The Dodgers lost 6-2 to the Giants on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium, extending their skid to four games and ending any chance of winning the four-game series this week. Los Angeles is now 24-18, while San Diego remained in front of the division at 24-17 after Tuesday.
Will Smith gave the Dodgers their only early spark, driving in a run with a sacrifice fly in the first inning after Los Angeles loaded the bases with one out. Jung Hoo Lee saved a run at the other end for San Francisco, racing back for an over-the-shoulder catch on Smith’s deep fly ball before crashing into the wall. Dave Roberts called it a game-changing play, and it fit the night: the Dodgers had chances, but not enough of them, and they did not cash in when they got them.
That has been the story of a club in a current offensive lull. The Dodgers had beaten the Giants just once in five games before Tuesday, and their return to the familiar thump of home runs over the weekend against the Houston Astros did not carry over into this dodgers game. They beat Houston 8-3 before the series, but Shohei Ohtani was not part of that power surge, and the lineup against San Francisco never found the same rhythm.
Andrew Friedman has tried to frame those swings as part of the sport’s volatility. “What we know for a fact is every guy is going to have ups and downs,” he said, adding that the randomness of baseball can spread those moments out or stack them together. “Sometimes those happen spread out, which allows your offense to thrive, and sometimes they happen concurrently, and that’s when you go into some real offensive lulls. And I feel like that’s more random than anything.”
The recent slide has been more than a bad week. MLB.com research said the Dodgers’ four straight losses by four runs or more matched their longest such run in a single season in the modern era since 1901, and the franchise had not been through a stretch like this since 1936, when the team was in Brooklyn. That kind of slump is rare for a club built to expect more, and it has arrived at a moment when the Padres are still ahead and the margin for error in the division has already narrowed.
Roberts said the rivalry has a way of sharpening the opponent. “I think that we bring out the best in every team,” he said, later adding that the Giants “haven’t had a good season thus far, but against us you can see the emotion that they’re playing with. We have to find a way to match that intensity. We do.” For now, the Dodgers cannot win the series, and the best they can do is salvage a split. After a week that has exposed both the offense’s dry spell and the cost of missed chances, that feels less like a comfort than a warning.
