Friday’s 9-6 Dodgers loss to the National League Central last place Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park ranks right up there as among the ugliest of the season for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts‘ team. I mean, the game was tied 5-5 with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth inning and a full count on Reds second baseman Jonathan India. Unfortunately, struggling Dodgers left-hander Alex Vesia grooved a 92.8-MPH four-seam fastball right down the middle, which India crushed for a grand slam home run down the left field line to put the game out of reach at 9-5.

Sure enough, and as we’ve come to expect from the Dodgers skipper, Roberts sugarcoated his team’s ugly loss yet again.

“Some really good at-bats?”– What about this painfully familiar tune, Doc?

What Roberts called “…some really good at-bats…” was six runs on 11 hits to the Reds nine runs on six hits. But those six Reds hits included India’s fifth-inning granny, a first-inning two-run home run by Reds left fielder Spencer Steer, and a fifth-inning solo shot by Reds center fielder Stuart Fairchild.

The silver lining to Friday’s continuing Dodgers nightmare is that catcher Will Smith hit his sixth home run of the season in the top of the fifth and Teoscar Hernández his 12th in the top of the ninth. Unfortunately, both were of the solo variety.

The other silver lining (if you care to call it that) is that the NL West second-place San Diego Padres and NL West fourth-place Arizona Diamondbacks also lost on Friday. Unfortunately, the San Francisco Giants won, to move into a second-place tie with San Diego 6.5 games back of the division-leading Dodgers.

Play Ball!

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