The Dodgers are main the majors in on-base-plus-slugging share as an offense this yr. They’re second within the Nationwide League in scoring, and third in workforce batting common.
They’ve the league’s high gamers in hitting (Will Smith batting .324 and Freddie Freeman batting .306) and OPS (Shohei Ohtani at .982 and Smith at .963).
They determine to have a number of gamers who will get MVP votes on the finish of the season, together with the odds-on favourite for the award in Ohtani.
And but, because the membership enters the stretch run of the season, their lineup may be the most important query mark of their bid to defend final yr’s World Sequence championship. For the reason that begin of July, they’ve scored the third-fewest runs within the majors, have the second-lowest workforce batting common and the fourth-lowest OPS.
They stayed comparatively quiet on the commerce deadline, hopeful plenty of struggling superstars would get issues going over the marketing campaign’s closing two months. However up to now, solely Freeman (who endured a two-month hunch earlier than heating up once more on their current nine-game journey) has proven tangible indicators of a late-season revival.
“If you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned this previous weekend, after utility outfielder Alex Name turned the workforce’s solely deadline addition to the lineup. “That’s something that we’re all counting on … Now it’s up to all of us to go out there and do our jobs.”
Whereas that’s true of most hitters within the lineup, all the best way all the way down to Andy Pages and (even earlier than his most up-to-date ankle harm flare-up) Tommy Edman, there are three star-level gamers specifically the Dodgers have been ready to spherical again into type.
Right here’s a take a look at the issues plaguing every of them:
Mookie Betts
First 15 video games: .304 common, .554 slugging share, .954 OPS
Final 87 video games: .222 common, .327 slugging share, .616 OPS
When requested on Sunday for the umpteenth time this season if he knew what was improper with Mookie Betts’ swing, Roberts did not provide you with a solution.
“Honestly, no,” Roberts mentioned. “I know that he and the hitting coaches have been working diligently, consistently, intentionally. I think that the first thing, the easiest thing, to say is it’s a mechanical thing. So I guess kind of that’s where he’s at. But also, I do believe that there’s a mental part of it, too, which is sort of beating him down a little bit.”
When Betts was introduced with the identical query later Sunday afternoon, after working a season-long hitless streak to 17 at-bats and watching his batting common dip to .233, he was left looking for divine intervention.
“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” he mentioned. “It’s up to God at this point.”
Betts’ struggles aren’t for an absence of effort. He spends hours within the batting cage earlier than (and typically after) nearly each recreation. He has tried mechanical tweaks and psychological cues and elementary drills that previously would get him again on monitor.
His strategy has largely remained sound, as he ranks within the high 20% of big-leaguers in chase charge, whiff charge and strikeouts share, per Baseball Savant’s Statcast knowledge.
And whereas his bat velocity is within the eleventh percentile of MLB hitters (and down nearly two mph from his 39-homer season in 2023), it’s additionally about the identical as he had final yr, when he was nonetheless a .289 hitter with 19 residence runs (in simply 116 video games) and a .863 OPS (which solely trailed Shohei Ohtani for the most effective on the workforce).
“I really don’t know what else to do,” he mentioned. “I don’t have any answers.”
Maybe probably the most confounding metric: Betts is within the 99th percentile in “squared-up” charge, a metric that successfully determines when a ball is hit off the candy spot of the bat.
However, even when Betts does make stable contact, he merely isn’t producing as a lot energy as he often does — rating among the many backside third of big-league hitters in common exit velocity and hard-hit share; and watching fly balls that used to go away the yard die on the warning monitor, in the event that they even make it that far.
Whereas he has been a sufferer of some dangerous luck (his anticipated .252 batting common is nearly 20 factors larger than his precise mark), he has had no selection however to “go back to the drawing board” time and time once more this yr — steadily grating on his confidence as solutions regularly fail to seem.
“I don’t know anybody in the world that would have confidence in the stretch that’s going on [for me],” he mentioned. “It sucks when you don’t get stuff done.”
Betts could be a streaky hitter. And the Dodgers’ hope is that, in some unspecified time in the future over these closing two months, he’ll discover one thing that unlocks extra pop in his bat, and go on the type of heater that may make him an efficient producer on the high of the lineup once more.
