The adage is almost as old as baseball itself: 0 ball against the best teams but beating up on the lesser-record teams.The Los Angeles Dodgers are getting part of the equation right. After defeating the first-place Colorado Rockies 9-6 on Sunday Hank Aaron Jersey , they’re 9-7 against one of the teams they’re chasing for the National League West title and 7-9 against the other, the Arizona Diamondbacks.They’re also a combined 8-6 against the other two NL first-place clubs, going 5-2 against the Atlanta Braves and 3-4 against the Chicago Cubs. They’re 4-3 against the Milwaukee Brewers, who currently lead the NL wild-card standings.Article continues below ...Los Angeles took two of three in Denver despite being without closer Kenley Jansen (irregular heartbeat) to close to within one-half game of Colorado in the NL West. Justin Turner was 4-for-5 with three extra-base hits Sunday — a homer and two doubles — and Enrique Hernandez also homered.“We’re trying to chase those guys down,” Turner told the team’s website. “The bullpen answered the bell, we won the two games we had a lead. We scored runs, got into the other team’s bullpen in the third inning.”But the Dodgers, who open a three-game series against the last-place Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park on Monday night, aren’t entirely taking care of business against the teams that could give them a path to a sixth consecutive division.They’re 2-4 against the last-place Miami Marlins and 0-4 against the Reds, who swept them in a four-game series at Dodger Stadium on May 10-13 — arguably the highlight of the Reds’ season and the lowest point of the Dodgers’ season. Outside of that series, Cincinnati is 57-83 in 2018.If it weren’t for the San Diego Padres, who’ve dropped 12 of 16 to their southern California rivals http://www.bravesfanproshop.com/authentic-nick-markakis-jersey , the Dodgers would be having a frustratingly poor season against the teams they theoretically should be defeating.At least they’ll be sending a pitcher to the mound Monday night who knows how to beat the Reds, who’ve lost eight of 12 and 13 of 18. They lost 7-6 Sunday to the San Diego Padres in a game that didn’t end until almost 9 p.m. EDT because of a 92-minute rain delay.Left-hander Alex Wood (8-6) will be looking to improve to 4-0 in his career against the Reds, although he hasn’t faced them since June 6, 2017. In that game, he held the Reds to one run and four hits in eight innings before Jansen finished a 3-1 Dodgers win at Great American Ball Park.Overall, Wood is 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA in four career starts against Cincinnati, limiting their hitters to a .184 average. He will be pitching for the first time in a week, or since he didn’t figure in the decision as the Dodgers lost 4-2 to the New York Mets last Monday in Dodger Stadium. He allowed one run and five hits in five innings. Wood is 7-1 with a 2.39 ERA and a .229 opponents’ batting average in his last 13 starts. He’ll face left-hander Cody Reed (0-2), who is coming off a 7-3 loss Tuesday to the Pittsburgh Pirates in his first Reds start since April 9.Reed gave up six runs and nine hits in five innings in Pittsburgh after going 4-8 with a 3.92 ERA in 17 starts with Triple-A Louisville. This will be his 15th career start since debuting in the majors in 2016, a year after Cincinnati acquired him from the Kansas City Royals in the Jonny Cueto trade. The Reds are 0-14 in his previous starts.Reed, who is 1-10 with a 6.22 ERA in 35 career major league games, tried putting a positive spin on his most recent start.“I know that I’m jamming guys Julio Teheran Jersey , I’m getting the ball in, working away, up and down,” Reed said. “I felt fine. I was throwing strikes, threw five (innings) and battled. I made it through five and tried to keep my game in it as much as I could.”The Dodgers haven’t played in Cincinnati since sweeping a three-game series there June 16-18, 2017, outscoring the Reds 21-10. As free agency continues to drag into the start of spring training, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright thinks Major League Baseball is going to have a significant problem on its hands.Speaking to Tim McKernan of InsideSTL.com (h/t Justin Terranova of theNew York Post), Wainwright suggested the possibility of a midseason walkout by the players:nless something changes, there's going to be a strike, 100 percent. I'm just worried people are going to walk out midseason. ...Thirty owners need to be answering that because you have one of the best players in the game that needs a job and no one is signing him.You've got 30 owners who have a sabermetric box that will sign players when they were in that box. They don't take any intangibles or anything else into play and that's a sad thing.Chicago Cubs reliever Brad Brach shared similar comments with reporters Friday, via NBC Sports Chicago's Tony Andracki:"I really don't know [what to make of the state of free agency].We talked to certain teams and they told us http://www.bravesfanproshop.com/authentic-nick-markakis-jersey , 'We have an algorithm and here's where you fall in that scale.' It's just kinda weird that all offers are the same that come around the same time and everybody tells you there's an algorithm, but you figure teams have different ones, but I don't know."The state of MLB free agency has become a hot topic as marquee players have waited months into the offseason before signing contracts over the past two years.Yu Darvish, J.D. Martinez and Eric Hosmer went through the winter last year before agreeing to deals in February.With all 30 teams reporting to spring training this week, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel are among the best free agents still available.Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander vented his frustration at the pace of free agency onTwitterthis week."System is broken," he wrote. "They blame 'rebuilding' but that's BS. You're telling me you couldn't sign Bryce or Manny for 10 years and go from there? Seems like a good place to start a rebuild to me. [Age] 26-36 is a great performance window too."Per ESPN.com'sJeff Passan, 18 out of 30 MLB teams are at least $50 million below the $206 million luxury-tax threshold.There is still time for for players like Harper, Machado, Kimbrel and Keuchel to negotiate deals that will make them happy. The regular season doesn't begin until March 28.But the ongoing strife between players and owners could leave MLB at risk of its first work stoppage since the 1994-95 strike.