The Dodgers might be sprinting toward the finish line this year, trying to edge out the San Diego Padres in a tight National League West race.
But on Tuesday night, in a win that kept them one game up in the standings with 29 to play, they made a 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds feel more like a nice, leisurely stroll.
Clayton Kershaw continued his renaissance season, pitching five innings of one-run ball to earn a fifth-consecutive victory (his longest such streak since the end of the 2022 season). The offense steadily wore the Reds’ pitching staff down, answering a first-inning Cincinnati run with one of their own before taking the lead for good in the fourth.
It all added up to a third-straight win for the Dodgers (76-57), and helped them hold serve on a night the Padres beat the Mariners in Seattle (despite blowing an early five-run lead).
“It’s been really fun to watch our guys play at the level that they’re capable of,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I like how we’re playing. I like where we’re at right now.”
Kershaw provided the bedrock for Tuesday’s victory.
The left-hander was pitching on four days’ rest for the third time this season (more than anyone else on the team), so that Shohei Ohtani could be lined up to start ahead of an off day on Wednesday. His already diminished fastball was playing down, averaging only 88 mph. And early on, the Reds (68-65) tagged him with a quick run, after Spencer Steer led off with a double and later scored on Miguel Andújar’s groundout.
“It wasn’t a great night, stuff-wise,” Kershaw said. “Didn’t have a lot of life on the fastball, or really anything.”
And yet, starting with that Andújar grounder, Kershaw proceeded to retire the last 14 batters he faced. Six came via strikeout, marking his second-highest strikeout total this season. And of balls put in play, only four were “hard hit” (with an exit velocity greater than 95 mph). Not one left the bat at more than 100 mph.
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It was the latest example of the 37-year-old left-hander’s newfound recipe for success: Hitting both sides of the plate with his fastball, leaning heavily on a slider that generated five whiffs and four outs, and mixing in his trademark curveball and newfangled splitter to keep an entirely right-handed Reds lineup off-balance in a 72-pitch outing.
“We kind of flipped the script and just started throwing kind of a lot of different stuff, trying to be creative, keep them off balance,” Kershaw said, while giving credit to catcher Will Smith’s pitch-calling behind the plate.
“I’ve seen growth in that sense,” Roberts added. “Just in the last couple years, he’s been more open to doing different things. And I commend him for that. I think in that fourth inning [when Kershaw retired the side with two strikeouts], you could see — it didn’t matter what Will was putting down, he felt like he could throw anything. And that’s something that was really rare and really cool to see.”
Given the low pitch count, Kershaw might have been able to go past the fifth. He and Roberts appeared to have a brief conversation in the dugout before shaking hands, a sign his night was over. But between his quick (by modern-day standards, at least) four-day turnaround, and the team’s careful management of his workload overall this season, Kershaw’s five innings were plenty.
“I think that he’s smart enough to understand how many bullets he has,” Roberts said.
On the season, Kershaw is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA, third-best among Dodgers starters this year. He also finishes August with a 1.88 ERA in five starts, third-best among National League starters for the month.
“It was a good August,” Kershaw said. “Fun to be a part of it this time of year.”
While Kershaw cruised, the Dodgers’ offense also found a groove.
They erased the early 1-0 deficit in the bottom of the first, when Mookie Betts walked, Freddie Freeman doubled and Betts scored on a throwing error by Reds left fielder Austin Hays.
They took a 2-1 lead in the fourth, after a leadoff double from Teoscar Hernández, an infield single from Michael Conforto on a scorching comebacker that ripped the glove right off the hand of Reds pitcher Nick Martinez, and a sacrifice fly from Kiké Hernández (who returned to the lineup for the first time since early July after being out with an elbow injury).
Then, in the sixth, they broke the game open with a four-run rally.
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Smith turned around a center-cut fastball for an opposite-field, leadoff home run, a positive sign for the slumping catcher who entered the night with a .150 batting average in August and only one long ball in his previous 25 games.
Miguel Rojas came off the bench for a two-run double later in the inning, smoking a flyball to deep center that got Noelvi Marte (who was making his first career MLB start in the middle of the outfield) turned around at the warning track.
Ohtani followed that with an RBI single to right, helping him break a one-for-16 skid.
The only bad news for the Dodgers on Tuesday came pregame, when left-handed reliever Alex Vesia was placed on the injured list with a right oblique strain. Vesia described the injury as mild and was hopeful of returning once his 15-day IL stint was complete.
But even without him, the Dodgers’ bullpen largely coasted in relief of Kershaw. Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott, both having recently returned from the IL, pitched scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth (giving Scott his first save since returning). And though Hays hit a two-run home run in the seventh off Ben Casparius, it did little to make Tuesday feel like anything more than a late-season cakewalk — even amid a mad dash down the season’s closing stretch.
Sasaki’s latest rehab start
In triple-A Oklahoma City, rookie pitcher Roki Sasaki made the third start of his minor-league rehab stint, giving up three runs in 3 ⅔ innings on five hits, two walks and four strikeouts. The most encouraging takeaway from the outing was Sasaki’s fastball velocity, which averaged 96 mph for a second-straight outing and topped out at 98.8 mph — the hardest he has thrown in his recovery from a shoulder injury. Sasaki is expected to make at least one more rehab start before being ready to be activated.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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