The Los Angeles Dodgers salvaged a road series with the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday before they headed to the Big Apple to take on the New York Yankees, the team with the best record in the MLB right now.
While they avoided a sweep and dropped 11 runs on the young and talented Bucs, there wasn’t a lot to feel good about in this series in which both their offense was shutout in one of the games and their pitching and defense struggled in the other two games.
We saw James Paxton and Walker Buehler struggle so much that neither made it to the fourth inning in their respective starts. We saw the infield commit five errors in two games with Mookie Betts and Kike Hernandez combining for four of them, creating more doubt about Betts being a long term solution at shortstop.
However, he did make up for it with a three-run home run to get himself going offensively which has been another issue for Betts for the better part of a month since his start in April.
Even manager Dave Roberts was disappointed after the win in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
“Yeah, it was the worst defensive game of the year,” Roberts said. “You have a starter go short last night (Paxton). You have a starter go three innings. It seems like because of the lack of defense, pitchers are throwing way more pitches than they should have. They’ve got to take responsibility too. But the defense goes hand in hand with the pitching.”
Roberts didn’t stop there about his team’s lackluster defense.
“You’re supposed to get 27 outs,” Roberts continues. “We gifted them at least a half dozen. We gave away bases, outs. It wasn’t good. We’ll take the win. But it was certainly at a cost, going into a big series.”
It feels as though the Dodgers (39-25) haven’t been able to put it altogether consistently. When the top of the order with Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman were hot, the bottom of the order couldn’t hit.
When the bottom of the order, consisting of Gavin Lux, Jason Heyward, Miguel Rojas, and Andy Pages have started to swing the bat better, the ‘MVP Three’ began to struggle collectively.
Despite their numerous injuries to starters and relievers, the pitching staff has anchored the Dodgers this year, but has had to take losses on the chin even in quality starts, because the offense has been wildly inconsistent.
On the nights where the offense has produced more run support, the starters like Paxton or recently Buehler have been shelled and the games have gotten away from the Dodgers; and to top it off, the defense hasn’t been great lately.
This team has had more pedestrian stretches through the first third of the season than we all anticipated. Even with so-called “firepower” scattered throughout the top of the lineup, the ability to get clutch hits with runners in scoring position has been a glaring issue for this Dodgers team.
While everyone is talking about what president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman will do with the trade deadline is less than two months away, the fact is the Dodgers have some things to shore up at various positions on the field, but this squad also just needs their current squad to play better.
It’s still too early to panic as it could be apart of their June Swoon we’ve seen in recent years, but for a team that wants to win a World Series, this Dodgers team has some areas to address, because as of now, they don’t look like a championship squad.
