MILWAUKEE _ The Milwaukee Brewers' slumbering offense finally got its wake-up call Friday night.
Unfortunately, the Cincinnati Reds' offense already had done too much damage.
Down, 10-2, entering the sixth inning at Miller Park, the Brewers reeled off seven runs to get back in the game. They could not pull off an improbable comeback, however, falling to the Reds, 11-10, to drop their sixth game in a row.
It's the second six-game losing streak since the all-star break for the Brewers, who are 9-18 over that stretch. They fell back to .500 (59-59) and into a third-place tie with Pittsburgh in the NL Central.
Exactly four weeks earlier, the Brewers began the second half with a 50-41 record and 5{-game lead in the division.
Down by two runs entering the bottom of the ninth, the Brewers pulled with one on Jonathan Villar's one-out homer off Raisel Iglesias, but it stopped there.
The seven runs the Brewers scored in the sixth were more than they tallied in an entire game since beating Washington, 8-0, on July 25. They sent seven batters to the plate before making an out, including five in a row against reliever Blake Wood before he was removed.
The big blow of the inning was a three-run homer by Eric Thames. In 10 games against the Reds this season, Thames has slugged nine homers and driven in 16 runs.
The outburst would have been more dramatic had the Reds not scored 10 runs against Brewers starter Jimmy Nelson before the fourth inning was done.
On paper, the pitching matchup appeared to decidedly favor the Brewers. Nelson was 9-5 with a 3.24 ERA and 158 strikeouts in 1412/3 innings, including a 2.71 ERA over his previous 18 outings.
Cincinnati starter Homer Bailey checked into the team hotel with a 3-6 record and 8.86 ERA in nine games in his return from three elbow surgeries and seemingly endless months on the DL. In his previous outing against St. Louis, Bailey was pummeled for 10 hits and 10 runs in 31/3 innings.
But it was Nelson who was roughed up this time around, though much of the damage probably felt like death from a thousand paper cuts. The Reds collected one soft hit after another in the third inning, scoring six runs with two outs.
It began with a two-run single that former Brewers second baseman Scooter Gennett dumped into shallow right. Eugenio Suarez punched a RBI single to center and Jesse Winker sliced an opposite-field, two-run double just inside the left-field line.
When second baseman Jonathan Villar muffed Tucker Barnhart's infield hit for his second error of the inning, Winker scored all the way from second to make it 7-2. Three more runs in the fourth chased Nelson, whose ERA rose to 3.72.
Nelson's outing came on the heels of a poor showing the previous evening by Zach Davies, who surrendered a career-high 11 hits and seven runs. So, in consecutive games, the Brewers' top two starters were tagged for 22 hits and 17 runs (16 earned) in 91/3 innings.
Bailey made it through five innings, allowing five hits and five walks but only two runs, those coming on Manny Pina's homer in the second.
