{"id":151882,"date":"2025-09-12T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/151882\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T16:58:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:58:10","slug":"can-dodgers-fix-offense-it-starts-with-better-health-and-team-at-bats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/151882\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Dodgers fix offense? It starts with better health, and team at-bats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To Andrew Friedman<\/a>, something like this was a virtual impossibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had said that we would have a six-week stretch where our offense would rank 30th in baseball, I would have said there was a zero percent chance,\u201d the Dodgers<\/a> president of baseball operations said last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have been wrong,\u201d he quickly added.<\/p>\n

Over a five-week stretch from July 4 to Aug. 4, the Dodgers inexplicably ranked 30th (out of 30 clubs) in scoring. And though they\u2019ve been slightly better in the five weeks since, questions about their supposed juggernaut lineup still abound.<\/p>\n

In the first half of the season, the Dodgers boasted the best offense in the majors, leading the majors in scoring (5.61 runs per game), batting average (.262), OPS (.796) and hitting with runners in scoring position (.300) and went 56-32 over their first 88 games.<\/p>\n

Since then, however, everything has flipped.<\/p>\n

It started with a July slump that was as stunning as it was unforeseen, with the Dodgers averaging just 3.36 runs in a 25-game stretch commencing with Independence Day. Since then, there have been only marginal improvements, with the Dodgers entering Friday ranked 24th in scoring (4.21 runs per game), 25th in batting average (.237), 18th in OPS (.718) and 22nd in hitting with runners in scoring position (.245) over their last 58 games \u2014 a stretch in which they\u2019ve gone 26-32.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot scoring runs,\u201d first baseman Freddie Freeman<\/a> said last week, \u201cit\u2019s just not who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the surface, the root causes seemed rather obvious. Much of their lineup was either on the injured list or scuffling in the wake of previous, nagging injuries. Healthy superstars were grinding through flaws with their swings. What little depth they had failed to compensate.<\/p>\n

To that end, the team is hopeful it has turned the page.<\/p>\n

Shohei Ohtani<\/a>, after a midseason lull, is back to his MVP-caliber norms. Mookie Betts<\/a> is back to looking like himself at the end of an otherwise career-worst season. Max Muncy<\/a> and Tommy Edman<\/a> have returned from injuries, providing the batting order with much-needed length. Significant playing time is no longer going to the likes of Buddy Kennedy, Alex Freeland, Estuery Ruiz or any of the other anonymous faces that populated the clubhouse during the campaign\u2019s darkest days.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur lineup, our team, looks more whole,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said this week. \u201cI think that we\u2019ve all been waiting for our guys to come back to health, and see what we look like as the ballclub that we had all envisioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, when asked whether the Dodgers\u2019 second-half slump could just be pinned on personnel issues, Roberts and his players said it wasn\u2019t that simple.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers might not have been whole. But they weren\u2019t doing fundamental things \u2014 like stressing opposing pitchers, driving up pitch counts, or executing in leverage situations \u2014 either.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d lost sight of playing the game the way we\u2019re capable of playing,\u201d Roberts acknowledged.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a little while,\u201d Betts added, \u201cwe were having just some bad at-bats.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the dynamic the Dodgers have honed in on fixing, hoping to turn their summer-long frustrations into a valuable learning experience as October nears.<\/p>\n

In recent days, a renewed and deliberate emphasis has been placed on the importance of competitiveness at the plate. Daily hitters\u2019 meetings have included film sessions reviewing situational at-bats from the previous night. In-game dugout conversations have centered on a more basic message.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more about your approach, your plan,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cThat\u2019s been the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week, the team took what it hopes are important first steps, ambushing the Rockies with seven-<\/a> and nine-run performances<\/a> in which they advanced baserunners, capitalized on scoring opportunities and built the kind of big innings that been missing over the two months beforehand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said a few games ago, \u2018This needs to be like how we focus for the playoffs,\u2019\u201d Freeman said. \u201cFocus on the little things that help win games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dodgers, of course, have seen what a broken offense looks like before.<\/p>\n

And they know what happens when it doesn\u2019t get rectified before the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Late in 2022, as co-hitting coach Aaron Bates recalled this week, the team slipped into bad habits while nursing a massive National League West lead: \u201cIt felt like that whole month of September was swing camp, or spring training,\u201d he said, \u201cin the sense of guys working on their swings individually too much, as opposed to playing the game in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results then were costly: A four-game NL Division Series elimination<\/a> to the San Diego Padres in which the Dodgers repeatedly failed with runners in scoring position.<\/p>\n

The next year was more of the same: The team losing its identity while coasting down the stretch, before being swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three listless games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last season, the Dodgers finally avoided such pitfalls. They batted .278 with runners in scoring position during their postseason run to the World Series<\/a>. Their tying and go-ahead runs in the Fall Classic clincher came on a pair of productive at-bats in the form of sacrifice flies.<\/p>\n

