Dodgers Opinion: The Dodgers Need Their Offensive Stars to Perform if They Want to Repeat

LOS ANGELES, CA—After a frustrating Game Four loss in the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Los Angeles Dodgers are set to play their final game at Chavez Ravine on Tuesday night before heading back to Toronto for Game Six and a potential Game Seven, but it didn’t have to be that way.

For much of October, the Dodgers’ starting pitching has carried the workload, getting the team back to the Fall Classic for the second consecutive season, but they weren’t going to be perfect for the entire run, especially against one of the league’s best offenses in the Blue Jays.

The Dodgers got a reality check in Game One, when left-hander Blake Snell took the mound and was unable to get out of the 6th inning, where the Jays would put up nine runs against the Dodgers’ bullpen and finish with an 11-4 victory over Los Angeles.

In Game Two, the Dodgers pushed the same formula that worked well in the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies and the National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers: have your starter go deep or complete the game.

After an 18-inning marathon in Game Three, the Dodgers put their faith in two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani to pitch deep in the game, but the offense, as of much of October, was a no-show, and the bullpen put the game further out of reach.

But the focus and blame for this series being tied heading into Game Five is on the offense.

Their stars have not performed outside of Ohtani, who has hit so well that Blue Jays manager John Schneider has refused to pitch to him, as shown by his five walks in Game Three.

Mookie Betts, the Dodgers’ all-star shortstop, who had a down season offensively but picked it up over the final 50 games of the regular season, has seemingly regressed to that same player we saw in the first half of the year.

The Jays have handled Betts’ bat, holding him to a .158/.273/.158 slash line and opting to continue to walk Ohtani in front of him to face him. And while that plan has come back to bite other opposing managers in the past, that is not the case this series.

Max Muncy, the Dodgers’ all-time home run leader and catalyst in the Dodgers’ lineup, is just 3-for-17 this series with a 35% strikeout percentage.

October hero Kiké Hernández has also been a shell of himself during the World Series, hitting just .188 and striking out in almost half of his at-bats (47.1%).

Enough has been said about sophomore center fielder Andy Pages already, but the criticism is warranted as the right-handed nine-hole hitter has just one hit this series and has looked lost all October.

However, no superstar on the team is as essential as Mookie Betts, and the Fox Sports crew circled him as the player who could make or break this offense.

Moments after Game Four, in which Betts went 1-for-4 with his only hit being a single in the eighth inning, Alex Rodriguez seemed to call out the Dodgers’ star shortstop, saying his struggles could hurt Ohtani the rest of the series.

“When I look at that lineup, the one guy that you have to circle is the great, great Mookie Betts because if Mookie doesn’t get going that means that Shohei may not get one more at-bat for the rest of series and that’s something to watch,” Rodriguez said.

David Ortiz then chimed in with what he thinks has gone wrong for the Dodgers and what the team’s other stars need to do to pick up Ohtani.

“Shohei has a hard job to do because he has to pitch and he has to hit but he’s more critical because if he doesn’t hit [the Dodgers] don’t hit,” Ortiz said. “It seems like every night when they get going, it’s because of [Ohtani]. Now you have a lot of superstars on the ball club, you have a lot of professional hitters that until this point they haven’t been able to come through collectively.”

The play has been so bad that the Dodgers manager has been considering a lineup change, which will likely happen in Game Five, as he hinted in his postgame comments.

“I think so,” Roberts said when asked about possible lineup changes. “I’m going to think long and hard, and it might look a little bit different tomorrow.”

The changes are necessary, as the Dodgers’ offense has generated just three runs over their last 20 innings, and while the personal numbers are far from saved, the narrative can be changed for all of these hitters with just one swing.

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