LOS ANGELES — Sometimes it is the bait, sometimes it is the weather and sometimes the ol’ fishin’ hole simply fails to deliver like it used to.
Expecting to catch their limit this week, the Dodgers were instead befuddled by the Miami Marlins, who had most of the answers from the mound and just enough from the plate.
The Marlins swam away with a 3-2 victory on Wednesday afternoon to take two of three in the series.
One day after Manager Dave Roberts questioned the team’s situational hitting, more issues surfaced Wednesday. The most crushing of all was the Dodgers’ bases-loaded situation with one out in the bottom of the ninth and Freddie Freeman at the plate.
Freeman sent a bouncing ball to Marlins second baseman Xavier Edwards, who tagged Shohei Ohtani retreating back to first and got his toe on the bag to complete the unassisted double play to end it.
With Freeman still standing on the bag and the Marlins gathered on the infield, a replay review sorted out the confusion and confirmed the Miami victory.
“I don’t think we’re collectively swinging the bats the way we were early,” Roberts said. “Sort of started in Colorado, I think. It’s one of those things where hitting is definitely cyclical. In total, we we’re at the top, near the top. The last 10 days, it just hasn’t been synced up. We just haven’t got those hits when we needed them.”
The Dodgers also had two runners on base with one out in the sixth inning after scoring a run, but failed to add on to the total. In the seventh, they wasted a leadoff walk to Ohtani.
Right-hander Tyler Glasnow managed to navigate his way around six walks, but made two costly mistakes, while the offense struggled against former Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara, who gave up two runs over six innings.
The Dodgers scored eight total runs in the series and three were charged to right-hander Pete Fairbanks, who left that appearance Friday with numbness in his hand and went on the injured list a day later.
It was the Dodgers who didn’t have much of a feel for anything during a rare midweek home day game.
“We’ve kind of been going through it, I would say as a group,” Freeman said. “Luckily we have really, really good pitching, you know, that’s why we’re kind of where we’re at right now.”
Freeman seems to be the one going through it the most. He hasn’t hit a home run in 19 games and is batting .129 over the past seven games.
“I had pitches to hit, I just didn’t hit ’em,” Freeman said. “I can’t speak for everybody else. I mean, I had strikes. I swung at the strikes. I didn’t hit the strikes.”
After not being used as a hitter Tuesday so he could focus exclusively on pitching, Ohtani returned to the top of the order and went 0 for 2 with three walks. Freeman went 0 for 5.
Andy Pages continues to slide after a hot start, and Mookie Betts remains out with an oblique injury. Max Muncy does have nine home runs but a lack of any offense in front of him has resulted in just 11 RBIs.
“It’s a long season, as we all know,” Roberts said. “You’d like everyone to get off to a good start, but a lot of guys are not performing to the back of their baseball cards. So you just hope that the work and the consistency of work will show benefits and it will balance out at some point.”
Even with the home runs he allowed to Liam Hicks and Esteury Ruiz, Glasnow was more than good enough in yet another strong start this season. The lack of run support made the home runs he allowed look even worse.
Glasnow allowed two runs on three hits over 5⅔ innings but had the six walks to go along with nine strikeouts.
“It was definitely a challenge today,” Glasnow said. “I think early on it felt good. The third and fourth inning felt great. And then the fifth and sixth I just was super weird. I just lost timing, flying open. It was just one of those days where it was hard to throw strikes.”
The Marlins led 1-0 on Hicks’ home run in the second inning that nearly made it to the loge level down the right-field line. The Dodgers tied it in their half of the second when Marlins shortstop Otto Lopez lost Alex Call’s pop-up in the sun, allowing Muncy to score.
The Marlins went back up 2-1 in the fifth on the home run from former Dodger Ruiz. It was Miami’s second hit of the game off Glasnow.
The Dodgers tied it again in the sixth on Dalton Rushing’s bloop single to right that scored Kyle Tucker, who led off the inning with a double.
Miami went up for good in the eighth inning against right-hander Will Klein (1-2), when Edwards led off with a single and scored on a bloop single to right field from Javier Sanoja.
“As an offense, the last few games haven’t been where we want it to be,” Freeman said. “So hopefully with the day off (Thursday) we’ll kick back into it.”