The Dodgers Have Face-Planted

The Dodgers may have peaked too early. On July 3, they completed a three-game sweep of the White Sox, lifting their record to a season-high 24 games over .500 (56-32) and their NL West lead to nine games over both the Padres and Giants. It’s been mostly downhill since then for Los Angeles, starting with a seven-game losing streak from July 4–11, which included three-game sweeps by the Astros and Brewers. This week, they dropped three straight to the Angels while the Padres swept the Giants, knocking the Dodgers out of first place for the first time since April 27. The two Southern California rivals face off six times in the next 10 days, bookended by three-game series in Los Angeles this weekend and San Diego next weekend.

I’ll zoom out to the bigger picture below and in a subsequent Padres installment, but Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Angels game had a couple moments that had to be seen to be believed. The Dodgers scratched out a run in the top of the first against Angels starter Victor Mederos, but opposite number Emmet Sheehan, who has generally pitched quite well since returning from Tommy John surgery in mid-June, fell behind each of the first five Angels he faced, leading to three first-inning runs. A two-run Dalton Rushing homer tied it in the second; the Angels retook the lead with runs in the third and fourth, but the Dodgers’ two-out rally for two runs tied it in the fifth, 5-5.

The Dodgers had a golden opportunity to break the game open when Miguel Rojas and Rushing both singled off reliever Brock Burke to open the sixth. Up came Shohei Ohtani, who amid the team’s recent malaise entered the game on a 17-for-38 run that included homers in three straight games. Ohtani lined a Burke fastball up the middle, but shortstop Zach Neto, shifted about six feet to the left of second base, speared it and was perfectly positioned to double off Rojas, then fire to first. Rushing, who had ranged too far towards second, punctuated becoming the third out in the triple play by face-planting while trying to avoid a tag (luckily, he at least escaped injury). Oof.

You can’t keep a great hitter down, though. With the score still tied in the top of the ninth, old friend Kenley Jansen fell behind Ohtani and then left a cutter over the middle of the plate, which Ohtani demolished. His 114.8-mph go-ahead homer — his hardest-hit ball in about six weeks — was so emphatic that somewhere in the afterlife Vin Scully may have hollered, “Holy mackerel!”

Alas, the Dodgers could not hold the lead. Alex Vesia fell behind four of the six batters he faced in the ninth – a recurring theme for the Dodgers that night — with Nolan Schanuel’s sacrifice fly plating Luis Rengifo as the tying run. Vesia departed after walking Mike Trout to load the bases with two outs, and while Ben Casparius calmly struck out Taylor Ward — who had already provided an RBI single and a solo homer — to send the game to extras, he yielded back-to-back singles to Christian Moore and Jo Adell in the 10th, and that was the ballgame.

Ohtani was in the spotlight again on Wednesday, attempting to complete his first five-inning start as a Dodger. He helped stake himself to a 3-0 lead with a game-opening triple off Kyle Hendricks, soon followed by Will Smith’s two-run homer, but he gave back two runs in the second, serving up a homer to Ward and a double to Yoán Moncada, who scored thanks to a couple of deep fly balls. With his pitch count already at 62 — eight beyond his previous season high, set last week — he struck out Rengifo to start the fourth, then yielded a pair of singles and a two-run double by Neto, forcing manager Dave Roberts to turn to Anthony Banda to bail him out. While the Dodgers preserved the 5-4 lead, the Angels converted back-to-back walks by Trout (whom Ohtani struck out twice) and Ward into the tying and go-ahead runs when Edgardo Henriquez allowed a two-run single to Logan O’Hoppe.

