Dodgers' middling play has dropped their division lead to just 1 game

New York Times

11 hours ago

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Shortly after the top of the sixth inning, the Los Angeles Dodgers lined up in punt formation. A fourth loss in as many tries this season to the fourth-place Los Angeles Angels loomed, but the score remained just 6-0 when Freddie Freeman was replaced at first base by backup catcher Dalton Rushing. The tactic is not new: This is the team that executed this play in the World Series just this last fall and got a parade at the end of it. But still, the early pulling of the reigning World Series MVP cemented a drubbing, with a 7-4 loss pushing the Dodgers into an uncomfortable position.
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Their ace allowed the most runs he's allowed in a Major League Baseball game Monday night. Their offense went silent against José Soriano, a gifted starter with a power sinker, but who also had allowed seven runs the last time he took the mound. By night's end, the San Diego Padres had closed the Dodgers' lead in the division to one game, the closest the race has been since June 14. They have to get through the Angels first, but what follows is a stretch of six games in 10 days against San Diego that could shape the narrative of the final month of the season.
'This was a bad loss for us,' Max Muncy said. 'There's not really a way of getting around that.'
It's not an encouraging script at this point. The Dodgers have gone 15-19 since the start of July. Their starting pitching is healthy, and some of their stars in the lineup have shown signs they can emerge from their slumber, enough that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said this weekend he saw 'this is how we can go on a run.'
'We're all looking for some traction here and trying to stack some wins,' Roberts said Monday night.
That run hasn't come yet.
'It's not going well for us right now,' Muncy said. 'We got to find a way to snap out of it. No one's going to feel sorry for us. So it's on us to find our way out of it, and we need to do it.'
They had a chance to sweep the Toronto Blue Jays this weekend and squandered enough chances to leave a season-high 16 base runners stranded. Monday, it took until the seventh inning to get a runner beyond first base as Soriano bullied them with an array of high-velocity sinkers at the bottom of the strike zone.
'You get one of the guys that just really get their pitches going, and it's a little bit what happened tonight,' Muncy said.
Shohei and Max yard. pic.twitter.com/xcqYXZIgFk
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 12, 2025
That seventh-inning threat ended when Alex Freeland chopped an inning-ending double-play ball back to the mound with the bases loaded. A Tungstonian blast from Shohei Ohtani — his 100th in this ballpark — is what it took to get the Dodgers on the board. Muncy's three-run blast punctuated a four-run eighth-inning outburst that came far too late. The scramble to try to get back into the game, started by Freeman's exit, created enough lineup machinations that Mookie Betts wound up in right field for the first time all season, fielding a fly ball to start the eighth inning. Teoscar Hernández had been the Dodgers' only remaining outfielder, with Roberts holding the slumping former All-Star in reserve in case a situation arose in the ninth inning. That chance never came.
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By then, the night had already been a wrap. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was bumped a day in the Dodgers' six-man rotation for this start, with Roberts saying it was an organizational decision looking to get ahead of an innings jump Yamamoto has already had this season from a year ago — and not because of any issue with the right-hander's health. Yamamoto said he felt the time off was a positive rather than a source of rust. He slogged through the first regardless. Zach Neto ambushed Yamamoto's first fastball of the game for a solo home run. An uncharitable strike zone led to a pair of walks, and Yoan Moncada punched a single to double the early advantage against him.
'That kind of threw me off rhythm,' Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda.
The wheels came off for Yamamoto in the fifth inning, as he surrendered a pair of singles before hitting Nolan Schanuel with a two-strike fastball to load the bases without recording an out. He wouldn't survive the frame, with the Angels bleeding him for four more runs on an array of soft contact before his career-high tying fifth walk of the game ended his night. His ERA is 2.84, his highest of the season.
Not that the Dodgers appear very well positioned to make up for a night like Yamamoto's on Monday night. Winning has hardly come easy even for a club that says it boasts more talent than last season's World Series champions. Those teams pivoted to punt formation in the postseason out of necessity. Nights like Monday were just a reaction to the circumstances of how poorly they're playing.
'With what I saw for (six) innings, it just felt like a good time to get him off his feet,' Roberts said of pulling Freeman. He has a case, given how poorly the Dodgers started the night.
Their continued maddening play hardly comes at an ideal time. A division lead that got up to nine games through July 3 is now down to one.
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'There definitely has to be some urgency,' Roberts said. 'I don't think anyone is blind to the fact that the standings are the standings. It's gotten a lot more interesting. So we've got to go out there and play good baseball. I definitely feel that our guys are starting to feel that urgency. It's been long enough of middling baseball.'
(Photo of Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
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