bullpen

Shohei Ohtani said he is prepared to make a six-inning start in October. He said he is open to pitching out of the bullpen, even if remaining in the game after a relief appearance might require him to play in the outfield.

His unspoken reasons for wanting to do so are obvious: The Dodgers are terrible.

They aren’t terrible compared to the Colorado Rockies or Chicago White Sox, but they’re terrible for a team with the most expensive roster in baseball.

They’re terrible for a team with ambitions to repeat as World Series champions.

They’re terrible enough that Ohtani is sounding how he did when he played for the Angels.

Ironically, he signed with the Dodgers so that he wouldn’t have to be in this situation again. But here he is, sounding as if he thinks he has to do everything by himself.

The Dodgers have failed him.

Ohtani came up with the idea to defer the majority of his $700-million contract until after he retires, wanting the Dodgers to spend that money to build super teams around him. The Dodgers won a World Series last year, but the good times could already be over.

Instead of building another championship team, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman constructed an all-time clunker. Instead of creating a 120-win juggernaut on which Ohtani would be able to have his cake and eat it too, the Dodgers have placed him in a predicament in which he could have to decide between prioritizing either the upcoming postseason or his pitching future.

Winning the World Series again with Ohtani on rehabilitation mode will be extremely difficult for these Dodgers, if not downright impossible. Their 9-6 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday night explained why, their bullpen imploding once again to waste another did-that-really-happen performance by Ohtani. At this point, their bullpen might as well be renamed the Nine Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

With Ohtani still in his first season pitching after his second Tommy John surgery, the Dodgers have limited his starts to five innings. That was the plan again on Tuesday, and five no-hit innings by Ohtani wasn’t about to make manager Dave Roberts stray from an organizational directive.

Removing Ohtani was a health decision, not a baseball decision.

However, by sticking to the plan, Roberts was forced to reenact his nightly routine of juggling sticks of dynamite. This time the explosion was immediate, as Justin Wrobleski gave up five runs to turn a 4-0 lead into a 5-4 deficit.

Roberts was loudly booed when he walked to the mound to replace Wrobleski, but how could anyone blame the manager for deploying the hard-throwing left-hander, who was one of the team’s most dependable relievers? It’s not as if the next pitcher shut down the Phillies. Edgardo Henriquez also gave up a homer.

Ohtani’s 50th homer of the season sparked an eighth-inning, two-run rally for the Dodgers that leveled the score, 6-6. The comeback made what happened later all the more deflating. Blake Treinen allowed three runs, and the game was over.

To recap: Ohtani pitched five no-hit innings and blasted a dramatic eighth-inning homer, and the Dodgers still lost.

As much as he provided, it wasn’t enough, which is why he was asked after the game about what more he could do.

Ohtani will pitch as a starter in the postseason but when asked if he could also be deployed as a reliever to help the flailing bullpen, he replied, “I’ve had different conversations with different people, and of course that’s come up.”

That’s when Ohtani presented a novel idea about how the Dodgers could use him.

“As a player, if I’m told to go somewhere, I want to be prepared to do so,” he said. “That’s on the mound and perhaps even in the outfield.”

The outfield?

Under baseball’s current rules, if Ohtani starts a game as a pitcher and is replaced on the mound, he could continue playing as a designated hitter. However, if he starts the game as a DH and pitches out of the bullpen, the Dodgers would lose the DH once his relief appearance is over.

Playing in the outfield would allow the Dodgers to use Ohtani as a reliever and keep his bat in their lineup after.

Told of what Ohtani said, Roberts replied, “He’s a great teammate. He wants to help us win a championship. So I’m all about it.”

Roberts looked delighted.

Of course he did. Any inning pitched by Ohtani is an inning not pitched by one of the Dodgers’ relievers. Any at-bat taken by Ohtani is an at-bat not taken by one of the team’s inconsistent hitters.

Ohtani and the Dodgers will soon have to make a major decision.

The organization can’t remain cautious with Ohtani and make a legitimate effort to retain their crown. They’re not good enough to do both. They will have to choose one or the other.

It was a stressful decision. But it shouldn’t have been so consequential.

In the middle of the fifth inning Tuesday night, Shohei Ohtani returned to the Dodgers’ dugout after a clean inning of work on the mound. Waiting for him at the top step was manager Dave Roberts, who (according to the SportsNet LA television broadcast) wanted to ask how he was feeling.

With any other pitcher, there would have been no such discussion.

Over his five innings against the Philadelphia Phillies, Ohtani had not given up a hit. He had thrown only 68 pitches. And he was flashing the kind of dominance that would have made a no-hitter feel like a real possibility.

Ohtani, however, is not like any other pitcher.

He is a two-way star, coming off a second career Tommy John surgery, who has been managed with kid gloves and Bubble Wrap in his return to pitching duties this year. He started his comeback by pitching one inning, then two, then so on until he built up to five. Weeks ago, the team — in consultation with the reigning MVP — decided to avoid pushing him past the five-inning mark until at least October.

His health, both on the bump and at the plate, remains the priority.

Thus, while Ohtani reportedly told Roberts he still felt good, he laughed and said it was up to the veteran manager to decide whether or not to extend his pitching outing.

Roberts, in a continuation of the team’s careful handling of Ohtani this year, decided against it.

The result, in a continuation of the struggles from the team’s beleaguered bullpen, was disastrous.

