The Dodgers have won 5 straight and are hunting the NL's top seed. The Reds are all but eliminated and playing out the string. Wednesday's finale at Dodger Stadium is a study in contrasts.
THU SEP 10, 7:10 PM
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Yamamoto has been the best pitcher in the Dodgers rotation for most of the summer, posting a 1.95 ERA across five August starts, 4th-best mark among NL qualifiers, and he gets a Reds lineup that just saw him up close. Lowder brings a very different story into the same building: he's 6-9 with a 5.43 ERA and got rocked by Milwaukee in his last time out, allowing 6 earned runs in only 4 innings. The gap between these two arms is about as wide as it gets on a given night.
The middle game of this series still has to be played before Wednesday, and how the Dodgers use their bullpen there matters here too. Blake Treinen is back off the 60-day injured list after an elbow issue that kept him out since June, a real boost for a relief corps that's otherwise carrying a long list of names rehabbing or shut down — Roki Sasaki, Gavin Stone, Ben Casparius, Kris Bubic, Brusdar Graterol, Jake Cousins, Will Klein and Eric Lauer among them. The Reds, meanwhile, are still without Michael Toglia, Spencer Steer, Hunter Greene and Blake Dunn.
None of that changes what each team is actually playing for down the stretch. The Dodgers are chasing Milwaukee for the NL's No. 1 seed and want to keep stacking wins. The Reds, sitting at 69-75, are all but eliminated and have shifted into spoiler mode for September, with manager Terry Francona pushing back on any notion of giving up on young players like Matt McLain.
Cincinnati's actually been playing better baseball than the record suggests lately — they've won 3 of their last 5, including taking 2 of 3 from Milwaukee, before dropping the opener of this series to LA. The Dodgers haven't lost a game since, riding a comfortable run through Washington and into this series.
Both rosters are banged up in different ways. The Dodgers' injury list is longer but stacked with organizational pitching depth, while the Reds are missing everyday, hard-to-replace pieces like Steer and Toglia at first base. That gap in who's actually irreplaceable is a big part of why one team is chasing a top seed and the other is auditioning for next year.
