the third to tie the score, but the Reds piled on from there, starting with Votto’s two-run homer that chased Ramos from the game in the bottom of the third and was followed by Mesoraco’s three-run bomb that made it 7-2.
“I feel comfortable and confident up there,” said Mesoraco, who is hitting .500 in four games since coming off the disabled list with an oblique injury.
He added a sacrifice fly in the fifth and singled in the sixth to finish 2 for 3.
“He has a much better approach,” Price said. “For a guy that’s got some power, he fights during his at-bats to put the ball in play. He’s a tough guy with two strikes. He’s going to punch out every now and then, but he does a tremendous job of battling his way through an at-bat. He fought off some great pitches today and then ended up coming up with the big three-run home run.”
The Rays got another two-run homer from Zobrist off reliever Nick Christiani in the seventh to make it 7-4, but after Tampa reliever Heath Bell intentionally walked Bruce to load the bases in the eighth, Heisey hit a pinch-hit grand slam that Price called “the icing on the cake.”
Brandon Phillips added three hits, Cozart had two and Bruce scored four runs to give the struggling offense a much-needed jolt.
“The key early in the season is not losing faith,” Price said. “To me, pressure is self-induced. So it’s a matter of keeping the faith. We understand that this is a good team. Everyone in there knows it. So the frustration becomes the biggest challenge for our club.
“It’s just a matter of going out there and understanding we’re going to play 162 games and we’re going to win a good bunch of games,” he added. “But we’d like to see guys start to relax and just be themselves and play the type of game we’re capable of playing. I think this is an indication that we’re getting closer to doing that.”
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