For a quick reminder of what makes a team with the oldest lineup in the majors the continued favorite to win a third straight World Series – even with one unicorn tied behind its back – take a long, close
look at this week’s series at Great American Ball Park.
Or for mercy’s sake, if you’re a Cincinnati Reds fan, just read about it here.
The Los Angeles Dodgers send as many Cy Young Awards to the mound for starts against the Reds this week as there are games in the series. And that doesn’t even count who’s listed for Thursday’s series finale (somebody they call TBA).
Two of the four CYAs belong to left-hander Tarik Skubal, the former Detroit Tigers ace the Dodgers acquired at the trade deadline, who started this week’s opener.
For the second time in a week Skubal rolled the Reds, this time pitching seven scoreless innings in a 4-1 win that clinched the Dodgers’ 14th consecutive playoff berth.
That runs Skubal’s totals against the Reds during his Big Red Week to 14 1/3 innings, 14 strikeouts and just two runs allowed on that long two-run homer by Elly De La Cruz in Los Angeles last week.
Next up: 2025 Cy Young finalist and World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamato in the second game and two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell in Game 3 before that TBA guy in the series finale.
That kind of shutdown pitching power is enough to drive an opponent fly into a dugout rage and pummel an innocent ball bag with angry blows – which Reds left-hander Nick Lodolo did (with his right hand) after a leadoff walk led to a two-out RBI single in the seventh for the Dodgers’ fourth run.
With all due respect to Lodolo – who competed for a season-high seven innings and 104 pitches on this night after battling blister issues for half the season – the Dodgers have been doing this to everybody in the league for years.
Maybe Lodolo will yet prove to be a big part of the Reds’ solution to the level of win-loss disparity that separates the NL Central’s last-place Reds from the iron-fisted rulers of major league baseball – an high-salaried juggernaut that has swept the Reds in their first four meetings this year despite a mere one-game cameo from injured superstar Shohei Ohtani, who landed on the injured list last week (knee).
The Dodgers have outscored the Reds 27-7 in those four meetings.
For those who may not remember last year, the L.A. streak over the Reds now numbers eight, including a pair of too-easy playoff games.
The biggest difference between a Reds team last year that squeezed into the playoffs on the final day of the season and the one this year that matched last year's loss total with 12 games to play boils down to the same thing that's making the Dodgers look so impenetrable (nine wins in their last 11 games) these days even without Ohtani.
Pitching. Starting pitching in particular.
The Reds had the second-best starting rotation in baseball (behind the Phillies) last year by measure of WAR (fangraphs.com), ranking among the leaders in several key categories.
This year they rank among the bottom third in WAR, and they entered the week fourth from the bottom in the majors in ERA.
The Dodgers have the second-ranked rotation to the Phillies this time around and, not surprisingly, first since acquiring Skubal at the deadline for their push to become the first National League team to win three consecutive World Series (and first team overall since the Yankees did it in 1998-2000).
The only glimmer for the Reds against the Dodgers in this series opener came from the same Red who accounted for nearly all the damage against the Dodgers last week in Los Angeles: Elly De La Cruz, who crushed a solo home run in the ninth off Evan Phillips.
That's four games against the Dodgers with a home run in each for De La Cruz.
And not a lot more than that. Except maybe waiting for next year.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Dodgers clinch 14th straight playoff berth with win over Reds
