BASEMENT BLUES
DODGERS STRUGGLING AGAINST NL’S WORST TEAMS
MIAMI — Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts leaned back in his chair late Tuesday night and it did not collapse, which was surprising given the way the season has gone.
The Dodgers, last year’s National League pennant winners, had just endured their fifth defeat in a row, all against last-place teams. The latest loss came in Miami, but Roberts contemplated his team’s place in the universe, which at that point included a mere one-game lead over the Marlins, baseball’s perennial punch line, in the NL standings.
“I need a Presidente,” he said, before pausing to reconsider his beer request. “I need more than one.”
Here’s a toast to the most disappointing team in the majors. The Dodgers began the season with expectations to match their high payroll, but they’ve been bad and getting worse. After Wednesday night’s 6-5 loss to the Marlins, since May 5 they have gone 0-8 against the Marlins, Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres, the NL’s division cellar-dwellers.
The Dodgers failed to score Tuesday against Miami starter Wei-Yin Chen, who entered with a 10.22 ERA. The 4-2 defeat left them at 16-25, putting Roberts’ team on pace for 99 losses.
“This is testing every bit of fight you have,” he said. “This is a stretch I’m sure a lot of these guys haven’t gone through.”
Actually, the Dodgers had an awful stretch just last summer, when they lost 16 of 17. But that felt different because they were an astounding 91-36 when the swoon began.
They regrouped to reach Game 7 of the World Series, falling to the Houston Astros, and with most of their roster back, the Dodgers expected to be one win better in
2018. Instead, too many injuries and sickly swings are threatening to derail the season.
“It’s not fun,” catcher Austin Barnes said. “Every day it seems like there’s something not clicking. It is absolutely frustrating.”
Offense is the biggest disappointment. Yasiel Puig hit his first home run of 2018 on Sunday after clubbing 28 last year. Going into Wednesday’s game, Cody Bellinger had six homers after hitting 39 in 2017 and leadoff batter Chris Taylor’s average had fallen to .234 from .288 a year ago.
Last week against the Reds, the Dodgers totaled nine runs while being swept in a fourgame series at home. Clutch hits have proved elusive and the bullpen has been wobbly, which explains why Los Angeles was 4-14 in games decided by one or two runs.
The Dodgers are accustomed
to coming up short in the end — they haven’t won the World Series since 1988 — but sub-.500 is something different for a franchise that has won five consecutive NL West division titles.
“It’s baseball; it’s a tough game,” All-Star third baseman Justin Turner said. “It doesn’t matter what it says on paper. You’ve got to show up and play nine innings and 27 outs, and anything can happen. Any team on any given day can go out and win a game. That’s the beauty of it. It’s not the NBA, where the best team on paper wins all the games.”
Turner returned this week after breaking his left wrist during spring training. But twotime All-Star shortstop Corey Seager is out for the season with an elbow injury, and threetime NL Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw likely will be sidelined until at least June because of tendinitis.
Kershaw is 1-4 with a 2.86 ERA. Left-hander Alex Wood fell to 0-4 Tuesday despite a 3.35 ERA.
“We just haven’t gotten any momentum or started clicking,” Wood said. “We feel it; everyone does. Everybody is grinding hard, and we’re trying to figure it out and get on the right track.”
The only Los Angeles Dodgers team to start worse was the first one, in 1958. That club had Walter Alston, Roger Craig, Don Drysdale, Carl Erskine, Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Frank Howard, Sandy Koufax, Don Newcombe, Johnny Podres, Pee Wee Reese, Johnny Roseboro and Duke Snider, and they finished seventh anyway.
Thanks to realignment and the introduction of divisions, the worst the 2018 Dodgers can do is fifth in the NL West.
But if they can’t beat teams in last place, they might wind up there themselves.