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Yahoo
a day ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits 2-run home run after giving up lead-off home run in latest pitching start
Shohei Ohtani bounced back perfectly on Monday night in a way that only he could. Ohtani returned to the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Monday for the first time since the All-Star break in their 5-2 win over the Minnesota Twins. Though he gave up a home run right off the bat at Dodger Stadium, Ohtani made sure that the Dodgers were back out in front by the time he returned for the second inning. Ohtani, after Mookie Betts was walked to start the game, hit a two-run home run to center field. It marked his 35th home run of the season. The home run came just minutes after Twins star Byron Buxton hit a deep home run to kick off the night in the top of the inning. That was the first extra base hit that Ohtani has allowed all season. Ohtani ended up striking out two in the inning to limit the damage. Ohtani was pulled after three innings on Monday night, which matched his longest start of the season. He was replaced by Dustin May. Ohtani gave up four hits and had three strikeouts while throwing 46 pitches. He struck out in his other three at-bats of the night. Monday night marked the sixth time Ohtani has taken the mound since returning from a torn UCL. That's been a slow process, as the Dodgers have been limiting his innings. He pitched just one inning in each of his first two starts, then he lasted two innings in the following two appearances. Right before the All-Star break, Ohtani had a season-high four strikeouts in three innings against the San Francisco Giants. Though Monday night's performance didn't get off to the best start, Ohtani expertly made his way through it and came out just fine. Freddie Freeman returns after wrist injury Despite what looked like a significant wrist injury the day before, Dodgers star Freddie Freeman returned to the lineup Monday as if nothing had happened. Freeman left the Dodgers' loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday afternoon after he took an 88 mph sinker directly to the wrist. He immediately pulled himself from the game, and was ruled out with a left wrist contusion. His X-rays after that game were negative, though, and he was considered day-to-day. Then, on Monday, Freeman was right back in the Dodgers' lineup. He said he felt a little sore ahead of the game, but was otherwise good to go. Freeman ended up going 1 for 4 from the plate. The Dodgers held the Twins to a single run until the ninth inning, when they added another run after loading up the bases. That comeback push, however, was stopped just short when Carlos Correa's potential game-tying home run was snatched by James Outman at the top of the wall for the final out. Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott was pulled from the game in the ninth inning with a trainer after feeling a 'sting' in his forearm, according to manager Dave Roberts. He will undergo an MRI. Will Smith hit a pair of solo home runs in the fourth and sixth innings for the Dodgers after Ohtani's homer, and then Andy Pages added another solo shot in the seventh. The win pushed the Dodgers to 59-42 on the season, and it snapped a three-game losing streak that came after they were swept by the Milwaukee Brewers out of the All-Star break. The second game of the three-game series is set for Tuesday night.
CBS News
a day ago
- Sport
- CBS News
Brewers edge Dodgers 6-5 for 10th straight win, completing season sweep
Abner Uribe retired Mookie Betts with the bases loaded for the final out, and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-5 on Sunday for their 10th straight victory. Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run homer for the Dodgers, but Isaac Collins snapped a sixth-inning tie with a two-run single as the Brewers finished 6-0 this season against the defending World Series champions. They extended their longest winning streak since 2021 by sweeping the NL West leaders for the second time in two weeks. Los Angeles has dropped 10 of 12 overall. Collins' two-out single to center field off reliever Lou Trivino (3-1) broke a 4-all tie and put Milwaukee ahead for good after a back-and-forth start. The Dodgers cut their deficit to a run in the ninth and loaded the bases with two outs, but Uribe got Betts to line out to center for his sixth major league save and second this year. Jose Quintana (7-3) allowed four runs over six innings for the win. Los Angeles starter Clayton Kershaw permitted five hits and three runs (two earned) in 4 1/3 innings. Ohtani launched his 34th homer of the season and Esteury Ruiz hit his first with the Dodgers. First baseman Freddie Freeman exited in the sixth after getting hit by a pitch on his left wrist. The Dodgers committed a trio of defensive miscues that helped the Brewers erase an early 3-0 deficit. Third baseman Tommy Edman airmailed a throw to first, Ruiz missed a cutoff man from left field and Andy Pages whiffed on a liner to center — all with two outs — to allow three Brewers runs to score. The Brewers are 34-12 since May 25, the best mark in the majors during that span. Milwaukee RHP Brandon Woodruff (1-0, 2.61 ERA) starts Monday in Seattle. Ohtani (0-0, 1.00) pitches for the Dodgers against Minnesota.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Brewers sweep Dodgers & a weekend recap
