The Reds needed a game like this badly.

An anemic offense was behind Cincinnati’s four-game losing streak -- and losses in five of its previous six games -- entering Thursday. Nick Castellanos and Jesse Winker delivered the boost that it had been missing in a big way in the Reds’ 6-1 win over the Brewers in Game 1 of Thursday’s seven-inning doubleheader at Miller Park.

• Box score

Castellanos and Winker combined to go 6-for-6 with three home runs, five RBIs and four runs scored. They delivered back-to-back solo homers in the third inning, then Winker went deep again in the fifth, hitting a two-run home run.

“It was nice to get a win and not have it be a taxing win,” Reds catcher Curt Casali said. “I felt like from the first inning, we won that game. And that was nice. We had the right guy on the mound to take care of it on the other side of the baseball, and contrary to what we have done in the past -- whether it was last year or the early part of this year [when] we scored early and we stopped -- we scored early today and we kept scoring.”

Reds starter Sonny Gray delivered five scoreless innings, allowing four hits and two walks with four strikeouts. The right-hander worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the second and extended his Major League-record streak to 40 consecutive games with six or fewer hits allowed. Gray also earned his fifth win, tied for the most in the National League.

In Tuesday’s 3-2 loss, Cincinnati's final 13 batters were hitless following a bizarre 9-2 forceout play. About two hours before Wednesday’s game, players from both teams decided to not play in an effort to spotlight social justice.

“No doubt about it, it’s been a long couple of days for us,” Gray said. “It’s been a little bit of a long 48 hours, 24 hours. But we wanted to come out today and play a good baseball game and walk away with the win.”

In his Major League debut, Jose Garcia squibbed a two-out roller up the third-base line -- which had an exit velocity of 69.8 mph, per Statcast -- that touched the bag for his first big league hit in the second. That kept the door open for Casali to hit an RBI single to left field for a 1-0 lead.

Leading off the third against Brewers starter Adrian Houser, Castellanos crushed a 2-2 pitch -- with a 36-degree launch angle -- off the batter’s eye in center field for his 10th homer of the season. Winker followed with an opposite-field homer to left on a 2-1 pitch.

Castellanos led off the fifth against Houser with a double. Milwaukee then called on lefty reliever Alex Claudio to face the lefty-hitting Winker, and it backfired. Winker slugged a 2-2 pitch -- again the opposite way -- for a two-run homer to left field and a 5-0 lead.

Castellanos added a sacrifice fly in the sixth that scored Garcia for a six-run lead.

Entering the day, Cincinnati was ranked 29th out of 30 MLB clubs in batting average and had notched only 26 hits over its previous six games. In Thursday's Game 1, the Reds notched a season-high-tying 12 hits.

Castellanos had been struggling after opening the season with a 12-game hitting streak, while Winker heated up after an early slump. On Thursday, they combined forces.

“They jump-started this thing early, and we added on,” Gray said.