Mike Salas
Game 54, 5/25/2024: Dodgers 1, Reds 3
CINCINNATI, OH – The Los Angeles Dodgers came into today’s game fresh off a disappointing loss to the 21-30 Reds yesterday. Things didn’t get much better on Saturday. Dodgers righty Walker Buehler was touched up for three runs, runs that the Dodgers suddenly anemic bats were unable to erase in a 3-1 loss to Cincinnati.
Buehler made his fourth start of the year, looking to get the Dodgers back in the win column. Dodger hitters faced Reds RHP Hunter Greene who was 2-1 in his last three starts with a 2.57 ERA. Greene bent but did not break, and shut down the Dodgers over 6.0 innings.
Mookie Betts got things started in the top of the first with a leadoff single up the middle. But Shohei Ohtani struck out and Freddie Freeman flied out on a first pitch swing. Then, Will Smith came up to bat and Betts was picked off at first base for the third out of the inning. It would be a pattern that would repeat itself during the entire game: squandered opportunities.
Walker Buehler took the mound, hoping to build on his best start of the year, six scoreless innings against these same Reds on Sunday. After Buehler gave up a leadoff single, he got the help of a 6-4-3 double play to get to the second out. However, before he could get the visitors back to the bat rack, he hung a slider that was hit into the seats by Spencer Steer giving the Reds a 1-0 lead. It was Steer’s second bomb of the series. He had also drilled a three run blast in the first inning of Friday’s series opener.
The top of the second started our promisingly enough for the Dodgers, but quickly flamed out. Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez both hit singles and Gavin Lux took a walk to load the bases with no outs. It looked very much like they had Hunter Greene on the ropes. But Greene, a product of Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, buckled down. In the next at-bat he and Jason Heyward battled for eight pitches. But on a 99-mph heater, Heyward hit a soft ground ball to second for a double play. It scored Will Smith to tie the game, but all the air had come out of the inning. A few pitches later, Greene was out of the inning on a Kiké Hernadez groundout. And with that, the Dodgers’ offensive production was done for the night.
In the second, Will Benson touched up Buehler for the second solo shot of the day, and the Reds were able to chase him from the game in the sixth, pushing a third run across on an Elly De La Cruz RBI single.
In the top of the sixth inning, the Dodgers’ had their last, best scoring opportunity of the night. Shohei Ohtani hit a hard ground ball to right field for a one-out triple. But, nada. Freddie Freeman hit a lazy fly ball to left field and Will Smith popped out to second baseman Jonathan India in shallow right field for the third out. With Smith’s out, the Dodgers are 0- for-their-last-16 with runners in scoring position.
The Dodgers were held hitless in their final three at-bats and in so doing, the team dropped its third series in the last two weeks. No bueno.
It was a case of a scuffling offense coming up against a locked-in pitcher. Greene’s ERA in May is a fantastic 2.40. I know it’s wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be nice to have this local product rockin’ the Dodger Blue at some point? I’m sure he’d love to sign with his hometown team. But alas, he’s extended all the way to 2029. Someone to keep an eye on at the trade deadline, perhaps?
The Dodgers’ hitting struggles continued in this one. They left seven runners in scoring position and the whole team was unable to produce in the clutch. One run on a double-play ball ain’t gonna cut it.
On Sunday, the Dodger look to Yoshinobu Yamamoto to stop the bleeding and hoping the Dodgers bats wake up to come out of Cincinnati with at least one win. Sunday’s game has an early start time 12:10 pm, Cincinnati time (9:10 am PST) due to possible bad weather moving into Ohio.
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