Dodgers win Game 1 vs. Reds behind Blake Snell, 5-HR barrage - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers ended a lethargic, inconsistent regular season in dominant fashion, reeling off 15 wins in a stretch of 20 games. All told, they finished with 93 victories, their lowest total in seven years and a far cry from the wins record so many outsiders pegged them for at the outset. It forced them to play in the wild-card round for the first time since Major League Baseball's postseason format expanded. But they believed they had found their best selves heading into the playoffs.

Then — for seven innings, at least — it showed up.

The Dodgers chased young Cincinnati Reds fireballer Hunter Greene after just three innings in Tuesday night's Game 1 of their National League Wild Card Series. Teoscar Hernandez and Shohei Ohtani each homered twice for L.A., five different hitters collected multiple hits and Blake Snell dominated in his Dodgers postseason debut, allowing just two runs in seven innings. If not for a faulty bullpen, the Dodgers' introduction to the 2025 postseason would have been a laugher. They nonetheless settled for a 10-5 victory, putting them one win away from advancing to the NL Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies.

«We've been playing pretty good baseball the last two weeks, three weeks,» Hernandez said. «We know the things that we can do, especially in big moments like this.»

Ohtani started the scoring with a 117.7 mph line-drive home run to lead off the bottom of the first, prompting flashbacks of the shot he hit off Dylan Cease in his second career postseason at-bat last fall. In the fourth, Ohtani tacked on a 454-foot homer, becoming the first player in the Statcast era (since 2015) to hit home runs of 450-plus feet and 115-plus mph in the same playoff game.

In between, the