To Andrew Friedman, one thing like this was a digital impossibility.
“If you had said that we would have a six-week stretch where our offense would rank 30th in baseball, I would have said there was a zero percent chance,” the Dodgers president of baseball operations mentioned final month.
“I would have been wrong,” he shortly added.
Over a five-week stretch from July 4 to Aug. 4, the Dodgers inexplicably ranked thirtieth (out of 30 golf equipment) in scoring. And although they’ve been barely higher within the 5 weeks since, questions on their supposed juggernaut lineup nonetheless abound.
Within the first half of the season, the Dodgers boasted one of the best offense within the majors, main the majors in scoring (5.61 runs per recreation), batting common (.262), OPS (.796) and hitting with runners in scoring place (.300) and went 56-32 over their first 88 video games.
Since then, nonetheless, the whole lot has flipped.
It began with a July stoop that was as gorgeous because it was unexpected, with the Dodgers averaging simply 3.36 runs in a 25-game stretch commencing with Independence Day. Since then, there have been solely marginal enhancements, with the Dodgers getting into Friday ranked twenty fourth in scoring (4.21 runs per recreation), twenty fifth in batting common (.237), 18th in OPS (.718) and twenty second in hitting with runners in scoring place (.245) over their final 58 video games — a stretch by which they’ve gone 26-32.
“Not scoring runs,” first baseman Freddie Freeman mentioned final week, “it’s just not who we are.”
On the floor, the foundation causes appeared somewhat apparent. A lot of their lineup was both on the injured listing or scuffling within the wake of earlier, nagging accidents. Wholesome superstars had been grinding via flaws with their swings. What little depth they’d did not compensate.
To that finish, the staff is hopeful it has turned the web page.
Shohei Ohtani, after a midseason lull, is again to his MVP-caliber norms. Mookie Betts is again to wanting like himself on the finish of an in any other case career-worst season. Max Muncy and Tommy Edman have returned from accidents, offering the batting order with much-needed size. Vital enjoying time is not going to the likes of Buddy Kennedy, Alex Freeland, Estuery Ruiz or any of the opposite nameless faces that populated the clubhouse throughout the marketing campaign’s darkest days.
“Our lineup, our team, looks more whole,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned this week. “I think that we’ve all been waiting for our guys to come back to health, and see what we look like as the ballclub that we had all envisioned.”
Nonetheless, when requested whether or not the Dodgers’ second-half stoop may simply be pinned on personnel points, Roberts and his gamers mentioned it wasn’t that easy.
The Dodgers won’t have been entire. However they weren’t doing elementary issues — like stressing opposing pitchers, driving up pitch counts, or executing in leverage conditions — both.
“We’d lost sight of playing the game the way we’re capable of playing,” Roberts acknowledged.
“For a little while,” Betts added, “we were having just some bad at-bats.”
That is the dynamic the Dodgers have honed in on fixing, hoping to show their summer-long frustrations right into a useful studying expertise as October nears.
In current days, a renewed and deliberate emphasis has been positioned on the significance of competitiveness on the plate. Each day hitters’ conferences have included movie periods reviewing situational at-bats from the earlier night time. In-game dugout conversations have centered on a extra fundamental message.
“It’s more about your approach, your plan,” Freeman mentioned. “That’s been the focus.”
This week, the staff took what it hopes are vital first steps, ambushing the Rockies with seven- and nine-run performances by which they superior baserunners, capitalized on scoring alternatives and constructed the type of large innings that been lacking over the 2 months beforehand.
“We said a few games ago, ‘This needs to be like how we focus for the playoffs,’” Freeman mentioned. “Focus on the little things that help win games.”
The Dodgers, after all, have seen what a damaged offense seems to be like earlier than.
And so they know what occurs when it doesn’t get rectified earlier than the playoffs.
Late in 2022, as co-hitting coach Aaron Bates recalled this week, the staff slipped into unhealthy habits whereas nursing a large Nationwide League West lead: “It felt like that whole month of September was swing camp, or spring training,” he mentioned, “in the sense of guys working on their swings individually too much, as opposed to playing the game in front of them.”
The outcomes then had been expensive: A four-game NL Division Collection elimination to the San Diego Padres by which the Dodgers repeatedly failed with runners in scoring place.
The following 12 months was extra of the identical: The staff dropping its identification whereas coasting down the stretch, earlier than being swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three listless video games.