When Jansen set down Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Smith in order, the Angels completed a season sweep of the Freeway Series and handed the Dodgers their fourth loss in a row and their 21st since July 3, against just 12 victories; the Giants have also gone 12-21 to tumble out of the division race, but the Padres have gone 23-12, the NL’s second-best record behind the red-hot Brewers (28-5). Here’s our Playoff Odds graph:

The Dodgers, who had a 98.2% chance of winning the division as of July 3, have dropped to a season-low 61.9%, while the Padres’ odds have improved from a minuscule 0.6% to a season-high 38%. Los Angeles, which has won three straight division titles and 11 of the last 12, is still favored based upon the two teams’ projections going forward — even while accounting for the Padres’ aggressive upgrades at the July 31 trade deadline, contrasted against the Dodgers’ much more conservative approach — but the cracks in their foundation are showing.

Three factors help explain how this race has tightened. For one, the majors’ most robust offense up until early July has become very ordinary amid injuries and underperformance; meanwhile, the Padres’ offense has improved, spurred by timely deadline additions such as left fielder Ramón Laureano and catcher Freddy Fermin, both of whom filled Replacement-Level Killer–sized holes. Second, the Padres’ run prevention has taken a big step forward, driven by the performance of their already-superior bullpen. And third, the difference in the two teams’ fates since has been magnified by diverging results in one-run games:

Here are the splits for the offense, rotation, and bullpen:

And the principal Dodgers hitters:

Up until early July, the Dodgers’ lineup was especially deep, with five regulars producing a 128 wRC+ or better, two in the vicinity of league average while playing premium defensive positions (Betts and Edman), one who’s been more or less average since a hot April (Teoscar Hernández), and one black hole (Conforto) — or two, if you count their especially busy utilityman (Enrique Hernández).

Ohtani remains the league’s most potent bat, with the NL’s highest slugging percentage (.630) and wRC+ (174). While Smith and Freeman have cooled off, Smith leads the NL in both batting average (.312) and on-base percentage (.416) while ranking second in wRC+ (163), with Freeman third in AVG (.300), ninth in OBP (.372) and 12th in wRC+ (136). Muncy, who missed five weeks due to a bone bruise in his left knee — an injury that looked much worse when he sustained it moments before Clayton Kershaw notched his 3,000th strikeout on July 2 — has been impossibly hot in eight games since returning, but he was scratched from Wednesday’s lineup due to soreness in his right side and is (gulp) heading for imaging.

Pages has regressed after an unexpectedly strong first half, with Edman, Betts, and Teoscar Hernández all crashing to varying degrees as well, though the last two have heated up over shorter spans in recent days; Betts is 14-for-35 across an eight-game hitting streak. Conforto remains a drag on the offense, and Call, a platoon partner acquired from Washington at the deadline, has yet to distinguish himself. Neither the improved performance of Rojas (filling in at second and third), nor the arrival of Freeland, a 50-FV prospect who’s currently no. 39 on The Board, has offset the loss of other moving parts. Edman and Enrique Hernández are both out until September; the former lost 16 games in May due to inflammation in his right ankle, then sprained the same ankle on August 3, while the latter has been out since July 6 due to inflammation in his left elbow. Kim, out since July 29 due to bursitis in his left shoulder, is ramping up his level of activity.

The offense’s decline has come just as the rotation — which at some points has been without five former All-Stars, counting Ohtani during his rehab from UCL reconstruction — has finally rounded into shape. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has faded after a hot start, but he hasn’t missed a turn, and leads the team with 126.2 innings, with a 2.84 ERA and 3.06 ERA. Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, and Blake Snell have all pitched well since coming off the IL, with the future Hall of Famer rebounding from offseason knee and foot surgeries and the other two from bouts of shoulder inflammation. Kershaw has put up a 3.14 ERA and 3.79 FIP in 14 starts since returning in mid-May. Glasnow, who missed 10 weeks from late May to early July, has posted a 3.08 ERA and 4.24 FIP (walks and homers have been problems) in 11 starts. Snell, who missed four months but has put up a 2.37 ERA and 3.89 FIP in four starts, punched out a season-high 10 in five shutout innings against Toronto on Saturday. The 25-year-old Sheehan’s stuff and command have improved since his abbreviated 2023 rookie season; even with Tuesday’s slog, he’s got a 3.22 ERA and 3.86 FIP in six starts and two relief appearances totaling 35 innings.

