After showing a little life with a win in Saturday’s middle game, the Los Angeles Dodgers had absolutely nothing to offer the Cincinnati Reds in Sunday’s finale, falling 9-0 and losing the series two games to one.
The victory moved the Reds into first place in a highly competitive NL Central, while the Dodgers still hold a slim lead over division rival San Francisco for top spot in the NL West.
The Dodgers mustered six hits on Sunday, all singles. Aside from Freddie Freeman’s 2-for-3 day, there really wasn’t much to write home about offensively. To make matters worse, Los Angeles designated hitter J.D. Martinez left the game in the second inning with a hamstring injury.
Additionally, catcher Will Smith was pulled in the third inning with a bruised left elbow after getting hit by a pitch in the bottom of the first. X-rays on Smith’s elbow later came back negative, indicating he should be ready to go for the upcoming series opener against the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday.
Young righty Michael Grove started the game for the Dodgers and braved six full innings after falling victim to a sizzling Cincinnati offense. Grove gave up eight earned runs on 10 hits — three of which were long balls — while striking out 10 batters. The youngster’s ERA rose to 6.75, rivaling newcomer Lance Lynn’s 6.47 mark for worst among starting pitchers on the club.
Rookie sensation Elly De La Cruz led the way offensively for the Reds, going 4-for-5 with a homer and two runs scored. Righty Graham Ashcraft picked up his sixth victory of the year for Cincinnati, throwing six shutout frames and scattering five hits while striking out two Los Angeles batters.
Despite maintaining the divisional lead, the Dodgers have lost five of their last seven games. There have been plenty of personnel changes over the last week as the summer trade deadline nears, but the general feeling is that front-office boss Andrew Friedman is filling holes with veteran players rather than making any significant upgrades in talent.
Fans were overwhelmed in excitement when Friedman brought Enrique Hernandez back to the team, perhaps unaware of his .599 OPS on the season, which incidentally was 30 points less than the .627 OPS of the recently demoted Miguel Rojas. Hernandez also committed 14 errors for Boston at shortstop before his departure, tops among American League players at that position.
Joe Kelly came in with a 4.97 ERA, a 1.310 WHIP and a 3.25 FIP, numbers that aren’t much better than many of the current relievers. And that’s not even mentioning that new utility man Amed Rosario’s defensive metrics were among the worst in the American League.
For all we know, these moves could be a precursor to something bigger, but we may have to wait until the waning moments of the deadline on Tuesday to find out.
In the meantime, the club gets ready to host Oakland for a three-game set after an off day on Monday. Lining up for the Dodgers are Lynn, Tony Gonsolin and Julio Urias.
Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to throw to hitters in a simulated game again on Thursday.
Think Blue Planning Committee 
You’re being way too negative, Dennis.
Grove was excellent. He had 10 k’s. If the offense had scored 10 runs we would have won this game.
We got more hits than we had yesterday.
Mookie, Smith and JDM will certainly be recovered in time for the playoffs.
The Padres are still 8 games behind us. That means if we lose all 3 to the A’s and all 4 to SD, we’ll still be ahead of the Pads by a game (even though we may be behind SF and AZ).
AF still has a couple of days to get us Verlander and/or Bednar and I just saw that the Guardians would consider trading their great reliever Clase for the right return. The Dodgers have also talked to the Pirates and Royals about Keller and Singer.
The best is yet to come…………………………..because it couldn’t get a whole hell of a lot worse than today.
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Dennis Santana, Brock Stewart and Trevor Oaks are available, I hear.
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Are you sure Brock Stewart is available? I think the Twins want to hang on to him. He would be a great fit for us though since he’s currently on the IL with elbow tendonitis.
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Here’s an interesting fact: The Dodgers won’t even begin another game until the trade deadline is over.
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Speaking of old favorites, Maeda and Ryu have both just returned from injuries. Maybe one or both would be available since we’re bringing back all of our former players.
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Might as well sprinkle in a little Sheldon Neuse, Billy McKinney, Edwin Uceta and Dylan Floro while we’re at it. 😀
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How about Yimi Garcia?
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Ol’ Yimi has had a far more successful career than I ever thought he would.
His contract just vested for next year so he’ll be around for at least one more season.
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Scott Barlow might be available, too. I remember when scouts had high hopes for him as a reliever coming up in the Dodger organization.
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I have other relievers I’d rather get, but I wouldn’t be upset if we got Barlow. We need at least one more guy for the bullpen by tomorrow, if not two.
Nelson and Giles are getting beaten around in their rehabs so I’m not counting on either of them.
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Maybe Friedman should sign Danny Duffy. So he can earn a paycheck again for like the fourth year without throwing a pitch.
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As they say, “Nice work if you can get it.”
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Maybe they should try letting Amed Rosario bat cleanup.
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At least we now know where Doc is getting his weird lineup ideas from.
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Jeff that’s so negative. This year has been a year to reload, and go with youth. Guys like Busch, Deluca, Vargas. hernandez and outman. Well 1 out of 5 ain’t bad and we quickly found quality replacements like Kiki, Rosario, marisnick. And while our ” pitching prospects ” have all been big failures, ( 0 out of 5 is maybe not so good) we have found some replacements, Lynn and Kelly, with more to come I’m sure. Oh and we’re still in first place. And we could be Oakland or Colorado. Cheer up guy.
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Actually, although Miller and Sheehan have high ERA’s, I definitely wouldn’t consider them big failures. It’s all part of getting experience at the MLB level and both those guys were probably force fed earlier than they should have been due to injury.
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A tually these guys are of an age, where they should be getting regular starts if they are going to be major leaguers, but it’s not Resonable to expect them to be super successful ( don’t tell anyone I said that) , as young rookies. Force-fed? Nope. You are right, it is actually big learning experience, but we’ll have a better idea as the season wears down. I’m surprised that they both have shown an ability to throw strikes. Miller is the confusing one, because every report drools over his ” stuff”. but we’ve never seen it, even in the minors.
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