Eugenio Suárez turned the game with a go-ahead 3-run homer in the 6th, wiping out Ortiz's early shot and putting Cincinnati back in front for good. Milwaukee had an answer an inning later when Jake Bauers went deep to tie it at 3-3, setting up a finish that came down to which bullpen had more left.
Tyler Stephenson's sacrifice fly in the 8th put the Reds back ahead 4-3, and it held up. Brandon Williamson picked up the win out of Cincinnati's pen, Brock Burke followed with a scoreless inning, and Emilio Pagán closed it out for his 23rd save, running the Reds to 17-for-17 in save chances since July. It was Milwaukee's own bullpen that cracked in the moment that mattered, coughing up the deciding run rather than Cincinnati's supposedly gassed relief corps.
The Polymarket chat's busiest stretch of the afternoon lined up with Cincinnati's breakthrough in the 6th, and the room split hard on where the game was headed from there. "Reds take 8th. Still lose the game," one poster holding Cincinnati wrote — wrong within the hour. Another predicted "gon be a scoreless bottom 8th calling it now," just before Stephenson's sac fly made a liar out of that read too. Milwaukee, already the first NL club into October and running away with the division, took the loss with its playoff seeding untouched; Cincinnati, 20 games out of a postseason spot, got to close out the season series with something to feel good about.