Dodgers 7, Reds 3: A trio of homers and some timely late hitting evens series

Chad Moriyama 05/17/2024 Game Recaps Leave A Comment

After a couple of low-energy games for the Dodgers, today they came out and took an early lead behind homers from their stars in Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani. However, the Reds scratched back slowly but surely against James Paxton to tie things up, but the Dodgers offense fought back late to push it just out of save range in a 7-3 victory.

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After being dead in the water early in a couple games, today’s start against Frankie Montas was a nice change. Mookie led the game off for the Dodgers with his 8th dinger of the year to put the Dodgers up early.

After quick hiatus, the were back at it in the 3rd, as an Enrique Hernandez single was cashed it on a Ohtani oppo homer that didn’t even look like he hit it all that well. That was his 13th of the year and made it 3-0.

Unfortunately, that was when the Reds started fighting back. Paxton faced the minimum through three innings, thanks to having singles erased by double plays in back-to-back innings.

However, a lead-off single in the 3rd made it to second on a wild pitch, advanced on a groundout, and then scored on another grounder (they were conceding the run) that Mookie threw wild on. On yet another grounder, Mookie continued a rough inning as he couldn’t transfer the ball on a double-play attempt, which led to a single and Paxton having to throw more pitches.

Stuart Fairchild then led the 5th off with a solo shot, and in the 6th it was Tyler Stephenson homering to tie the game up at 3-3 all of a sudden.

On the other side of things, the Dodgers offense stalled after the two homers, as they later stranded two with two outs in the 3rd and 4th, and didn’t put up a fight in the 5th. Montas was done at that point, but the offense saw a single erased by a double play in the 6th for the minimum.

In the 7th, they took advantage of a break. An Enrique single was followed by a strikeout and a groundout, but on the double-play attempt, Elly De La Cruz threw wild and advanced a runner to second. In a puzzling choice, the Reds gave Freddie Freeman a free pass and Will Smith followed with a single to make it 4-3 before a wild pitched also scored Freeman to make it 5-3.

Surprisingly, Paxton started the 7th, giving up a single before being removed. Thankfully there were no problems, as Michael Grove entered, picked off the runner, and then dispatched of two hitters to end the frame.

The 8th belonged to Blake Treinen, who looked dominant again, throwing just seven pitches and getting a pair of groundouts and a hilarious strikeout.

While they didn’t need it, necessarily, it was great to see both Andy Pages singling and Jason Heyward returning with a two-run blast in the 8th to right to push the lead to 7-3.

Daniel Hudson was going to come in either way, so he did so in the 9th, and after one-out “error” on Gavin Lux (a tough tough play), Eric Karros called the double play to end it.

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30-17 for the year and still the only NL West team over .500 if you were wondering how that’s going.

Since it’s a weekend game, the two teams will be playing an hour earlier at 3:10 PM HT/6:10 PM PT/9:10 PM ET for the third out of a four-game series. It’ll be Walker Buehler looking to show signs of improvement against Graham Ashcraft.

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