Clayton Kershaw is masterful again in Dodgers win

The Dodgers could be sprinting toward the end line this 12 months, making an attempt to edge out the San Diego Padres in a tight National League West race.

But on Tuesday evening, in a win that stored them one sport up in the standings with 29 to play, they made a 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds really feel more like a good, leisurely stroll.

Clayton Kershaw continued his renaissance season, pitching 5 innings of one-run ball to earn a fifth-consecutive victory (his longest such streak since the end of the 2022 season). The offense steadily wore the Reds’ pitching employees down, answering a first-inning Cincinnati run with one of their own before taking the lead for good in the fourth.

It all added up to a third-straight win for the Dodgers (76-57), and helped them maintain serve on a evening the Padres beat the Mariners in Seattle (despite blowing an early five-run lead).

“It’s been really fun to watch our guys play at the level that they’re capable of,” supervisor Dave Roberts said. “I like how we’re playing. I like where we’re at right now.”

Kershaw supplied the bedrock for Tuesday’s victory.

The left-hander was pitching on 4 days’ relaxation for the third time this season (more than anybody else on the group), so that Shohei Ohtani may very well be lined up to start forward of an off day on Wednesday. His already diminished fastball was taking part in down, averaging only 88 mph. And early on, the Reds (68-65) tagged him with a fast run, after Spencer Steer led off with a double and later scored on Miguel Andújar’s groundout.

“It wasn’t a great night, stuff-wise,” Kershaw said. “Didn’t have a lot of life on the fastball, or really anything.”

And yet, beginning with that Andújar grounder, Kershaw proceeded to retire the last 14 batters he confronted. Six got here via strikeout, marking his second-highest strikeout whole this season. And of balls put in play, only 4 have been “hard hit” (with an exit velocity better than 95 mph). Not one left the bat at more than 100 mph.

It was the latest instance of the 37-year-old left-hander’s newfound recipe for success: Hitting both sides of the plate with his fastball, leaning closely on a slider that generated 5 whiffs and 4 outs, and mixing in his trademark curveball and newfangled splitter to keep an solely right-handed Reds lineup off-balance in a 72-pitch outing.

“We kind of flipped the script and just started throwing kind of a lot of different stuff, trying to be creative, keep them off balance,” Kershaw said, while giving credit to catcher Will Smith’s pitch-calling behind the plate.

“I’ve seen growth in that sense,” Roberts added. “Just in the last couple years, he’s been more open to doing different things. And I commend him for that. I think in that fourth inning [when Kershaw retired the side with two strikeouts], you could see — it didn’t matter what Will was putting down, he felt like he could throw anything. And that’s something that was really rare and really cool to see.”

Given the low pitch depend, Kershaw may need been ready to go past the fifth. He and Roberts appeared to have a transient dialog in the dugout before shaking fingers, a signal his evening was over. But between his fast (by modern-day requirements, at least) four-day turnaround, and the group’s cautious management of his workload total this season, Kershaw’s 5 innings have been lots.

“I think that he’s smart enough to understand how many bullets he has,” Roberts said.

On the season, Kershaw is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA, third-best among Dodgers starters this 12 months. He also finishes August with a 1.88 ERA in 5 begins, third-best among National League starters for the month.

“It was a good August,” Kershaw said. “Fun to be a part of it this time of year.”

While Kershaw cruised, the Dodgers’ offense also discovered a groove.

They erased the early 1-0 deficit in the underside of the first, when Mookie Betts walked, Freddie Freeman doubled and Betts scored on a throwing error by Reds left fielder Austin Hays.

They took a 2-1 lead in the fourth, after a leadoff double from Teoscar Hernández, an infield single from Michael Conforto on a scorching comebacker that ripped the glove proper off the hand of Reds pitcher Nick Martinez, and a sacrifice fly from Kiké Hernández (who returned to the lineup for the first time since early July after being out with an elbow injury).

Then, in the sixth, they broke the sport open with a four-run rally.

Smith turned around a center-cut fastball for an opposite-field, leadoff home run, a optimistic signal for the slumping catcher who entered the evening with a .150 batting average in August and only one long ball in his earlier 25 video games.

Miguel Rojas got here off the bench for a two-run double later in the inning, smoking a flyball to deep middle that acquired Noelvi Marte (who was making his first profession MLB start in the center of the outfield) turned around at the warning observe.

Ohtani adopted that with an RBI single to proper, serving to him break a one-for-16 skid.

The only dangerous news for the Dodgers on Tuesday got here pregame, when left-handed reliever Alex Vesia was positioned on the injured listing with a proper indirect pressure. Vesia described the injury as delicate and was hopeful of returning once his 15-day IL stint was full.

But even without him, the Dodgers’ bullpen largely coasted in reduction of Kershaw. Blake Treinen and Tanner Scott, both having not too long ago returned from the IL, pitched scoreless innings in the eighth and ninth (giving Scott his first save since returning). And though Hays hit a two-run home run in the seventh off Ben Casparius, it did little to make Tuesday really feel like something more than a late-season cakewalk — even amid a mad sprint down the season’s closing stretch.

Sasaki’s latest rehab start

In triple-A Oklahoma City, rookie pitcher Roki Sasaki made the third start of his minor-league rehab stint, giving up three runs in 3 ⅔ innings on 5 hits, two walks and 4 strikeouts. The most encouraging takeaway from the outing was Sasaki’s fastball velocity, which averaged 96 mph for a second-straight outing and topped out at 98.8 mph — the toughest he has thrown in his recovery from a shoulder injury. Sasaki is anticipated to make at least one more rehab start before being prepared to be activated.