After clinching their 14th consecutive postseason appearance, the Los Angeles Dodgers can check the first box off their list of goals.
Ahead of the second contest of a three-game set against the host Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday, the Dodgers (91-59) are far from satisfied.
“You should never take for granted getting to play in the postseason,” Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said after his team’s 4-1 victory over the Reds on Monday. “I think for me, the message is, we haven’t come close to playing our best baseball and here we are, with 12 games left, getting a ticket to the postseason. … We’re just as hungry as we were in ’24 and ’25.”
Roberts’ club also pulled within two games of the Milwaukee Brewers (93-57) for the majors’ best record. The Dodgers hold a 3 1/2-game edge on the Atlanta Braves (88-63) for the second National League postseason bye.
On the mound on Tuesday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto (13-8, 2.62 ERA) will be in search of his second consecutive dominant outing against the Reds. The star right-hander hurled seven innings of one-run, three-hit ball in a 14-1 rout of Cincinnati on Wednesday. Yamamoto tied his career high with 10 strikeouts while walking one.
Spearheading a rotation that has seen injuries derail the seasons of several fellow starting pitchers, Yamamoto has served as a source of consistency. Making his team-leading 27th start, the 28-year-old appears ready for another postseason run.
“In October, I’m pretty sure there will be more intense games ahead of us,” Yamamoto said. “I’d like to take the rest of our season to maintain my condition, and then however many starts I have left, I just want to take it one at a time to help myself get ready for October.”
Yamamoto is 2-1 with a 2.84 ERA in three career starts against the Reds.
As celebrations could be heard from the visitors’ locker room inside Great American Ball Park, the opposite could be said about Cincinnati’s clubhouse. The Reds (70-80) lost for the sixth game in seven tries and were eliminated from postseason contention for the 11th time in 13 years.
In a season that has left Cincinnati manager Terry Francona searching for bright spots, Elly De La Cruz is giving the club a boost. The 24-year-old shortstop blasted his 27th homer on Monday, a 457-foot shot in the ninth inning.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Francona said of De La Cruz’s bleacher-clearing homer. “It would be a lot more fun to talk about had it put us ahead, but it was still impressive.”
Reds right-hander Rhett Lowder (6-10, 5.81 ERA), who gets the ball on Tuesday, has a limited number of opportunities to improve on what has been a disappointing return to the big leagues after missing all of 2025 with forearm and oblique injuries.
Lowder faced Yamamoto and Los Angeles in a losing effort on Wednesday, as he surrendered seven runs on seven hits across 3 1/3 innings. He struck out four and walked two as his ERA climbed to 15.95 across two starts in September.
That outing was Lowder’s first against the Dodgers.
–Field Level Media
