CINCINNATI -- What’s more frustrating, a 14-0 loss one day or giving up a 1-0 lead on two home runs in the bottom of the eighth the next?

The Marlins are in position to answer that question after reliever Drew Steckenrider allowed solo homers to Jose Iglesias and Jesse Winker in the eighth inning of Miami’s 2-1 loss to the Reds on Wednesday at Great American Ball Park.

“That one for sure is a tough one to swallow,” Miami manager Don Mattingly said.

Iglesias led off the eighth with his first homer of the season before Steckenrider allowed Winker’s second in two nights, sending the Marlins to their seventh loss in the past eight games.

“The first one, I’d throw again,” said Steckenrider, who’s 1-for-2 in save situations. “He went up and got a fastball. It landed in the first row -- small ballpark. The second one ran out over the plate, and he got a piece of it and hit it out.”

Wasted was Trevor Richards’ brilliant start. The right-hander allowed one hit over six shutout innings and left with a lead thanks to Neil Walker’s third-inning homer. After stranding a combined four runners in the first two innings, Richards locked in well enough to retire 10 straight batters and 13 of the last 14 he faced.

“Trevor was really good, especially after the first couple of innings,” Mattingly said. “He dialed it in.”

“After the first couple of innings, I was able to make my pitches and keep them off-balance,” Richards said. “The first two innings, my fastball was getting away from me. I wasn’t able to throw it for strikes. The defense made some nice plays to get me out of it.”

Richards lowered his ERA to an even 2.00 over three starts while striking out seven for the second straight game.

“I want to progress every start,” he said. “I want to get better every time I go out there.”

Walker’s third-inning one-out homer was the 19th of his career against Cincinnati, more than he has hit against any other team.

Center fielder Lewis Brinson struck out four times, but he also threw out Joey Votto trying to score from third on Scott Schebler’s one-out fly ball in the first. Catcher Jorge Alfaro, who was hit in the head by a batter’s backswing for the second straight night, quickly recovered a pitch that got away from him and easily threw Winker out at second to end the fifth.

Alfaro’s play allowed the Marlins’ pitchers to face the minimum 15 batters from the third through seventh innings. Martín Prado, making his first appearance at third base since last August, contributed a diving stop of Eugenio Suarez’s sharp grounder and threw him out to end the fifth, but the effort was negated by an offense that has produced one run in the past 18 innings.

“We’ve been having trouble putting anything together,” Mattingly said. “We can’t get anything started. We just have to ride it out.”

Besides his game-tying home run, Iglesias helped stymie the Marlins with two defensive gems of his own. He made a diving stop of Starlin Castro’s sharp one-hopper up the middle in the first and started an inning-ending double play with a glove flip to second baseman Derek Dietrich while lying on his belly. He also hustled from almost all the way behind second base to grab Curtis Granderson’s two-out, bases-loaded bouncer in the second and shoveled the ball from his glove to Votto at first, killing that threat.

“Iglesias made a couple of big plays that killed us,” Mattingly said.