CINCINNATI – If only the Dodgers could bury their offense in cheese to make it more palatable like the locals do with the Skyline chili of which they are so inexplicably proud.
They turned in another unappetizing performance Saturday night, managing just five hits and wasting their best scoring opportunities in a 3-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
The loss was the Dodgers’ season-high fourth in a row.
But the offensive malaise goes back farther than that. Over their past 16 games, the Dodgers have averaged just 3.6 runs per game. Saturday was the fifth time in that stretch they managed to touch home plate no more than once and they are batting .216 as a team during this stretch.
Even their lone run of the game Saturday was just about as inoffensive as it could get.
They did load the bases with no outs in the second inning on a pair of singles by Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez and a walk of Gavin Lux. But Smith trotted home as Jason Heyward bounced into a double play and the Dodgers’ scoring threat was neutered.
They did even less with Freddie Freeman’s leadoff double in the fourth inning and Shohei Ohtani’s one-out triple in the sixth. Both were stranded, part of an 0-for-7 performance with runners in scoring position.
That has been a recurring theme during this stretch. The Dodgers are batting .205 (26 for 127) over their past 16 games. Ohtani’s triple was their last hit in the game.
Meanwhile in his fourth start since returning from elbow surgery, Dodgers starter Walker Buehler is still trying to miss bats.
He didn’t the first time he faced the Reds. Last week at Dodger Stadium, he held them scoreless for six innings, allowing just three hits and striking out seven. The start seemed to give hope that Buehler was successfully reinventing himself to accommodate his new post-surgery reality.
The second time around against the Reds, though, looked more like his first two starts. He gave up solo home runs to Spencer Steer on a hanging slider in the first inning and to Will Benson on a grooved fastball in the third.
Buehler did get three strikeouts on called third strikes but his first 60 pitches generated just three swings-and-misses. He threw a season-high 91 pitches over 5 2/3 innings. The Reds swung and missed just six times.
The Reds got to him for another run in the sixth inning on a leadoff double by Jacob Hurtibise and an RBI single by Elly De La Cruz before Buehler’s day was done. Discounting his scoreless outing against the Reds, Buehler has given up 17 hits (including five home runs) in 13 innings.