Wednesday was getaway day for Dodgers, the final game of a six-game homestand ahead of a weeklong trip to St. Louis and Houston. And that’s a good thing, first baseman Freddie Freeman said, because there are a number of players on the team that really could use a getaway, Freeman chief among them.
With Wednesday’s 3-2 matinee loss to the Miami Marlins, the Dodgers (20-11) have lost two in a row at home for the first time this season. In those two games the Dodgers scored just three runs, went four for 18 with men in scoring position and left 16 runners on base. And the final outs Wednesday came when Freeman, batting with the bases loaded and one out, grounded into a bizarre, unassisted double play with Marlins second baseman Xavier Edwards fielding the ball, tagging Shohei Ohtani as he ran him back to first, then dragging his foot across the bag to retire Freeman.
“I hit it right at the second baseman. He tagged Ohtani and tagged first,” Freeman offered in an accurate, if hardly revelatory explanation.
Freeman was equally brief when asked to discuss a slump in which he has hit .138 in his last seven games with as many strikeouts as hits.
“I would have fixed it by now if I knew,” he said through gritted teeth when asked what the problem was. “I had pitches to hit. I just didn’t hit ’em. I mean, I had strikes, I swung at the strikes, I didn’t hit the strikes, so…”
So, he welcomes Thursday’s day off, the Dodgers’ first in two weeks.
“A day off,” he said with a sigh, “will help.”
Manager Dave Roberts hopes that’s true not just of Freeman. Outfielder Teos-car Hernández and catcher Will Smith are hitting .149 combined over their last seven games, and outfielder Kyle Tucker is hitting .237 over the last 15.
“Right now, Freddie’s not feeling good. He’s not swinging it well,” Roberts said. “Will is trying to find his way. Tucker’s starting to find his way as far as putting the barrel on the ball. Teo’s cooled off a little bit. In general, we’re just not all there. There are more guys that
aren’t going well right now [than those] that are.”
But if that’s the bad news, here’s the good: Despite the slump, the Dodgers left for the airport Wednesday afternoon second in the National League with 20 wins and ranked among the top three in the majors in runs, batting, on-base percentage, slugging and OPS.
“Hitting is definitely cyclical,” Roberts said. “In total, we’re near the top. The last 10 days, it just hasn’t been synced up. You’d like everyone to get off to a good start, but a lot of guys are not performing to the back of their baseball cards.”
If the manager was trying to keep the Dodgers’ hitting woes in perspective, his first baseman was praising the starting pitching after another brilliant start from Tyler Glasnow, who gave up three hits in 52/3 innings, striking out nine. However he left with nothing to show for it.
“Luckily we have really, really good pitching,” Freeman said. “They’re the reason why we have a chance to win every single game.”
Glasnow certainly gave them that chance again. When Miami’s Liam Hicks drove the first pitch of the second inning into the lower stands just inside the right-field foul pole, it was the first run Glasnow had given up in his last 12 innings. He didn’t give up another until the fifth, when former teammate Esteury Ruiz hit his first homer of the season into the first row of the left-field pavilion.
In between, the right-hander struck out seven and the Dodgers accepted a gift run when Max Muncy started the second inning with a double off the glove of Marlins center fielder Jakob Marsee, then scored two outs later when shortstop Otto Lopez lost Alex Call’s popup in the bright midday sky.
The Dodgers had Miami’s Sandy Alcantara on the ropes most of the afternoon, putting runners on in five of the six innings he pitched. But after from the tainted run in the second, they couldn’t break through against until the sixth.
Tucker led off that inning with a double to right-center, moved to third on a ground out, then scored on Dalton Rushing’s two-strike single to right. But Alcantara escaped the jam when Alex Freeland bounced to second with two runners on.
After that, it became a battle of the bullpens — a battle the Marlins won when Javier Sanoja blooped a two-out single to shallow right off reliever Will Klein in the eighth, scoring Edwards. That proved the difference when Freeman, with a chance to be the hero, grounded into a double play with the winning run at second base.
Now, a day off, which Freeman said couldn’t come at a better time. “Hopefully with the day off,” he said “we’ll get back at it.”
