Post-2025 NLWC Game 2 Thread: Dodgers Advance to NLDS @ Philadelphia

Here's what Dodger pitchers see for the strike zone in the eighth inning.

DODGERS 8, REDS 4
DODGERS WIN NLWC 2-0

The other Wild Card series today were pure chaos. Cleveland rose from the dead, scoring five in the bottom of the eighth inning, to tie their series 1-1. San Diego punched back in Chicago, with Manny Machado hitting a key two-run HR in the fifth, to tie their series 1-1. And then Jazz Chisholm's speed saved the Yankees' bacon, with New York downing Boston 4-3, to tie their series 1-1.

That left the Dodgers/Reds series, with the Dodgers up 1-0 in the series. It sure looked like the baseball gods wanted another WC series tie, when Teoscar Hernandez boffed a lazy fly ball in the first inning to put the Reds up 2-0 and drive Yoshinobu Yamamoto's pitch count up by almost double.

But the Dodgers battled back to take a 3-2 lead in the fourth, and then opened up for four runs in the sixth to make it 7-2 Los Angeles. In the seventh inning, Mookie Betts doubled in another run; Betts went 4-for-5 with 3 RBI and was the player of the game. Betts batted .667 with a 1.700 OPS in this NL Wild Card series, which is just unreal, even with the small sample size.

Meanwhile, despite being behind from the start, Yamamoto perservered and had an outstanding outing: 113 pitches, 6.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 2 BB and 9 Ks. The 113 pitches was his season high.

Leave it to the Dodgers to crumble in the eighth--again!--with Emmet Sheehan getting only one out and giving up two ER (and two walks), before Alex Vesia (who was hopeless last night) came in mid-AB and got a one-pitch striekout before striking out TJ Friedl (the tying run!) to escape a bases loaded jam.

I think I heard Rick Monday say that the Dodgers used 100 pitches to get through the two eighth innings in this NLWC series. That is just not going to cut it.

Roki Sasaki had a clean ninth inning to close out the game, which is a good sign. The Dodgers had three errors in this game: Teosscar Hernandez' error, then Kiké Hernandez and Ben Rortvedt joined the sloppy parade.

That lousy bullpen and lazy fielding ain't gonna cut it in Philadelphia. We need to regroup, fast.

And I'm not even going to talk about Andy Pages being 0-for-9 with 2 Ks this series.