Hernandez Three-Run Blast Blows It Open, LAD Tops CIN 6-3

Teoscar Hernandez went 2-3 with a home run and 3 RBI to power Los Angeles past Cincinnati 6-3 on September 8. The story of the night was a five-run swing across two innings that turned a tight game into a comfortable Dodgers win.

Cincinnati looked like it had the right idea early. Elly De La Cruz launched a 412-foot shot to center in the first inning to put the Reds up 1-0, and Chase Burns kept Los Angeles completely off the board through three innings — no hits, no runs, one walk, five strikeouts. That was the high-water mark for Cincinnati. The game turned in the fifth, and it turned ugly. A throwing error by third baseman Hayes allowed two runs to score — Hernandez and Call both came home on the miscue, with Rojas reaching safely and advancing to third on the same play. The win probability swung from 48% to 77% on that sequence alone, a 29-point lurch that effectively handed Los Angeles control of the game.

Then Hernandez made it emphatic. In the sixth, he drove a 392-foot home run to left that scored Freeman and Muncy ahead of him, pushing the lead to 5-1. That three-run shot was the knockout blow, and it appears Williamson — who came on in relief for Cincinnati and walked five batters across 4.1 innings while allowing three earned runs — never found a way to slow the Dodgers down. Emmet Sheehan, meanwhile, was quietly excellent on the other side: 5.2 innings, just 3 hits, 1 earned run, and 10 strikeouts. Ten. That kind of performance gives a bullpen room to breathe.

Cincinnati did not go quietly. Eugenio Suarez hit a 403-foot homer to center in the seventh to make it 5-2, and in the eighth, Hector Rodriguez scored on a groundout to pull the Reds within two at 5-3. But Los Angeles answered immediately — a sacrifice fly by Smith scored Muncy to restore the three-run cushion at 6-3, and Evan Phillips closed it out with a clean inning, two strikeouts, no hits, no walks. The Reds got multi-hit games from De La Cruz, Rodriguez, and Carlos Jorge, so the lineup was not the problem. The pitching — specifically the five walks Williamson issued — looks like what unraveled Cincinnati's night.