Subscribe to Baseball Bar-B-Cast Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube The first series back after the All-Star break did not go as planned for the Los Angeles Dodgers. On the flip-side it went as well as it could go for the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers swept the Dodgers, in LA, over the weekend as they extended their win streak to ten and climbed up the standings to tie the Cubs for the lead in the NL Central. The Dodgers remain 3.5 games up in the NL West, but everything is not going according to the script in Los Angeles. Mookie Betts' struggles continued, and he's now been moved into the leadoff spot, and Freddie Freeman left the game Sunday after getting hit on the wrist, leaving the Dodgers unsure what his future availability will look like. Jake and Jordan discuss both the impressive success of the Brewers and the Dodgers struggles. That was not the only sweep of the weekend as the Blue Jays and Diamondbacks swept their series, and the Chicago White Sox notched their first sweep of the year taking down the Pittsburgh Pirates. The guys dive into each of these series as well as the Cubs vs. Red Sox, Yankees vs. Braves and Reds vs. Mets. They wrap up by going Turbo Mode to chat about every other series over the weekend. Plus, the Mets retired David Wright's jersey number on Saturday and Jake and Jordan reflect on the former Met's impressive career. Start your week off getting caught up on all the action in baseball here on the Baseball Bar-B-Cast. (1:28) - Brewers sweep Dodgers (22:34) - Blue Jays, Diamondbacks & White Sox sweep (31:29) - Cubs over Red Sox (36:08) - Yankees in Atlanta (46:06) - Reds ruin Wright weekend (53:16) - Turbo Mode🖥️
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
From a day off to the leadoff spot, Dodgers try unraveling mystery of Mookie Betts' slump
The day off was unanticipated. The change to the lineup was even more of a surprise. In what has become a season-long struggle by Mookie Betts and Dodgers coaches to get the slumping superstar back on track, this weekend brought the most glaring examples of experimentation yet. First, on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts gave Betts an unexpected off day and providing what he felt was a needed mental reset after sensing Betts — who missed the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade this year — was still off despite his week-long break. Read more: Freddie Freeman injured as Dodgers are swept by the Milwaukee Brewers, again Then, on Sunday, Roberts gave the veteran slugger an unexpected challenge: Bumping him up from the two-hole to the leadoff spot in the batting order in hopes it would trigger something amid a career-worst season at the plate. 'Looking at how things are going, where Mookie is at emotionally, mechanics-wise, all in totality,' Roberts said, 'I felt that giving him a different look in the lineup, hitting him at the top, something he's obviously been accustomed to throughout his career, will put him in a mindset of just [trying] to get on base and just trying to take good at-bats.' 'There's a lot of internal kind of searching that goes on with the mechanics and things like that,' Roberts added. 'But I personally do feel that the external part of it — hitting at the top of the order, having a mindset to get on base — I think will help move this along better.' It all served as the latest confounding chapter in what has been a trying season for Betts and his once-potent swing, the newest effort by the club to ease the frustration that has weighed on his mind amid a summer-long slump — while waiting for his mechanics to finally get back in sync. 'This is a process I've never been through,' said a clearly-dejected Betts, who entered Monday sporting a .240 batting average (ranking 120th out of 158 qualified MLB hitters), .684 OPS (132nd) and 11 home runs (tied for 89th), to go along with well-below-league-average marks in underlying metrics like average exit velocity (29th percentile among MLB hitters), hard-hit rate (20th percentile) and bat speed (12th percentile). 'I don't have any answers,' he continued. 