Final season, the Dodgers lastly prevented such pitfalls. They batted .278 with runners in scoring place throughout their postseason run to the World Collection. Their tying and go-ahead runs within the Fall Traditional clincher got here on a pair of productive at-bats within the type of sacrifice flies.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has confirmed his MVP kind in current video games, homering twice in final Sunday’s win towards the Baltimore Orioles.
(Eric Thayer / For The Los Angeles Occasions)
However this summer time, after a first-half outburst that met each lofty expectation of their $400 million roster, extra troubling patterns started to resurface once more.
Betts’ sluggish begin devolved right into a career-worst stoop, bottoming out with a .205 common throughout July. Freeman started to fade proper alongside him, along with his .374 season common on the finish of Could plummeting to .292 lower than two months later. Edman and Teoscar Hernández struggled after getting back from first-half accidents. Michael Conforto by no means discovered his footing whereas Andy Pages endured an prolonged sophomore slide.
When coupled with Muncy’s extended absence — he missed 48 of 56 video games due to a knee damage and indirect pressure — the Dodgers all of the sudden had a lineup of gamers both grinding to rediscover their swing, or struggling to make up for the firepower they had been lacking.
And as simple scoring dried up, their incapacity to work constant “team at-bats” shortly turned magnified.
“It happened incrementally, every day, little by little,” Bates mentioned. “Where it’s like, you’re a little off, you want to see what’s wrong with your swing, and you don’t realize that it snowballs. Before you know it, you’re thinking so much about your swing, you’re off of the situations out there.”
It was an issue, Bates insisted, borne of excellent intentions. Many of the roster was battling swing flaws. An excessive amount of day by day power was spent on gamers attempting to individually get their mechanics proper.
It led to senseless swings had been wasted on unhealthy pitches. It triggered scoring alternatives to carelessly, and repeatedly, go frustatingly by the wayside.
“Guys just got so internal with their mechanics,” Bates mentioned, “they weren’t able to shift their focus once the game starts to just competing in the box.”
Bates began sensing the development whereas watching the staff from afar, gaining a unique perspective throughout a two-week medical absence in early August to deal with blood clots in his leg.
Within the clubhouse, gamers started voicing related observations after notably puzzling offensive performances in current weeks.
“I feel like a lot of swings that we took today weren’t really good swings to get on base,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas mentioned after the Dodgers managed just one hit in six innings towards Padres left-hander Nestor Cortes on Aug. 23. “We know we’re more than capable of putting up better at-bats and more hits together to create some traffic.”
“We individually are trying to find ways on our own to make sure that we’re just hitting better than we are,” Ohtani echoed, via an interpreter, after the Dodgers’ one-run efficiency in a series-opener in Baltimore final weekend. “But I think the side effect of that is, we’re a little too eager, and putting too much pressure on ourselves.”
Thus, this week, the staff endeavored to make adjustments.
Of their day by day pregame hitters’ conferences, the membership has began holding what fellow co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc described to SportsNet LA as “NFL-style” movie periods; by which gamers had been requested to evaluation situational at-bats from the night time earlier than, and analyze their capacity to execute their plan of assault.
“The game rewards you for having those ‘team at-bats,’” Bates mentioned. “So you just preach to them by holding each other accountable, talking about them after the fact, not shying away from it.”
Freeman added that, within the dugout, gamers have additionally made an effort to emphasise that message amongst themselves.
“Don’t get upset because your swing didn’t feel good,” he mentioned. “Like, if you go 0-for-four but move a runner over four times, that’s a great game for us. It might not be for your stats. But you gotta throw that out the window. That’s what we’ve been trying to clean up.”
The hope is that this renewed focus will naturally assist hitters sync-up their swings.
On Monday night time, for instance, Betts moved a runner to 3rd base with a fly ball within the sixth inning, earlier than coming again to the plate and roping a tie-breaking two-run single with two outs within the eighth.
“He said it in the hitter’s meeting [the next day],” Freeman relayed, “how that little positive thing of moving [a runner] over helped him build confidence going into his next at-bat.”
Little moments like that, the Dodgers hope, will assist kick-start their offense as they arrive up on the playoffs. They may not have been in a position to envision the struggles of the final two months. However now, between higher well being and enhancing at-bat high quality, they lastly see a technique to repair their ailing offense.
“Now, we’re at least having good at-bats, getting a walk, extending innings, finding ways to manufacture runs,” Betts mentioned.
“I do think that presently, the guys are engaged,” Roberts added. “Guys are playing as one right now.”
