Through the first three weeks of the season, the Dodgers had the most dangerous offense in baseball.
Over three frustrating weeks since, they’ve been perhaps the most mediocre unit in the majors.
Reconciling the difference has become the most pressing storyline surrounding the team to this point of the campaign –– raising questions about what has gone wrong lately, how fixable the lineup’s problems are, and whether the Dodgers’ true talent level is closer to what they did out of the gate or what they have endured more recently.
“Just kind of as a unit, I don’t think that we’re one piece right now,” manager Dave Roberts said Sunday, aftera 7–2 loss to the Atlanta Bravesthat dropped the Dodgers to 9–12 since their offensive slump began.
“It’s not from lack of effort,” he added. But still, “we’ve been in this funk for quite some time.”
And the longer it has gone on, the more difficult it has become to pinpoint a specific answer.
“As a group, we’re just going through a rough stretch,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “And, you know, that’s part of baseball.”
This has been the most common refrain from Dodgers personnel since their struggles at the plate started.
At the end of play on April 20, the club led MLB in virtually every statistical category, including runs-per-game (6.04), batting average (.293), slugging percentage (.507), home runs (42) and OPS (.873). They also ranked first in average exit velocity (91.3 mph), top-five in hard-hit rate (44.4%) and easily outpaced everyone else in all-encompassing weighted metrics like wRC+ (144, meaning they were 44% more productive than league average).
In hindsight, much of that was unsustainable.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
