CINCINNATI (AP) — Kyle Manzardo homered and drove in two runs, Joey Cantillo pitched four scoreless innings and the Cleveland Guardians beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-1 Wednesday night to claim the season series from their in-state rivals.
The Guardians, who took two of the three games from the Reds at Progressive Field in May, earned this year's “Ohio Cup,” which is awarded to the winner of the season's series.
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Cleveland Guardians' Joey Cantillo pitches during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cleveland Guardians' Steven Kwan hits a single during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cincinnati Reds' Brady Singer pitches during the second inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cleveland Guardians' Joey Cantillo pitches during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cantillo allowed four hits with a walk and eight strikeouts. He leads the majors with a .189 opponents' average with runners in scoring position and worked out of jams in the first, second, and fourth innings on Wednesday.
The Guardians, who had been shut out in three of the previous four games, loaded the bases with one out in the third, but failed to score. They loaded the bases again with no outs in the fifth and scored four runs despite having only one hit.
Travis Bazzana singled and drove in the first run off Reds starter Brady Singer, who issued a pair of bases-loaded walks to force in two more runs. Caleb Ferguson replaced Singer and allowed Patrick Bailey's sacrifice fly to make the score 4-0.
Singer (5-10) allowed four runs — all unearned — and six hits. He walked four and struck out three. The Reds committed two errors on Wednesday, including a fielding error by Elly De La Cruz which began the four-run fifth.
Erik Sabrowski (4-2) earned the victory for Cleveland.
Noelvi Marte drove home the Reds' only run with a single off Franco Aleman in the sixth.
Manzardo's home run, his 13th of the season and second in as many games, came off Chase Petty leading off the seventh, making the score 5-1. It was his fourth homer against the Reds this season.
Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee (4-10, 3.89) is scheduled to start Friday against the visiting Diamondbacks.
Reds RHP Rhett Lowder (3-7, 5.61) is scheduled to start Thursday against the visiting Pirates.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB
Cleveland Guardians' Joey Cantillo pitches during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cleveland Guardians' Steven Kwan hits a single during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cincinnati Reds' Brady Singer pitches during the second inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
Cleveland Guardians' Joey Cantillo pitches during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Tanner Pearson)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a record operating profit of 89.5 trillion won ($62 billion) for the April-June period, a day after crosstown rival SK Hynix also reported record earnings, as the world’s two largest memory chipmakers continue to ride the global artificial intelligence boom.
Despite their soaring profits, the companies’ shares have fallen sharply this week in South Korea’s volatile stock market, where retail investors often drive sharp swings in share prices, as concerns grow over their plans to spend massively on increasing manufacturing capacity and the prospects of intensifying competition from China.
Samsung’s second-quarter operating profit was a more than 19-fold increase from a year earlier, and nearly all of it came from its semiconductor business, which benefited from rising chip prices driven by demand for AI servers and increased shipments of advanced high-bandwidth memory chips used to power AI applications. That outweighed an operating loss in its mobile, TV and home appliances division, partly due to higher component costs.
Samsung’s quarterly revenue of 171.5 trillion won ($119 billion) was also an all-time high. The company said it expects demand for its memory products to remain strong in the second half of the year, driven by continued expansion of AI infrastructure and broader adoption of agentic AI. Demand for server chips is expected to accelerate further, keeping the market undersupplied, it said in a statement.
Samsung’s report came a day after SK Hynix also reported a record second-quarter revenue of 60.5 trillion won ($42 billion). However, SK Hynx’s profit was still below the loftier market expectations and the company’s shares declined by more than 9% on Wednesday. Samsung’s share prices have also declined this week.
Samsung and SK Hynix together produce about two-thirds of the world’s memory chips. While the companies have embarked on major investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities and data centers as South Korea expands its AI ambitions, some analysts say there are growing concerns about whether such massive spending will ultimately generate sufficient returns.
Shares of South Korean chipmakers have also been pressured by concerns over intensifying competition from China, with reports that a state-owned Chinese company had begun mass-producing domestically developed immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, a key technology for advanced chipmaking. Investor concerns were also heightened by the strong stock market debut of Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies, some analysts say.
Samsung and SK Hynix last month announced plans to invest a combined 800 trillion won ($554 billion) in a new chipmaking hub in the country’s southwest to capitalize on surging AI-driven demand.
The chiefs of Samsung, SK and South Korean automaker Hyundai joined President Lee Jae Myung on his San Francisco trip last week, where they announced hundreds of billions of dollars in planned cooperation with major U.S. technology companies, including AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic and chip designers Nvidia and Broadcom. The agreements span chip technologies, data centers and other AI infrastructure.
In a roundtable with foreign media last week, Kim Yong-beom, Lee’s chief policy adviser, said the initiatives reflect how global technology companies are rushing to secure long-term partnerships with South Korean chipmakers as they seek reliable supplies of memory chips for AI.
However, the volatility of the companies’ stock prices, along with those of other global tech firms, shows that investors are shifting their focus from short-term earnings to long-term sustainability, Son In-joon, a semiconductor analyst at South Korea’s Eugene Securities, said in a report this week.
The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
People pass by Samsung Gangnam store in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
