Tarik Skubal gave the Dodgers exactly the kind of start they were hoping for, and Teoscar Hernández kept swinging a hot bat as Los Angeles stretched its winning streak to six with a 3-2 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night.
The six straight wins match the Dodgers’ longest run of the season, a mark they had already hit from May 23-29 and again from August 17-23.
Skubal, moved from Wednesday to Tuesday after being flipped with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, worked deeper than he had in any start since joining the Dodgers. He opened by keeping Cincinnati off the board through his first trip through the lineup, but the Reds broke through in the third when Dane Myers singled with two outs and Elly De La Cruz followed with a towering homer into the back part of the left-field pavilion to tie the game.
That was the full extent of the damage. Skubal finished with 7 1/3 innings on 94 pitches, the first time he had pitched into the eighth inning on four days’ rest since his shutout against Cleveland on May 25, 2025.
He struck out five, not quite the overwhelming performance Roberts had described beforehand, but he was efficient enough to get through six on 84 pitches and then retire all three batters he faced in the seventh on just eight more. He returned for one more out in the eighth, getting Héctor Rodriguez before walking off to a warm ovation.
“He should be at 75 pitches through six innings, that’s when he’s really good, 80 pitches, something like that,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “When he’s efficient, that’s when we know we’ve got Tarik back, with the strikeouts on top of that.”
The Dodgers’ bullpen had to finish the job, and Edgardo Henriquez handled the heart of the Reds order first. He did allow a double to De La Cruz, but he stranded the tying run by striking out Sal Stewart looking. Tanner Scott then made it interesting in the ninth, walking Tanner Stephenson to start the inning before striking out the next two and ending it with a groundout.
Los Angeles built its lead by taking advantage of early chances, scoring in three different innings while threatening in each of the first six. Will Smith got the party started in the first, outlasting Nick Lodolo in a nine-pitch battle and launching his first home run since coming off the injured list exactly one week earlier. It was only the second time during this six-game surge that the Dodgers scored in the opening frame, with the other coming in Saturday’s two-run first.
Tommy Edman added another run in the second when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. That was the second time on this homestand a Dodger was plunked to force in a run, following Alex Call on Saturday against the Washington Nationals.
The hit by pitch was Edman’s 12th of the season, the most by any Dodger since 2023, when Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and James Outman all reached at least a dozen. Even more striking, Edman didn’t take his first HBP of the year until July 4.
Hernández was the other big story at the plate. With two outs in the third, he lined a ball that bounced past Myers in center and sent him racing around the bases.
He tried to stretch it into an inside-the-park homer, but De La Cruz fired in a fast relay throw and Hernández was cut down by several feet, settling for a triple. He made up for it in the fifth with a two-out single that scored Mookie Betts and put the Dodgers back on top, then added another single in the eighth.
Hernández finished with three hits and a walk, and his hit streak reached nine games. Over that stretch, he has 16 hits in 32 at-bats, a .500 clip.
The Dodgers will wrap up their nine-game homestand Wednesday night at 7:10 p.m. with Yamamoto on the mound against Reds right-hander Rhett Lowder.
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