'I don't know how to get through this. I don't know. I'm working every day. Hopefully it turns.' The leadoff exercise started with mixed results Sunday. Betts singled in the third inning, one at-bat before new No. 2 man Shohei Ohtani hit a home run. But, in a failed ninth-inning rally that sent the Dodgers to a series sweep against the Milwaukee Brewers, he finished a one-for-five day by lining out sharply to center field, ending the game with Ohtani stuck in the on-deck circle. Betts will continue to lead off for the foreseeable future, with Roberts committing to keeping him at the top of the order — and Ohtani, the team's previous leadoff hitter, in the two spot — at least until Max Muncy makes his expected return from a knee injury sometime next month. Read more: New mural at Dodger Stadium honors Fernando Valenzuela 'The only way we'll know, we'll find out, is once we do that for an extended period of time,' Roberts said. 'I do think that there will be some fallout from that kind of external mindset of, 'Hey, I'm hitting at the top of the order. My job is to get on base, set the table for Shohei and the guys behind him.' I think that will lead to better performance.' Until such a turnaround actually materializes, however, the search for answers to Betts' struggles will go on, with the Dodgers continuing to try to unravel the mystery behind a sudden, unsettling slump no one saw coming. 'I just got to play better,' Betts said. 'I got to figure it out.' Indeed, while his superstar teammates were at All-Star festivities in Atlanta last week, Betts spent the break back home in Nashville, working on his swing at a private training facility. In one clip that emerged on social media, Betts was seen doing one of the many drills that have helped him maintain offensive excellence over his 12 big-league seasons: Taking hacks with a yellow ball pressed snuggly between his elbows, trying to promote the fluid and connected motion that has eluded him this year. 'With Mookie, a lot of it has to do with how his arms and hands work, and getting his arm structure properly lined up,' hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. 'It sets up how the bat slots, and how his body sequences.' For Betts, a 5-foot-10 talent who has long exceeded expectations as one of the sport's most undersized sluggers, such mechanical efficiency has always been paramount. As he noted early this season, when his slump first came into focus in early May, he has never had the same margin for error as some of the sport's more physically gifted star hitters. He can't muscle doubles or hit home runs off the end of his bat. He can't afford to have a bad bat path or disjointed swing sequence and be the same hitter who, just two years ago, batted .307 with 39 home runs. 'I can't, unfortunately, not have my A-swing that day but still run into something and [have it] go over the fence or whatever,' Betts said back then. 'Even when I have my A-swing, if I don't get it, it's not gonna be a homer. If I don't flush that ball in that gap, they're gonna catch it.' And this season, much to his chagrin, flushing line drives and cranking big flies has become a frustrating rarity. Identifying the reason why has led to countless potential theories. At the start of the year, Betts believed he created bad swing habits while recovering from a March stomach bug that saw him lose 20 pounds and some of his already underwhelming bat speed. But as he tried reverting to mental cues and mechanical feels that had recalibrated him in the past, nothing seemed to click in the same way they once did. 'The cues and feels that I've used my whole life, in Boston and L.A., just don't work anymore,' he said this weekend. 'So I'm just trying to find out who I am now, what works now.' Read more: Dodgers pitchers can't hold back Brewers, who beat L.A. for fifth time this month Some of that, of course, could be attributed to age. Betts will be 33 by the end of this season. He is coming up on 1,500 career games. Inevitably, even players of his caliber eventually start to decline physically. Roberts, however, framed it more through the lens of evolution. On the one hand, he said of Betts, 'I know he's still in his prime. I know he's as strong as he's been in quite some time.' However, the manager added, 'his body has changed and will continue to change,' requiring Betts to find new ways to maximize the power the team still believes he possesses. 'That's the nature of hitting,' Van Scoyoc said. 'He has to find something for him that works organically, that gets him lined up again.' This dynamic is why, to both Betts and the Dodgers, his full-time move to shortstop this season hasn't been to blame. Betts has repeatedly pushed back against that narrative, pointing to the MVP-caliber numbers he posted while playing the position during the first half of last year (before a broken hand cost him two months and forced him to return to right field for the Dodgers' World Series run) and the two-week tear with which he started this season (when he batted .304 with four home runs over his first 15 games). And though his new defensive role has come with some added challenges — Betts said on his Bleacher Report podcast last month that his daily pregame workload has increased while playing shortstop, to the point 'it probably does weigh on you a little bit hitting' — he has also emphasized the confidence he has gained from his defensive improvements; his shortstop play serving as the one thing that has gone right in a season of offensive misery. "I just can't see that you go out there and stick him in right field tonight and he's going to throw out two hits or three hits, or he goes to second base and he's going to go on a heater,' Roberts echoed earlier this month, before reiterating Sunday that the team has not considered changing Betts' position. 