The Los Angeles Dodgers still hold the best record in baseball but have hit a bit of a rough patch since taking a six-game winning streak into last weekend’s series with the San Diego Padres.
L.A. won the first two games at Petco Park and were on the verge of completing a sweep before the Padres mounted a comeback in the series finale. That started a stretch of four losses in the last five games for the Dodgers.
In six games since their 11-6 win in 12 innings against the Padres, the Dodgers collectively are batting .128.
Their latest woes have come against rookie Ryan Weathers — who held them to just one hit — a Walker Buehler single — and had six strikeouts over 5.2 innings — and Yu Darvish. Including his MLB debut in last year’s National League Division Series, Weathers has not allowed a run to the Dodgers in 10.2 innings pitched over three appearances (two starts).
“I thought Weathers mixed and matched. He has a good fastball, so we couldn’t figure him out early. When they went to the ‘pen, things started to open up for us. I thought we were taking good at-bats,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“Obviously the AJ homer, the Neuse homer were big. We had a chance to win tonight and we got beat. Good baseball game. … I thought the second half of the game we took really good at-bats, so on the offensive side I’m not too concerned.”
When informed of the statistics behind the Dodgers’ offensive slump, Roberts maintained there was no need to panic. “I can appreciate the devil’s advocate angle, but we’ve got a lot of good offensive players who have track records to back it up,” he said. “I think we’ll be fine.
“There’s always parts of a season where there’s a lull offensively. That happens. Those pitchers are pretty good too. I’m OK with the offense.”
Dodgers injuries piling up
Still without Cody Bellinger and Gavin Lux, the Dodgers scratched Chris Taylor and Gavin Lux from the lineup on Thursday in the span of just over one hour. Both players were held out because of lower back stiffness.
“They couldn’t swing the bat, so we had to stay away from those guys. They were both available to pinch-run potentially. We’ll see how they respond to treatment,” Roberts said.
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