The defending World Series hampion Dodgers are 23-31 since July 4.
The Dodgers face plenty of questions with MLB playoffs approaching.
Los Angeles lost five of six against last-place Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
Losers of six games in a row and seven of eight, and coming off one of the most dispiriting regular season losses in franchise history, they witnessed two thunderclaps off the bat of Shohei Ohtani in the first three innings against Baltimore, a pair of towering solo home runs that pushed Ohtani’s season total to 48, his second consecutive 50-homer campaign in sight.
Betrayed all year, and especially of late, by a big-bucks bullpen badly failing to live up to its track records, the Dodgers instead enjoyed the stylings of imminent Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw and a trio of minimum wage relievers, as Kershaw dazzled by taking a shutout into the sixth inning and striking out eight off an assortment of beguiling sliders and curveballs, and even a couple punchouts looking at his 90 mph fastball.
It was a direly needed 5-2 victory Sept. 7, ensuring the Dodgers did not go 0-6 on a tour of last-place Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and preserved their one-game lead over the San Diego Padres in the National League West.
“We’re too good,” says Kershaw, the 37-year-old again once again pitching like an ace, “for it not to turn around.”
Yet one win could not camouflage all that ails the defending World Series champions, who are running out of time to address their woes before the games take on outsized importance.
For a ballclub aiming to repeat their championship feat, that will expend more than half a billion dollars on payrolls and luxury tax, mediocrity can feel like misery.
Check the vibes
And mediocre might be generous: The Dodgers are 23-31 since July 4, a period marked by their share of health woes but also breakdowns in all phases of their roster, most notably that embattled bullpen and a lineup with misfiring and wounded pieces.
After the Dodgers were shut out for 25 of their past 27 innings entering their Sept. 6 game, the hitters huddled pregame and listened to manager Dave Roberts’ counsel, that they needed “the freedom to fail, to go be themselves.”
Lifting that burden, Roberts said, would go a long way toward results.
“Giving them the freedom to play freely,” says Roberts. “With that, the hope is you’re going to see more smiles, some more sunflower seeds, and then with the (improved) energy.”
The sunflower seeds were a scarcely-veiled reference to struggling slugger Teoscar Hernández, usually the energy guy who splashes home run heroes with the salted projectiles upon their return to the dugout.
Yet lugging a .244 batting average, a .281 OBP and league-average production can take the salt out of anybody. With Hernández just 3 for 18 on this road trip, Roberts gave him and center fielder Andy Pages the day off in the series finale at Camden Yards.
The whole squad might have needed a blow after the events of Sept. 6, when ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto came within one out of a no-hitter, only to give up a two-out ninth-inning homer to Jackson Holliday, and watch helplessly as reliever Blake Treinen allowed four baserunners to reach and lefty Tanner Scott gave up his second walk-off hit in as many nights.
Grim stuff. But the next morning, right fielder Mookie Betts insisted, “the vibes were high.”
It doesn’t hurt when Ohtani sends the second pitch of the game 411 feet for an instant 1-0 lead. Or when Ohtani and Betts go back-to-back in the third inning, for a 5-2 lead.
Or when the trio of Scott (four years, $72 million), Kirby Yates (one year, $13 million) and Treinen (two years, $22 million) are idled for the late innings, and minimum-salaried rookies Edgardo Henriquez, Justin Wrobleski and Jack Dreyer pick up for Kershaw, recording the final 10 outs, seven by strikeout.
Wrobleski fanned five in two dominant innings, perhaps the prelude to a bullpen reordering Roberts hinted at before the game.
For a 79-64 club on an 89-win pace with just 18 games left, the Dodgers have no shortage of questions to clear up.
What’s the bullpen pecking order? Will Ohtani continue to stretch out as a starter or own the ninth inning, a concept Roberts did not shoot down when asked?
Can they hit enough? Will the sunflower seeds fly again?
“We’ve got one game on the Padres,” says Kershaw. “We just have to win games and go from there.”
And there will be internal reinforcements.
‘Put on your big boy pants’
In winning their first full-season championship since 1988, the Dodgers earned the privilege of experiencing one of the game’s more unpleasant sidelights: How difficult it is to repeat.
Nobody’s done it since 2000, and the Dodgers will almost certainly have to do it without the pleasure of a first-round bye. While Roberts reflexively mentioned building a bullpen to win 11 postseason games, reality – they are four games behind Philadelphia in the chase for the second-best division record and a first-round bye – suggests they’ll need to win 13.
Such is life on the repeat grind.
“When you’re the Dodgers, everybody kind of wants to give you the best,” says infielder Miguel Rojas. “We’ve been seeing that. They all want to beat you. But at the end of the day, that’s what we all signed up for.”
The lineup will get what should be a significant boost Sept. 7, when third baseman Max Muncy is activated after his second significant injured list stint this season. The burly 35-year-old is hardly a superstar but with an .880 OPS and an ability to put up one of the toughest plate appearances in the big leagues, he’s an elixir for the Dodgers lineup.
For whatever reason, they are 54-35 when Muncy is in the lineup. And 25-29 without him.
Utilityman Tommy Edman is also set to return in the next week, the club coming together in a season in which they needed all nine starting pitchers to survive the onslaught of injuries.
“It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact that we haven’t been together for a long period of time,” says Rojas. “It’s been hurting us. But I’m pretty positive that in mid-September, we’re going to have the team that we’re supposed to have, to go chase this pennant and go for the World Series.”
In this, the year of the flawed contender, the Dodgers fit right in. They just look a little funny with their Hall of Fame-laden roster stacked up with the mere mortal Mets and Padres and Cubs and Tigers.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that this year. Nor has there been a season in their soon-to-be 13-year playoff run where the Dodgers either won more than 100 games or the division, and often both.
Then again, nobody expected Kershaw to shake off injury and age to emerge as their best pitcher since Aug. 1, a span in which he’s 6-0 with a 2.10 ERA.
“We don’t lose a whole lot around here,” says Kershaw. “It’s not something to get used to, but when it does happen, baseball’s not as much fun. You’ve got to come to the field ready to work, ready to get going. You can’t dwell on it.
“It’s the greatest thing about baseball and the hardest thing about baseball: You play every day. You gotta put on your big boy pants and play.”