Dodgers 7 Reds 4 Dingers and Brett Make For A Winning Streak

Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports

A winning run that spans more than one game? That is kindof a streak! Amazing things happen when i’m on regular schedule (worrying about this team) and not relaxing. The Dodgers won their second game in a row versus a godawful Cincinnati Reds team who is just hoping to get to the end of the season without any major injuries to Joey Votto or Todd Frazier.

The Dodgers need a 3rd starter, Brett Anderson hasn’t thrown this many innings since he was in his early 20’s, Alex Wood is fighting it, and Mat Latos is just barely going to make his 4th start as a Dodger, so things aren’t going that well with any of them, but tonight Anderson looked like a legitimate playoff starter, he got hella ground balls (though a 66.7% GB% would basically be his average for this season which is absurd) and only walked 1, showing strong command of his pitches and he induced soft contact all night long. The one worry might be his disappearing strikeout rate, but worry about one thing at a time, this was a positive start, definitely.

The real story of this game is the home runs the Dodgers hit, Yasiel Puig, A.J. Ellis, Scott Van Slyke all went deep doing nothing to quell the narrative about how the team can’t win without home runs. Guess the Dodgers are just going to have to settle for dongs all day. Puig hit an absolute monster to center in the 4th, and his recent emergence is one of the most important things for this team sans the bullpen.

But can we give a hand to A.J. Ellis his wRC+ is now the same as Puig’s, and while everybody including, yes, yours truly wanted him off the team, he’s easily one of the best backup catchers in baseball that many teams would kill to have starting for them. His walk to strikeout ratio this season? 24-25. Solid.

Jim Johnson? uh. yiiikkes.

He struck out one in 0.2 innings of work, but a double off of Justin Turner‘s glove came around to score off of him, 15 runs in 6.2 innings, his luck has been questionable, but he’s walking way too many guys for a pitch to contact type reliever. J.P. Howell came in and faced a batter (he walked him), and his trend of starting the season by dominating and shutting down towards the end of the year continues. Thank heavens for Luis Avilan (???!?!?!??!?!) who got the Dodgers out of the jam.

Heck the pen is so bad right now that even Kenley is struggling a tad, he gave up a single and a walk before striking out the final two batters and closing the game for the Dodgers 69th win (nice).

I cannot wait for September and Julio Urias and Jose De Leon and Jharel Cotton and Mike Bolsinger and Yimi Garcia because the Dodgers need pitchers, and they need good ones. The offense was never the problem, and that was evident tonight.