CLEVELAND -- The Reds made their Monday makeup on Ohio’s North Coast a day trip, forgoing a Sunday night stay in a Cleveland hotel and opting instead for a pregame flight from Cincinnati and a postgame departure to their next stop in Atlanta. Their players all made the trip, but their momentum did not.

With Luis Castillo taking a big step back from his in-season turnaround and the hottest offense in the game largely quelled by a sequence of Tribe relievers, the Reds fell, 9-3, in the rescheduled finale of the Ohio Cup.

“It was just a bad night overall," Castillo said through an interpreter.

The season series 3-3 split means a Cleveland club changing its name this winter will keep the Cup. But the Reds, having surged in the second half, obviously still have their eyes on other prizes in 2021, and Castillo’s return to ace-type standing after an abysmal April and May is a big reason why they are still relevant in the National League Central and the NL Wild Card races.

Unfortunately, this was a night in which Castillo, who had a sparkling 1.91 ERA in his 12 previous outings, endured a reversion to his early season difficulties.

“The location of the pitches wasn’t there tonight,” said Castillo, “and the batters were able to make me pay.”

Castillo lasted just 3 1/3 innings and was tagged for eight runs on seven hits and three walks. Though staked to a quick 1-0 advantage by an RBI single from the red-hot Joey Votto, Castillo allowed the tying run in the bottom of the first and then a real eruption in the ensuing innings.

Cleveland catcher Wilson Ramos connected with Castillo’s four-seamer up in the zone for a two-run homer to the opposite field in the second to make it 3-1. A José Ramírez triple and a Bradley Zimmer RBI groundout brought home another pair in the third. And in the fourth, Castillo was chased when Amed Rosario tripled home a run and Ramírez hit a two-run blast to right.

That was enough to send the Reds to a rare second-half loss.

So … what was up with Castillo? Well, not his velocity, which was down slightly though not to a disturbing degree. His sinker, which generated zero whiffs on 10 swings, averaged 96.5 mph and not his usual 97.2. His four-seamer, which got just one whiff on nine swings, averaged 95.2 mph rather than his usual 96.6.

Castillo, who allowed eight earned runs for the third time this season (the first Reds pitcher since Homer Bailey in 2017 to endure such a fate) said he felt healthy. The problem was him missing spots and a little bit of bad luck. The Ramírez homer, for instance, went just 345 feet and had an expected batting average of .070, per Statcast.

“He didn’t throw bad by any means,” Reds manager David Bell. “If anything, maybe the command wasn’t quite as sharp as it has been pretty much every time he’s pitched for a long time now. To be super critical, maybe the command was off a little bit. And against any team we play, if your command is off a little bit, sometimes you get in trouble. I wouldn’t put any more on it than that. He’s healthy, he looks good, and he’ll be back out there next time.”

Having gone unbeaten not just in five straight games but five straight series coming into Monday's makeup of a rained-out May date, the Reds could shrug it off as one of those nights. They’ve seen Castillo get back on track before and expect him to again. The real road trip, with hotels and everything, to Atlanta and Philadelphia beckoned, and Cincinnati hopes to meet up with its momentum there.