\"Dodgers <\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u2019 Shohei Ohtani has showed his MVP form in recent games, homering twice in last Sunday\u2019s win against the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n

(Eric Thayer \/ For The Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

But this summer, after a first-half outburst that met every lofty expectation of their $400 million roster, more troubling patterns began to resurface again.<\/p>\n

Betts\u2019 slow start devolved into a career-worst slump, bottoming out with a .205 average during July. Freeman began to fade right alongside him, with his .374 season average at the end of May plummeting to .292 less than two months later. Edman and Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> struggled after returning from first-half injuries. Michael Conforto<\/a> never found his footing while Andy Pages<\/a> endured an extended sophomore slide.<\/p>\n

When coupled with Muncy\u2019s prolonged absence \u2014 he missed 48 of 56 games because of a knee injury and oblique strain \u2014 the Dodgers suddenly had a lineup of players either grinding to rediscover their swing, or struggling to make up for the firepower they were missing.<\/p>\n

And as easy scoring dried up, their inability to work consistent \u201cteam at-bats\u201d quickly became magnified.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt happened incrementally, every day, little by little,\u201d Bates said. \u201cWhere it\u2019s like, you\u2019re a little off, you want to see what\u2019s wrong with your swing, and you don\u2019t realize that it snowballs. Before you know it, you\u2019re thinking so much about your swing, you\u2019re off of the situations out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a problem, Bates insisted, borne of good intentions. Most of the roster was battling swing flaws. Too much daily energy was spent on players trying to individually get their mechanics right.<\/p>\n

It led to mindless swings were wasted on bad pitches. It caused scoring opportunities to carelessly, and repeatedly, go frustatingly by the wayside.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuys just got so internal with their mechanics,\u201d Bates said, \u201cthey weren\u2019t able to shift their focus once the game starts to just competing in the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bates started sensing the trend while watching the team from afar, gaining a different perspective during a two-week medical absence in early August to address blood clots in his leg.<\/p>\n

In the clubhouse, players began voicing similar observations after particularly puzzling offensive performances in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a lot of swings that we took today weren\u2019t really good swings to get on base,\u201d veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said after the Dodgers managed only one hit in six innings<\/a> against Padres left-hander Nestor Cortes on Aug. 23. \u201cWe know we\u2019re more than capable of putting up better at-bats and more hits together to create some traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cWe individually are trying to find ways on our own to make sure that we\u2019re just hitting better than we are,\u201d Ohtani echoed, through an interpreter, after the Dodgers\u2019 one-run performance<\/a> in a series-opener in Baltimore last weekend. \u201cBut I think the side effect of that is, we\u2019re a little too eager, and putting too much pressure on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, this week, the team endeavored to make changes.<\/p>\n

In their daily pregame hitters\u2019 meetings, the club has started holding what fellow co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc described to SportsNet LA as \u201cNFL-style\u201d film sessions; in which players were asked to review situational at-bats from the night before, and analyze their ability to execute their plan of attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game rewards you for having those \u2018team at-bats,\u2019\u201d Bates said. \u201cSo you just preach to them by holding each other accountable, talking about them after the fact, not shying away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman added that, in the dugout, players have also made an effort to emphasize that message among themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get upset because your swing didn\u2019t feel good,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, if you go 0-for-four but move a runner over four times, that\u2019s a great game for us. It might not be for your stats. But you gotta throw that out the window. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve been trying to clean up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hope is that this renewed focus will naturally help hitters sync-up their swings.<\/p>\n

On Monday night, for example, Betts moved a runner to third base with a fly ball in the sixth inning, before coming back to the plate and roping a tie-breaking two-run single with two outs in the eighth.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said it in the hitter\u2019s meeting [the next day],\u201d Freeman relayed, \u201chow that little positive thing of moving [a runner] over helped him build confidence going into his next at-bat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little moments like that, the Dodgers hope, will help kick-start their offense as they come up on the playoffs. They might not have been able to envision the struggles of the last two months. But now, between better health and improving at-bat quality, they finally see a way to fix their ailing offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we\u2019re at least having good at-bats, getting a walk, extending innings, finding ways to manufacture runs,\u201d Betts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do think that presently, the guys are engaged,\u201d Roberts added. \u201cGuys are playing as one right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To Andrew Friedman, something like this was a virtual impossibility. \u201cIf you had said that we would have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[17458,4279,93446,93444,5460,22076,363,4286,4991,15553,19630,93443,93445,99,41178,93442,1975],"class_list":["post-151882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-bates","tag-dodgers","tag-five-week-stretch","tag-freeman","tag-game","tag-guy","tag-mlb","tag-mookie-betts","tag-offense","tag-player","tag-run","tag-runner","tag-scoring-position","tag-sports","tag-swing","tag-team-at-bat","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}