Dodgers’ superstars remain cold in rubber-match loss to Guardians

When the key moment arose in the bottom of the sixth inning Wednesday night, the Dodgers had what they wanted. 

Two runners on and nobody out. Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Tucker due up to the plate.

On paper, those two sluggers are the best (or, at least, highest-paid) hitters in the team’s star-studded lineup. 

However, during an anemic opening week from the entire Dodgers offense, they’ve also been among the many swinging ice-cold lumber.

That didn’t change in an eventual 4-1 loss to the Cleveland Guardians, which cost the Dodgers this three-game series and ended their opening homestand on a sour note.

Ohtani bounced into a rally-killing double play, rolling over on a first-pitch cutter that Cleveland starter Gavin Williams threw right down the middle.

Tucker ended the inning a pitch later on a flyout to right, missing on yet another dead-red cutter Williams left over the heart of the plate.

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So goes things for the Dodgers (4-2) through the first six games of the season. Their pitching has been stout. They have more wins than losses. But their biggest stars have not yet begun to hit.

Not even close.

Ohtani is now batting just .167, punctuating Wednesday’s 0-for-3 performance with an inning-ending strikeout in the eighth that left two more runners stranded on base.

Tucker is down to .174 following his 0-for-4 clunker, having struck out nine times in his last five games.

And elsewhere, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith are also all scuffling. They went a combined 1-for-11 in the loss to the Guardians (4-3), with a meaningless ninth-inning home run from Freeman the lone exception. Respectively, they are hitting .136, .208 and .200.

All five of those big names also have an OPS of .700 or worse.

Much credit Wednesday, of course, goes to Williams. Entering the night, the right-hander had a 13.03 ERA in three career games against the Dodgers. This time, he spun seven scoreless innings while striking out 10 –– including nine in a 12-batter sequence between the second and fifth innings.

That was more than enough to outshine Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who allowed two runs in six innings while lacking his best stuff (he only had two strikeouts).

But it was also the kind of dominance the Dodgers’ weren’t supposed to be subjected to this year. 

What it means

For now, the Dodgers hope very little.

Six games, after all, is a minuscule sample size. Eventually, their expectation is for performances across-the-board to rise.

“There’s going to be guys that we’re talking about that are off to slow starts, and then a series later, the article is going to be ‘He’s off to a hot start,’” manager Dave Roberts argued pregame, already trying to head off any early-season criticism. 

“It could change in two days. So it’s certainly overblown. I completely understand it, but the guys that have been around a long time understand that you can’t let that affect you.”

Who’s hot

The one exception to the team’s glaring hitting woes: Andy Pages.

The third-year outfielder went 3-for-3 Wednesday with a double, giving him a .429 batting average so far with nine total knocks –– four more than anyone else on the team.

All spring, the Dodgers raved about the 25-year-old slugger, with both Roberts and teammates repeatedly praising the quality of his at-bats and the maturation of his daily approach.

So far, it is all paying off; evidence not only by his big opening-week numbers, but the fact he has struck out only two times in his first 21 trips to the plate.

Who’s not

There are plenty of candidates here, so let’s go with something broader.

Entering the season, the Dodgers expected to have a relentless approach from the entirety of their offense. This week, they an opposite set of results.

In their three games against the Guardians, the Dodgers struck out 12 times while drawing only three walks. For a team that was supposed to count “quality of at-bats” as its primary calling card, such totals in even a three-game stretch seem difficult to reconcile.

Granted, the Guardians employ a talented pitching staff. Last year, they had the fourth-best team ERA in the majors, winning the American League Central despite owning that league’s lowest-scoring offense. 

However, they ranked only 12th in strikeouts, and issued the 13th-most walks. That’s the kind of profile the Dodgers should have exploited. Instead, they finished the series scoring only seven runs. 

Up next

The Dodgers are off Thursday, before beginning their first road trip of the season on Friday. They will start in Washington with three games against the Nationals, then head to Toronto next week for a World Series rematch with the Blue Jays.