CINCINNATI -- Last season, Reds reliever Amir Garrett’s primary pitch was a four-seam fastball, with his slider being a distant second. Not this year.

Garrett relies much more on his slider, then goes to his sinker and four-seamer. The reason appears to be pretty simple.

“Yeah, my fastball gets hit,” Garrett said on Wednesday. “My slider doesn’t get too much and when it does get hit, it usually is weak contact or a groundball. It’s just pitching to my strengths. I realized my slider could be a really dominant pitch for me. Why not use it as your main pitch if hitters aren’t getting good swings on it?”

The slider was on full display in the top of the 10th during the Reds’ 5-4 win in 11 innings over the Brewers on Tuesday. Garrett struck out the side against Tyler Saladino, Orlando Arcia and Yasmani Grandal.

According to Statcast, 12 of the 16 pitches Garrett threw in the inning were sliders. The left-hander got six swings-and-misses and three foul balls.

Entering Wednesday, Garrett was using his slider 58.8 percent of the time with hitters batting .098 against it. In 2018, he used 33.3 percent sliders and opponents batted .111. His sinker is used 22.2 percent with hitters batting .478 and the four-seam fastball is used 19 percent with a .227 average for hitters. Last season, when he used the four-seamer 59.9 percent of the time, they batted .306.

“It was definitely a pitch that was on last night,” Garrett said of his slider. “To be honest, I really wasn’t feeling it in the bullpen. It’s weird how that works sometimes.”

In a team-leading 42 appearances this season, Garrett is 3-1 with a 1.70 ERA and hasn’t allowed a hit in his previous six games over 5 2/3 innings. He hoped his numbers would help him join starter Luis Castillo as an All-Star in Cleveland next week, but Garrett was not selected.

“I thought it should’ve been a no-brainer, but it obviously wasn’t,” Garrett said. “Sometimes, these things happen. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time. Anybody who makes it, deserves it. We’ll keep moving forward. My focus is on the team and us winning.”

Suarez argues at a tough time

Leading off the decisive 11th inning on Tuesday, Reds third baseman Eugenio Suárez was called out on strikes and was furious with home-plate umpire Chad Fairchild. Suarez yelled at Fairchild for several moments and appeared in danger of getting ejected.

Normally, that wouldn’t be a terrible thing, but the Reds had already used all of their position players. Manager David Bell bolted out of the dugout to get Suarez and diffuse the situation.

“I tried to get out there as quick as I could,” Bell said on Wednesday. “At that point, you know when you run out of players that something like that could happen. It wouldn’t be good. But at some point in time, we’re going to have to have a pitcher in the outfield. It’s going to happen.”

In the eighth inning, Bell decided to pinch-hit for catcher Kyle Farmer with his other available catcher, Curt Casali, which also exposed the team if something went wrong.

“The bigger concern was at catcher,” Bell said. “I felt better that they used their second catcher last night. It’s definitely a concern but you don’t want to hold back from trying to win a game for a worst-case scenario. I’m glad it didn’t happen last night.”

Ejections piling up for Bell

As a first-year Major League manager, Bell is no stranger to ejections and already has six this season. According to Elias Sports, it’s the most for a rookie skipper since Rick Renteria was thrown out six times while with the Cubs in 2014. Ron Gardenhire of the Tigers leads the league with seven ejections.

The Reds’ record for single-season ejections is also six.

“I haven’t looked too much into it. Each situation has been so different,” said Bell, who was last tossed from a game on Saturday after a hit-by-pitch situation. “It’s never something I set out to want to do. Obviously, you want to avoid it at all costs. Truly each one has been different and have happened for a different reason and circumstances. You lump them together, it’s significant. Each one has its own story.”

According to research on baseball-reference, which gathers its data from box scores on Retrosheet, the Major League single-season record is 11, set by John McGraw with the 1905 New York Giants and later matched by Bill Dahlen with the 1911 Brooklyn Dodgers and Bobby Cox with the 2001 Atlanta Braves.

Only once in Major League history, according to baseball-reference, have two managers reached double digits in ejections in the same season. That was 1910, when McGraw and Dahlen were both tossed 10 times.