My Kingdom For an RBI Groundout: Dodgers Put Away Reds, 8-4

The noble tiger is a rare beast, but Wednesday night, there was a sighting in Los Angeles. A NOBLETIGER, for those of you who are perhaps less online than I am, is a contrived but delightful acronym: No Outs Bases Loaded Ending in Team Incapable of Getting Easy Run. In other words, it’s a team going from bases loaded and nobody out to a scoreless inning, and Cincinnati’s feline accomplishment felt like the last moment before it was washed away by the crushing tide of Los Angeleno excellence.

The Reds started Game 2 of their Wild Card Series against the Dodgers with a burst of energy. A hit-by-pitch, a fielding error, a slashed groundball single, and suddenly the underdogs were up 2-0 on the indomitable Yoshinobu Yamamoto. They struggled to find much more traction against him for the next three innings, nine up and nine down, but those initial two runs gave them a bulwark against the perpetual Dodger onslaught on the other side of the field.

Zack Littell, Yamamoto’s counterpart, wasn’t quite as sharp, but he held the Dodgers at bay with smoke and mirrors for three innings. In the fourth, the constant pressure became too much; the bottom half of the Dodgers order struck for two runs, putting them up 3-2, and the Reds called in Nick Lodolo from the bullpen to escape the inning. After the teams exchanged scoreless frames in the fifth, the stage was set for our fateful inning.

TJ Friedl, Cincinnati’s leadoff hitter, started things off with a smashed line drive to right. Spencer Steer followed by roping a liner of his own to center. Gavin Lux chopped one off of home plate that Max Muncy could only pocket. Suddenly Yamamoto was in a world of trouble, with the tying run almost certain to score and pressure aplenty behind that one. Even better for the Reds, they had their 4-5-6 hitters coming up.

Yamamoto pitched with his usual unhurried precision, starting Austin Hays with two pitches that just missed the lower inside corner. Even down 2-0, Yamamoto kept working the edges, spotting a cutter high and outside, and Hays turned on it. He hit it on a line, but a sinking line; in the end, it was a one-hopper to Mookie Betts that didn’t bounce until just in front of him. That froze the runners, who weren’t sure if the ball would be caught on the fly. Betts had plenty of time to throw home and record the first out.

Next up was Sal Stewart, the young phenom who marauded his way through the minors at 21 and forced his way not just onto the playoff roster, but into the cleanup spot. But you know one thing 21-year-olds are? Impatient. Yamamoto’s plan remained unchanged. He threw a sinker too low for ball one. He threw a cutter, too low again, but Stewart couldn’t lay off. The 1-1 pitch was a slider that fooled Stewart, who was expecting a letter-high fastball. Instead he got a breaking ball that clipped the bottom of the zone for a more or less unhittable strike two. Now having seen three pitch types in three pitches, Stewart was on his back foot when Yamamoto pulled out a nasty curveball, even lower and farther away from Stewart, drawing a helpless wave for strike three.

The threat wasn’t over. Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati’s best hitter, was batting sixth (look, don’t ask me why, I don’t agree with it) and thus had a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This time Yamamoto began the plate appearance with a wrinkle. Instead of his customary bottom-of-zone nibble, Yamamoto started De La Cruz with a curveball right down the 101. De La Cruz, surely in take mode after seeing Yamamoto carve up his teammates all day with pitches that never quite tickled the fringes of the zone, was locked up for an easy strike one.

After a yanked fastball inside took the count to 1-1, Yamamoto put De La Cruz in the spin cycle. Curveball low. Curveball to the same location. Fastball high. De La Cruz, in swing mode, kept fouling the ball off and staying alive, but he was barely hanging in there against Yamamoto’s precision. The next pitch was another hook, sharper and faster than the first three he’d shown, and it drew a desperate, futile swing. Inning over, threat averted, and just like that, Cincinnati’s chance of winning the game slipped away.

I know that baseball isn’t usually like that. Failing to score in an inning isn’t the end of the world; you could always score in the next, or your opponents could come up short and keep giving you more chances. But this isn’t a mid-July game against your divisional rival’s injury-weakened lineup. These are the Los Angeles Dodgers you’re facing. Two of the first three batters reached to start the bottom of the sixth. To make matters much much worse, those three were the bottom of the order. Two on and one out for Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, et al? I barely felt surprised when Ohtani muscled an RBI single, Betts blasted a double, and (after an intentional pass to Freeman) Teoscar Hernández hit a laser beam two-run double to push the lead to 7-2.

To be fair, that wasn’t the only chance the Reds had to do some damage with the bases loaded. In the eighth inning, they again started hot, with four straight batters reaching base to load them up and cut the deficit to 8-3. A sacrifice fly got them back within four, and a Matt McLain walk then brought the tying run to the plate. Could a miraculous grand slam resurrect the seemingly dead and buried Reds and push the defending champions a bit?

It could not. Alex Vesia, who was the team’s best regular reliever down the stretch before their postseason plans turned to erstwhile starters and future Hall of Famers, worked Friedl perfectly even as Friedl battled to put something in play. The two did battle on the outside edge, with Vesia painting fastballs both high and low and Friedl simply punching them foul. For six pitches, Friedl had his defenses dialed in, leaning over the outside half to counter Vesia’s dialed-in location. But Vesia had the perfect counter. After five fastballs in his first six pitches, he started his signature slider inside and let it carve across the plate. Friedl couldn’t pull the trigger; his mind saw a fastball that would miss the plate inside, and he could only watch in dismay as the slider instead caught the outside corner for strike three, ending the last threat of the game.

The Dodgers glitterati, for their part, did the thing they always seem to be doing. Yamamoto was brilliant, allowing only two unearned runs over 6 2/3 innings. He struck out nine Reds, walked only two, and had the ball on a string all night. Those two walks, in fact, both came in his last frame of work as he threw a career high 117 pitches. Before then, he was in complete command at seemingly all points. He looked like one of the best pitchers in the world, which of course he is.

The hitting stars did their part too. Even without any home runs, the Dodgers were relentless. Ohtani reached base twice. Betts had three doubles as part of a four-hit night. Hernández smashed that key double. The bottom of the lineup even pulled its weight; the 7-9 hitters each had two hits. When they’re all clicking like this, the Los Angeles lineup feels like an unsolvable riddle, and the Reds didn’t even come close with their guesses in this series. There’s no shame in that. The Dodgers are a serious team. Tonight, they showed up and took care of business to set up a clash with the Phillies in what should be an epic NLDS.