LOS ANGELES — The team with the best record in baseball came to Dodger Stadium this weekend and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked if that would provide a “measuring stick” for where his team stands a quarter of the way into the season.
“I really believe for us, we’re our own measure in how we go about it regardless of opponent,” Roberts said.
Well, they haven’t been measuring up then.
The Atlanta Braves handed the Dodgers a 7-2 defeat Sunday afternoon, holding the Dodgers to two runs in the loss and taking two out of three games in the weekend series.
The Dodgers have now lost three of their past four series, seven of their past 11 games and 12 of their past 21 games. They have been held to two runs or fewer in seven of those past 11 games.
“I just think it’s a rough stretch for us,” said Max Muncy, who had half of the Dodgers’ hits Sunday and drove in all of their runs. “Obviously, we are facing tough pitching, and they’re making pitches, but I think for us as a group, we’re just going through a rough stretch. That’s part of baseball. We had some guys hit some balls hard, and we had some guys hitting the ball soft, and none of them seem to fall. It’s just kind of how the game goes sometimes.”
The Dodgers hope to get some help from a .179 hitter – Mookie Betts. Betts was off to his own slow start before he went on the injured list with a strained oblique muscle. He is expected to come off the IL on Monday.
“It’ll be kind of a shot in the arm to have Mookie back,” Roberts said after Sunday’s loss. “I know he’s excited. Just to kind of add a star player into your lineup lengthens things out. He comes in fresh, excited to be back. Hopefully, he can infuse some energy into this club.”
The Dodgers’ biggest star has been missing in action. Shohei Ohtani was 0 for 4 Sunday and has just four hits in his past 33 at-bats (.121) and only one home run in his past 106 plate appearances.
“I think he’s getting beat on some fastballs,” Roberts said when asked to diagnose Ohtani’s slump. “Balls at the belt line that he usually hits to the big part of the field, he’s a little late, underneath a little bit which just speaks to being late. I don’t know if it’s a mechanical thing with Shohei. But there’s a lot of pop ups, fly balls to the left fielder where, when he’s right, those are doubles and homers.
“When he’s not slugging, you can tell he’s not right because typically when he’s moving it forward it’s for slug. But he’s just not synced up right now.”
It’s no coincidence that the Dodgers’ offense isn’t either. Though Ohtani is hardly the only one in the Dodgers’ lineup underperforming, he is the only one with four MVPs.
“It’s kind of his burden in the sense of the expectations for him,” Roberts said. “If you look at the overall stat line, it’s okay (a .241 average and .792 OPS) but relative to who he is and what he’s done it’s certainly south of that. It certainly helps when he’s doing what he’s been doing for quite some time. The energy frees other guys up. But there are still eight other guys that are more than capable. And I think you could argue there’s a lot of guys below where they will be. But when you’ve got a guy like Shohei or Freddie, guys feed off guys like that.”
For now, they’re going hungry. They were shut out into the ninth inning Saturday, the eighth inning on Sunday.
“I think everyone’s trying to do a little bit more right now,” Muncy said. “We all know as a group that we’re struggling. That’s just something that everyone’s trying to take on their own shoulder, instead of just passing the baton, myself included. Once we get back to everyone just having really good team at bats, I think things will start clicking for guys, without even thinking about it. Just a rough stretch, and we got to get through it.”
After beating Chris Sale on Friday, the Dodgers’ own starting pitching put them in a hole early in back-to-back losses.
Blake Snell made his season debut on Saturday and gave up five runs in the first two innings. On Sunday, Justin Wrobleski was complicit in his own downfall during a four-run second inning that put the Dodgers behind to stay.
Wrobleski gave up one run on three consecutive singles with one out in the second inning. He was handed a way out when Sean Murphy bounced a ball right back to Wrobleski. But Wrobleski’s throw to Alex Freeland at second base was high, pulling Freeland off the bag. He was lucky to get his foot back down in time to get the forceout. But the inning-ending double play that it should have been disappeared.
“I was going up the mound (to make the throw to second base), so when you’re going up the mound like that you got to really stay on top of it,” Wrobleski said. “It just went up high on me.”
With the inning extended, Wrobleski walked the No. 9 hitter, Jorge Mateo, to load the bases, then Mauricio Dubon doubled down the third base line, driving in three runs.
Wrobleski retired the next 16 Braves in order before giving up a solo home run to Drake Baldwin in the eighth and another to Matt Olson in the ninth inning.
“It’s just, for me, one half-inning of being pissed off about it, and then you gotta keep going back out there and doing your thing,” Wrobleski said. “It’s frustrating. It’s annoying because now I look back at it and yeah, that’s what cost me from having a good outing.”
Down big early two games in a row, the Dodgers offered little resistance either time. They had just one hit and struck out eight times in six innings against Spencer Strider on Saturday and didn’t score until the ninth inning. They didn’t fare any better against Sunday’s starter, Bryce Elder, in a remarkably similar game.
The Dodgers put two runners on with two outs in the first inning but Muncy struck out, starting a stretch of 15 Dodgers retired in order by Elder who allowed just one hit and struck out eight in 5⅔ innings.
The Dodgers’ next baserunner didn’t come until Elder walked the bases loaded with two outs in the sixth inning. Handed a chance to get back into the game with one swing, Muncy made that swing, driving a ball to the wall in right field off reliever Robert Suarez. But Braves right fielder Eli White caught Muncy’s line drive, crashing into the wall as he did.
“‘Who do I gotta pay off at this point?’” Muncy said of his thoughts as White robbed him of extra bases. “I don’t know. I mean, next at-bat, I went up there and just said, ‘I’m gonna swing straight up. If I get it in the air, they can’t catch it.’ And it kind of worked.
“I had a lot of really good swings (in the series), just nothing to really show for it. And that’s just baseball.”
The next pitch Muncy saw was a hanging slider from Braves reliever Tyler Kinley in the eighth and he drove it beyond the right fielder’s range for a two-run home run this time and the Dodgers’ only runs of the game.