LOS ANGELES — The hitter the Dodgers have been waiting for returned Monday. The offense, as a whole, remains a work in progress.
Max Muncy was activated onto the roster and into the starting lineup after spending a month away with a bone bruise in his left knee, but hits remained hard to come by in a 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Freddie Freeman is at least coming to life with his third home run in the past five games after going his first 23 games of July without one.
But the Dodgers managed just three hits all night and looked a lot like the team that went 10-16 while Muncy was out of action.
On the mound, Tyler Glasnow wobbled through the second inning when he gave up a home run to Masyn Winn, but otherwise dominated by retiring 17 of the last 18 batters he faced following a walk to Pedro Pages in the second.
Glasnow was left with a no-decision despite allowing one run on three hits with two walks and seven strikeouts in his seven innings of work.
The Cardinals went to work against the Dodgers’ bullpen first when Ivan Herrera hit a home run against Anthony Banda in the eighth for a 2-1 lead. They got to new roster addition Brock Stewart in the ninth when Willson Contreras and Lars Nootbaar led off with singles. Yohel Pozo brought home the go-ahead run with a two-out single.
With Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts on a continued downturn at the top of the order, the Dodgers turned Cardinals starter Sonny Gray back into a force. In his three starts before facing the Dodgers, Gray gave up a combined 30 hits with 17 earned runs and 19 total runs.
It was vintage Gray on Monday after he gave up one hit (Freeman’s home run) over seven innings with eight strikeouts.
The crowd attempted to do its part by giving the Betts the Trea Turner treatment, but to no avail. Fans were boisterous for Betts’ first and third at-bats of the game that resulted in a fly out and a strikeout looking, but the third strike appeared to be out of the zone on replay.
Philadelphia Phillies fans famously used energetic support with Turner to help him emerge from a 2023 slump during his first season with the club after leaving the Dodgers.
It is getting so bad for Betts that he was robbed of a hit in the ninth inning on a diving catch near the right-field foul line by Nootbaar. A hit would have moved Ohtani into scoring position with no outs in the ninth.
Ohtani and Betts combined to go 1-for-8 with three strikeouts.
Manager Dave Roberts said that even with Betts batting .231, with a .657 OPS, he plans on leaving the former MVP at the top of the order.
“I just feel that if you weigh the options, the alternatives and things like that, I’m going to continue to believe in him and trust that he’s the best option,” Roberts said. “And you know, whether it’s in the No. 1 or the No. 2 (spots), that’s what we’re going to roll with.
“I think that the questions are fair as far as kind of moving them down and things like that. But this guy is a premium player, and he’s just in this extended funk, but he’s going to work his way out of this.”
A two-week experiment to move Betts into the leadoff spot despite the struggles was to no avail and was aborted on the just-completed road trip.
With Winn’s home run and another from Ivan Herrera to give the Cardinals a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning, the Dodger got creative to tie it in the bottom of the eighth. Teoscar Hernandez doubled, while pinch runner Esteury Ruiz went to third on a Michael Conforto ground out and scored on an Andy Pages grounder.