Till that occurs, nevertheless, questions will persist. About whether or not his shortstop play is guilty for his offensive decline (a idea a number of rival evaluators have more and more pointed to of late as a cause for his struggles). About whether or not age is solely catching as much as the soon-to-be 33-year-old veteran. And about whether or not he’ll ever be the identical hitter he was as soon as, amid a season-long hunch nearly nobody noticed coming.
Shohei Ohtani
First 70 video games (earlier than resuming pitching): .297 common, 1.034 OPS, 24% strikeout charge
Final 40 video games (since resuming pitching): .230 common, .886 OPS, 31% strikeout charge
The simple demarcation line for Ohtani this yr has been earlier than and after he returned to pitching in mid-June, with offensive manufacturing dropping at the same time as his stuff has ticked up on the mound.
Ohtani has nonetheless been a comparatively productive hitter since then, persevering with to hit residence runs at a league-leading tempo (he’s tied with Kyle Schwarber for the NL lead with 38 on the yr).
However he has grow to be a a lot simpler out the final couple months, as nicely, epitomized at the beginning by his climbing strikeout charge.
An over-aggressive strategy would determine to be the simple clarification right here. And there have been instances, Roberts famous, the slugger seems to get right into a “swing mode” that forestalls him from shedding dangerous pitches.
However on the entire this season, Ohtani is definitely swinging much less usually than he did final yr, chasing pitches at an nearly equivalent charge and persevering with to attract extra walks than nearly anybody within the majors (his 71 free passes are seventh-most this season).
Ohtani’s drawback has been a rise in swing-and-miss, with the reigning MVP developing empty on greater than one-third of his hacks.
It’d merely be a byproduct of the added bodily workload he has taken on since resuming two-way duties. However he has insisted such issues stay fixable, citing an absence of stability and consistency in his swing mechanics.
Like Betts, Ohtani can be liable to extra excessive highs and lows over the course of a yr. Final season, for instance, he hit simply .235 with an .886 OPS in August, earlier than turning round in September and batting .393 with a 1.225 OPS.
The Dodgers might use one other late-season tear like that once more this time period. Whether or not he can do it whereas additionally ramping up as a pitcher looms as one of many largest questions going through the Dodgers down the stretch this yr.
Teoscar Hernández
First 33 video games (pre-groin pressure): .315 common, 9 residence runs, .933 OPS, 18% strikeout charge
Final 57 video games (post-groin pressure): .211 common, seven residence runs, .619 OPS, 28% strikeout charge
Hernández’s midseason drop-off is maybe the best to clarify of any lately scuffling Dodgers hitter.
Earlier than struggling a groin/adductor pressure in early Might, he was on an All-Star (and probably even MVP-caliber) tempo after re-signing with the Dodgers within the offseason.
Since then, nevertheless, the 32-year-old merely hasn’t appeared the identical — each on the plate, the place he hasn’t been capable of drive the ball as he often does, and within the area, the place his vary has been clearly restricted.
To that finish, a foul ball he took off his foot final month hasn’t helped issues both.
There have been some current indicators that Hernández is getting wholesome once more. His slugging share has began to tick again up since getting every week off for the All-Star break. He has had extra arduous contact, particularly to middle and the alternative area.
“At the beginning [after my injury] it was a little hard,” Hernández mentioned after hitting residence runs in consecutive video games at Fenway Park final week. “First I got my groin, then I got the foul off my foot. Couldn’t put a lot of weight [on it] for like two weeks. Thank God there was the break in there. I got those four days off, going through that and getting some treatment, getting some rest. And finally feel like myself again.”
However, it nonetheless hasn’t resulted in a complete reversal of fortunes, with Hernández ending the street journey going simply five-for-25 with 9 strikeouts and just one extra-base hit.
Final yr, Hernández’s capability to be a run-producer behind the Dodgers’ star trio of hitters was essential to each their regular-season and postseason offensive success. These days, although, he has been extra strikeout-prone and fewer opportunistic on the plate, contributing to a string of irritating current defeats marked by squandered possibilities in leverage alternatives.
“He’s bearing down, and he’s not trying to give at-bats away,” Roberts mentioned. “He’s grinding.”
Very like the Dodgers’ different scuffling stars, the workforce will want him to totally snap out of it, and stay up as soon as once more to the expectations the membership had for him and the lineup at massive.
