LOS ANGELES — The parties are over for now. The winning continues.
The Dodgers started the season celebrating baseball’s global appeal in Tokyo then their own achievements at home. With no pre-game ceremony on Monday night, they just went to work, beating the Atlanta Braves, 6-1, behind a combined four-hitter from Tyler Glasnow and the bullpen.
The Dodgers have started the season 6-0 for the first time since 1981. They have not started a season with a longer winning streak since 1955, when the Brooklyn team started 10-0.
The Dodgers trailed at some point during four of their first five victories. Not Monday. They scored twice in the first inning against Braves starter Grant Holmes (the Dodgers’ first-round pick in the 2014 draft), twice more in the third and never trailed.
Shohei Ohtani walked to start the bottom of the first inning then rode home on Teoscar Hernandez’s two-run home run, a 436-foot drive to straightaway center field.
It was just the fourth hit in the first six games for Hernandez. But two were home runs, one a double and he has driven in eight runs already this season.
In the third inning, Mookie Betts reached on an infield single, Hernandez drew a walk and Michael Conforto doubled to drive in a run. Tommy Edman’s fly ball to the warning track in center field drove in another.
Holmes labored through four innings and the Dodgers welcomed Braves reliever Enyel De Los Santos with three hits and another run in the fifth, Will Smith driving it in with a two-out single.
The Dodgers have played three of their first six games without Freddie Freeman and two of those without Betts. The supporting cast has stepped up. Hernandez, Conforto, Edman and Smith have combined to drive in 20 of the Dodgers’ 36 runs in six games.
Kiké Hernandez hit their 14th home run of the season, a 412-foot drive into the left-field pavilion leading off the sixth inning.
Meanwhile, Tyler Glasnow was cruising through the Braves’ lineup – depleted by the continued absence of Ronald Acuña Jr. (yet to return from last year’s knee injury) and the 80-game suspension of Jurickson Profar (announced before the game Monday).
Glasnow walked back-to-back batters to start the second inning and Matt Olson to start the fourth. But he didn’t give up a hit until Jarred Kelenic’s one-out, ground-ball single in the fifth inning.
Making his first start since Aug. 11 (due to a sprained elbow), Glasnow struck out five of the first 11 Braves batters and eight in his five scoreless innings. He got 13 swings-and-misses (seven on his curveball) and 17 more called strikes.
Jack Dreyer and Alex Vesia continued the shutout through the seventh inning but Tanner Scott gave up a home run to Michael Harris II leading off the eighth. That ended a stretch of 29 scoreless innings for the Braves’ offense.
More to come on this story.