'That's hard for me to kind of imagine. It's a fair ask. But I just don't see that as the case." Instead, the focus has remained not only on Betts' flawed swing mechanics, but the resulting side effects it has had on his approach at the plate. One stat that jumped out to Roberts recently: In Betts' last 99 plate appearances, he has walked only one time — a shockingly low number for a hitter with a walk rate of nearly 11% over his career. To Roberts, it's a sign that Betts, in his ongoing search to get his swing synced up, is failing to accomplish the even more fundamental task of working good counts and waiting out mistakes. 'If you're 'in-between' on spin versus velocity, and [getting in bad] counts, you're not as convicted [with your swing],' Roberts said, tying all of Betts' problems into one self-fulfilling cycle that has only further perpetuated his lack of results. 'So my eyes tell me he's been 'in-between' a lot.' Which is why, in recent weeks, Roberts had started to mull the idea of moving Betts into the leadoff spot. After all, the manager hypothesized, if Betts can't find his swing by grinding in the batting cage and analyzing his mechanics — as he did during his off day on Saturday — then maybe reframing his mindset in games can better help him get there. 'It speaks to how much faith I have in him as a ballplayer,' Roberts said. 'To, where he's scuffling, not move him down but ironically move him higher in the order. 'I think that kind of support, and the different way that he'll see the lineup as it's presented each day, will kind of lead into a different mindset and I think that'll be a good thing for all of us." For now, the Dodgers can only hope. With Muncy still out, Freddie Freeman having his own recent slump compounded by a ball that hit him in the left wrist on Sunday, and the Dodgers stuck in a current 2-10 spiral that has seen their once-comfortable division lead dwindle leading up to the trade deadline, they need the old Betts more than ever right now. Thus far, the search for answers has met no end. 'It's hard,' Betts said, 'but I got to figure it out at some point." Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Sport
- Newsweek
Dodgers Star Gives 4-Word Response Regarding Recent Struggles
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The Los Angeles Dodgers are one of the coldest teams in baseball. Entering Monday, the Dodgers had lost 10 of their last 12 games and have seen their division lead decrease to just 3 1/2 games over the San Diego Padres. Several key contributors have been struggling for Los Angeles, but none have been worse than the struggles from superstar shortstop Mookie Betts. MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - JULY 09: Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field on July 09, 2025 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - JULY 09: Mookie Betts #50 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field on July 09, 2025 in Milwaukee, spoke to the media Sunday after the Dodgers' 6-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers and gave a brief response when asked what needed to change to help get himself and Los Angeles out of its current funk. "Just gotta play better," Betts told reporters, via a video on X from SportsNet LA. "I can't speak for everyone else, but personally I just have to play better." Betts certainly does need to play better, as he is headed toward the worst full season of his Hall of Fame level career in the major leagues. He is batting just .240 on the season and over the last 15 days, he has a slash line of .162/.200/.182. He has no home runs, one double and just one RBI in that 15-day stretch, easily some of his worst numbers over any 15-day stretch of his career. Mookie Betts in his last 30 games entering today: .178/.227/.280. The Dodgers moved him into the leadoff spot today to try and shake things up. Betts struck out swinging on three pitches in his first at-bat. — Kyle Glaser (@KyleAGlaser) July 20, 2025 Betts has never finished a season with an average under .250 and has finished under .265 just twice in his career (2017, 2021). Manager Dave Roberts decided to move Betts to the leadoff spot for the first time since June of last season in hopes of taking some pressure off Betts having to succeed between Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith in the lineup. It is unclear if that will be successful and if it is not, the Dodgers will have to make a tough decision regarding Betts' positioning in the lineup when the postseason rolls around. More MLB: NL Central Race Heating Up Leading into Trade Deadline
