Reds Walk Into Dodger Stadium With Nothing to Lose

A 69-74 Cincinnati squad heads to Dodger Stadium to face an 86-57 Los Angeles team that has spent the season making opponents look overmatched. No model read is available for this one, so we're going straight to the matchup tape.

Chase Burns is expected to take the mound for Cincinnati against a Dodgers lineup that features two of the most dangerous hitters in the National League. Emmet Sheehan is set to start for Los Angeles, and on paper this is exactly the kind of assignment a young arm wants — a winning team behind him, a home crowd, and a Cincinnati offense that has been inconsistent enough to give a pitcher room to breathe. That said, the Reds are not without weapons, and dismissing them entirely would be a mistake.

Sal Stewart is the name Cincinnati needs to put in the lineup card and let cook. At 31 home runs and 107 RBI on the season, Stewart has been the Reds' most productive bat by a significant margin — the kind of hitter who can single-handedly change the complexion of a game against any pitching staff. Elly De La Cruz, hitting .280, gives Cincinnati a legitimate threat at the top of the order who can create problems in ways that don't always show up in the box score. The Reds have the individual talent to hang in this game. Whether they have the collective consistency is the real question.

On the other side, Freddie Freeman is hitting .301 and Shohei Ohtani has 30 home runs and 80 RBI — a pairing that makes Los Angeles's lineup genuinely punishing from top to bottom. Sheehan doesn't need to be dominant tonight; he just needs to be competent, because the offense behind him is capable of doing the heavy lifting. Our model doesn't have a validated read on this game, so we're not going to manufacture conviction where none exists. What we can say plainly: the Dodgers are the better team by record, by lineup depth, and by home-field advantage. Burns and Stewart will need to be exceptional for Cincinnati to leave Dodger Stadium with a win.