Ohtani owns a 3.47 ERA and 2.13 FIP in nine abbreviated starts totaling 23.1 innings. The Dodgers don’t plan to push him past five innings before the playoffs, with Roberts saying, “He’s just such a valuable player to us offensively, as a pitcher, and so to push for an extra inning, or call it five extra innings in totality, it’s just not worth it. There’s just way too much downside, instead of just staying the course.”

If they reach October with a starting pitching pool that includes Yamamoto, Glasnow, Snell, Kershaw, and Ohtani, the Dodgers will be sitting pretty, but their recent histories are ominous, and the margin for error has dwindled. To accommodate the recent returnees, the Dodgers dealt Dustin May to Boston on July 31. Even with his clunky 4.85 ERA, his 104 innings (still second to Yamamoto) provided extra value, though after missing a season and a half due to Tommy John surgery and an esophageal tear, the team didn’t intend to push him much further. Meanwhile, Tony Gonsolin is done for the year; after missing all of 2024 due to TJ, he underwent a UCL internal brace procedure and a flexor cleanup on Tuesday. Sheehan, with 54.2 innings between the minors and majors, will likely face workload limits at some point, leaving Roki Sasaki as the team’s other depth piece. After struggling to a 4.72 ERA and 4.61 FIP in his first 34.1 major league innings, he’s been out since mid-May due to a shoulder impingement; he’ll begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Oklahoma City on Thursday.

Despite their name-brand starters, the Dodgers rotation ranks dead last in innings (559.2), taxing a bullpen whose 516.2 innings is 24.2 more than any other team; its 4.20 ERA ranks 20th in the majors overall and has risen since July 3. Deadline acquisition Brock Stewart just landed on the IL due to shoulder inflammation, joining Brusdar Graterol (out until at least September likely done for the year after offseason labrum surgery), Evan Phillips (TJ), Michael Kopech (rehabbing from a meniscectomy in his right knee), Tanner Scott (out since July 22 due to elbow inflammation), and Kirby Yates (out since July 29 due to lower back pain). Kopech hadn’t allowed a run in seven innings before getting injured, but both Scott and Yates carried ERAs and FIPs above 4.00 to the IL, so who knows how effective they’ll be upon returning.

Given those injuries, Banda has made 18 appearances during the Dodgers’ 33-game skid, and Vesia and Jack Dreyer 15 apiece, an unsustainable pace. Blake Treinen has struggled to find the strike zone after missing more than three months due to forearm tightness, Alexis Díaz hasn’t been much help since being acquired from the Reds, and the team has churned through a dizzying number of here-today, gone-tomorrow arms; their total of 38 pitchers is tied for second in the majors.

Sasaki’s return could push Sheehan to the bullpen, or for that matter, both could wind up there. Two other live arms are worth noting. Bobby Miller, who’s made just two major league appearances this year after a disastrous sophomore season triggered by a bout of shoulder soreness, posted a 5.58 ERA in his first 69.1 innings at OKC, primarily as a starter, but shifted to short relief in late July. He’s spun six consecutive hitless innings while allowing just one walk and striking out four, with his average four-seam velocity improving from 97.8 mph to 99.1. Kyle Hurt, working his way back from his July 30, 2024 Tommy John, could be nearing a rehab assignment; Eric Longenhagen has a report from the back fields in Arizona on him (and a few other Dodgers and Padres arms) here.

This weekend’s pitching matchups haven’t been formalized, but the Dodgers, who lead the Padres 5-2 in the season series, figure to have Kershaw, Glasnow, and Snell lined up against Michael King, Dylan Cease, and Yu Darvish. While Los Angeles’ playoff odds are still 98.9%, a failure to fend off the Padres will make their road to a repeat even harder.