For a brief moment Tuesday night, smiles and laughter returned to the Dodgers dugout.
Mired in a month-long slump and without a home run in his last 13 games, Shohei Ohtani finally rediscovered his swing, belting a solo blast in the bottom of the third inning that –– for both himself, and his struggling team –– offered a temporary sigh of relief.
As Ohtani returned to the dugout, he sheepishly grinned as teammates greeted him with an exaggerated celebration. Then, as he walked down the bench, he joked with starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto that he should have the ball retrieved, making a hand motion usually reserved for a player’s first career hit.
Good times.
They wouldn’t last.
Instead, the Dodgers once again faded late in an eventual 6-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants, suffering their fourth-straight defeat behind another quiet night from the offense and second-straight shaky performance from the pitching staff.
“When you don’t get a whole lot of opportunities and you don’t cash in on the couple that you do get, you don’t score a lot of runs,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We haven’t given ourselves as many opportunities as we’re used to … So that’s where it’s like, our margins, even on the offensive side, are just more finite.”
Indeed, since April 18, the Dodgers’ 9-14 record is fourth-worst in the majors.
Ohtani went 2-for-4 in the loss, snapping out of his recent 4-for-38 slump with not only the third-inning homer but also a first-inning single that led to the night’s opening run.
Alas, it wouldn’t be enough to get the Dodgers (24-18) out of their ongoing funk; not on a night Yamamoto allowed an MLB career-high three home runs in a 6 ⅓-inning, five-run clunker, and the rest of the Dodgers’ lineup combined for just two other knocks while stranding eight men on base.
The turning point came in the top of the fifth, when Yamamoto gave up back-to-back home runs to San Francisco’s Nos. 8 and 9 hitters Harrison Bader and (for the second time on the night) Eric Haase, turning a 2-1 Dodgers lead into a 3-2 deficit.
Then, the Giants (18-24) broke the game open in the seventh, scoring three times after Blake Treinen failed to escape a two-on, one-out jam he inherited from Yamamoto. The first scored one on a squeeze bunt Freddie Freeman couldn’t bare-hand while crashing from first base. Two more came around on a double from Jung Hoo Lee.
Just like that, the joy was gone again for the Dodgers –– who managed only one run from a bases-loaded opportunity in the first inning, after Will Smith was robbed of extra bases on a running catch in right from Lee; then left the bases loaded in the eighth, squandering their best chance at a late rally.
On another frustrating night, they suffered another dispiriting defeat.
“We just haven’t really capitalized on that much lately,” Tucker said. “So we just need to do a little bit better job at that, just kind of all the way around.”
What it means
The Dodgers’ recent slump first came into focus when they lost two of three in San Francisco last month.
This week, they were hoping to avenge that series, and get back on track against a Giants team that arrived in Los Angeles losers of nine of its last 12.
Instead, the Dodgers are now 1-4 against the Giants this season, and have scored a total of nine runs in the five games combined.
The offense remains the primary problem, with Tuesday marking the 10th time in the last 13 games the team has failed to score more than three times.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it was also their fourth-straight defeat by at least a four-run margin. The last time the Dodgers did that, according to Baseball Reference: 1936.
Who’s hot
At long last, Ohtani.
His first hit of the night might not have been exactly what he was looking for, a ground-ball single that snuck through the right side of the infield.
His next one sure was, though, as he not only snapped his two-week home run drought (and hit just his second in a snap of 109 plate appearances) but did so by going the other way with a towering drive –– using the “big part of the field,” as Roberts likes to say, in a way he has struggled to for most of this season.
“I thought tonight was a really good night (for him),” Roberts said. “He can hopefully take that momentum from tonight and then be building on that through Anaheim and San Diego.”
The reason Ohtani will have to wait until the team’s weekend road trip is because he will not be in the lineup the next two games.
Roberts came to that decision before the game, sensnig the slugger needed an offensive reset after enteing the night batting .200 over his previous 26 games.
Roberts said he didn’t want to change course just because the two-way star –– who will start on the mound as a pitcher Wednesday –– had one good night, either.
“I’ve talked about the workload and I’ve talked to him at length about it,” Roberts said. “It’s tough on days he pitches. I don’t think it’s fair to player just to assume, he threw out a couple knocks so he should be in there tomorrow. I don’t like playing that game.”
Who’s not
Four starts into the season, Yamamoto seemed to be picking up where he left off in last year’s postseason, posting a 2.10 ERA with a sub-1.00 WHIP.
Since then, however, the Japanese right-hander has hit an unexpected skid, culminating in Tuesday’s season-worst performance against the Giants.
Yamamoto not only suffered a season-high for runs allowed in the loss, but also suffered his fourth-straight outing giving up at least three.
As a result, his ERA has climbed to 3.60 on the year, and is at 5.18 over this recent stretch.
He has also now allowed eight home runs, already more than double the total he yielded in 30 starts last year.
Up next
The Dodgers and Giants continue this four-game series on Wednesday night, when Ohtani (2-2, 0.97 ERA) will face Robbie Ray (3-4, 2.76 ERA).
