‘Guys are scuffling.’ Dodgers stars remain cold in series loss to Guardians

When the key moment arose in the bottom of the sixth inning Wednesday night, the Dodgers had what they wanted. 

Two runners on and nobody out. Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Tucker due up to the plate.

On paper, those two sluggers are the best (or, at least, highest-paid) hitters in the team’s star-studded lineup. 

However, during an anemic opening week from the entire Dodgers offense, they’ve also been among many swinging an ice-cold bat.

That didn’t change in an eventual 4-1 loss to the Cleveland Guardians, which cost the Dodgers this three-game series and ended their opening homestand on a sour note.

Ohtani bounced into a rally-killing double play, rolling over on a first-pitch cutter Cleveland starter Gavin Williams threw right down the middle.

Tucker ended the inning a pitch later on a flyout to right, missing on yet another dead-red cutter Williams left over the heart of the plate.

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So goes things for the Dodgers (4-2) through the first six games of the season. Their pitching has been stout. They have more wins than losses. But their biggest stars have not yet begun to hit.

Not even close.

“I think right now, offensively, most of our guys are scuffling,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s obviously a very talented lineup. And right now, it just seems like a lot of guys are in-between.” 

That includes Ohtani, who is now batting .167 after a 0-for-3 performance Wednesday that followed a rare session of on-field batting practice pregame.

It includes Tucker, whose average is down to .174 following a 0-for-4 clunker and nine total strikeouts in his last five games.

And it includes Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith, who went a combined 1-for-11 in the loss to the Guardians (4-3) to finish the night hitting .136, .208 and .200, respectively.

All five of those big names also have an OPS of .700 or worse.

“I think you can talk to every single one of us,” said Freeman, who had the lone hit of the group with a shutout-negating home run in the ninth, “and say we wish we had a better offensive first week.”

Much credit Wednesday, of course, goes to Williams. Entering the night, the right-hander had a 13.03 ERA in three career games against the Dodgers. This time, he spun seven scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts –– outshining Yoshinobu Yamamoto in his six-inning, two-run, two-strikeout grind of an outing.

Still, questions about the Dodgers offense are nonetheless starting to surface.

They won’t go away until their superstars start to hit.

“I know we’re looking for some answers here, but we’re still OK,” Freeman insisted. “We’re 4-2. We have not played well yet as an offense. We’ll get it going.”

What it means

For now, the Dodgers hope very little.

Six games, after all, is a minuscule sample size. Eventually, their expectation is for performances across-the-board to rise.

“There’s going to be guys that we’re talking about that are off to slow starts, and then a series later, the article is going to be ‘He’s off to a hot start,’” Roberts argued pregame, already trying to head off any early-season concern. 

“It could change in two days. So it’s certainly overblown. I completely understand it, but the guys that have been around a long time understand that you can’t let that affect you.”

Afterward, he doubled down on that message.

“You still got to give credit to the guys making pitches,” he said. “I think that we’ll get our groove.”

Who’s hot

The one exception to the team’s glaring hitting woes: Andy Pages.

The third-year outfielder went 3-for-3 Wednesday with a double, giving him a .429 batting average so far with nine total knocks –– four more than anyone else on the team.

All spring, the Dodgers raved about the 25-year-old slugger, with both Roberts and teammates repeatedly praising the quality of his at-bats and the maturation of his daily approach.

So far, it is all paying off; evidenced not only by his big opening-week production, but the fact he has struck out only two times in his first 21 trips to the plate.

“He’s controlling the zone,” Roberts said. “And he’s hitting to all fields.”

Who’s not

There are plenty of candidates here, so let’s go with something broader.

Entering the season, the Dodgers expected to have a relentless approach from the entirety of their lineup. This week, they got an opposite set of results.

In their three games against the Guardians, the team struck out 29 times while drawing only six walks. For a club that was supposed to count “quality of at-bats” as its primary calling card, even Roberts acknowledged that was the one part of this week that was  “a little concerning.”

“I think that guys trying to find their swings is one thing,” he said. “But … We’re striking out at quite a clip.” 

Up next

The Dodgers are off Thursday, before beginning their first road trip of the season on Friday. They will start in Washington with three games against the Nationals, then head to Toronto next week for a World Series rematch with the Blue Jays.