After pulling Ohtani with a four-run lead, the Dodgers watched their relief corps melt down in predictable, reminiscent fashion. Justin Wrobleski gave up five consecutive hits with one out in the sixth, including a three-run home run to Brandon Marsh that broke open the inning. Edgardo Henriquez made matters worse, replacing Wrobleski — amid a chorus of boos directed at Roberts — later in the inning only to give up another long ball to Max Kepler.

By the time it was over, the Phillies had scored six runs to take the lead. And though the Dodgers would battle back to tie the score in the eighth, the bullpen faltered again in the ninth, when Blake Treinen gave up a decisive three-run, two-out home run to Rafael Marchán in the Phillies’ eventual 9-6 win.

For the five innings Tuesday, Ohtani displayed utter dominance against the only team to have already clinched a division title.

His fastball was playing up, eclipsing 100 mph seven times and topping out at 101.7 mph. His secondary stuff was electric, a mix of sliders and sweepers and curveballs and splitters that kept the Phillies off balance and able to make only benign contact.

After a two-out walk to Bryce Harper in the first inning, Ohtani retired the final 13 he faced. He got only six total whiffs, but was more pitch-efficient because of it, with his 68 throws coming in 19 shy of his previous season-high (he threw 87 pitches in his only other full five-inning start on Aug. 27).

That’s why, once Ohtani raced back toward the dugout to transition from pitcher to hitter in the middle of the fifth, his removal wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Why, after Roberts conversed with Ohtani from the top step, he found first baseman Freddie Freeman laughing at him back on the bench, sensing the stressfulness of his manager’s decision (which represented the ninth time in Roberts’ Dodgers tenure he had pulled a pitcher from a no-hitter in the fifth inning or later).

By that point, of course, the game shouldn’t have been in danger either way.

The Dodgers had scored three runs in the second inning on home runs from Alex Call and Kiké Hernández. They added another in the fourth off Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, handing the Cy Young contender just his fourth start this season of more than three earned runs.

But then, a bullpen that had been burned repeatedly in recent weeks (including in a 10-inning loss in the opening game of this series Monday night) played with fire again.

Wrobleski, a rookie left-hander who had been one of the Dodgers’ better relievers of late, had Rafael Marchán break up the no-no with a one-out single, Harrison Bader and Kyle Schwarber to load the bases with two more hits after that, Harper to gap a double that brought two runs across, and Marsh to go deep on a hanging 0-2 slider for a go-ahead three-run shot.

Henriquez, another rookie who had been sharp in limited action this year, yielded another home run to Kepler two batters later.

Just like that, it was 6-4 Phillies.

Ohtani helped the Dodgers get back in the game with his bat. In the eighth, he clobbered a leadoff home run deep to right field for his 50th long ball of the season, making him just the sixth player in MLB history with consecutive 50-homer campaigns.

The Dodgers kept the rally going after that, loading the bases for Call to hit a tying sacrifice fly.

Alas, the Dodgers’ bullpen did what it does best once more in the ninth, coming unglued at the worst possible moment.

After getting two quick outs to start the inning, Treinen gave up a double to Weston Wilson (the No. 7 hitter who entered with a .202 average). He fell behind 3-and-0 to Bryson Stott (the No. 8 hitter) to trigger an intentional walk. Then, in a 3-and-1 count to Marchán (the No. 9 hitter and backup catcher for the Phillies), he served up an inside cutter that Marchán pulled down the line, getting just enough behind it to send it bouncing off the top of the short right-field wall.

Nine painful runs, in four miserable innings of Dodgers relief.

Another loss, that wasted Ohtani’s no-hit (but short-lived) masterpiece.

Bye-bye bye.

Hello, Dodger bullpen.

It was all so familiar. It was all so infuriating. It was the 2025 season boiled down into three hours of roars, then screams, then sighs.

The gasping, grappling Dodgers needed a three-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies this week to have any chance at a first-round bye in the upcoming playoffs.

Dodgers pitcher Anthony Banda (43) reacts during the first inning of a loss to Philadelphia Phillies at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

One game down, and their bullpen has already suffocated them.

They’re not going to get the bye. They couldn’t survive Philly’s first punch. It was the same old story. The Dodgers’ continually vexing relief pitchers gave back a two-run lead, ruined two ensuing comebacks and then were burned for a 10th inning double steal that led to the winning run in the Phillies’ 6-5 victory.

In a scene reminiscent of past October failures, a mournful Dodger Stadium crowd witnessed the Phillies dancing out of their dugout and squeezing into souvenir T-shirts and loudly celebrating on the field after clinching the National League East title.

In a scene also reminiscent of past October failures, just a few steps from the party, the Dodgers clubhouse was deathly quiet.

Max Muncy was asked about the bullpen, which allowed all six Phillies’ runs Monday, including three homers.

“That’s a tough question,” he said.

He attempted to answer it anyway, saying, “It’s frustrating from a team perspective, but they’ve done a great job for us all year and they’ll continue to do a great job.”

Sorry, but there is no spinning out of this mess. This is not a championship bullpen. This is not even a pennant-winning bullpen. This bullpen has been overworked and outmatched and simply outplayed all season, and when the Dodger front office had a chance to fix it at the trade deadline, they did virtually nothing.

It’s everyone’s fault. It’s an organizational failure. This bullpen is going to be the death of them. The slow expiration officially started Monday.

Fueled by fat pitches from Anthony Banda and Jack Dreyer and Alex Vesia and Blake Treinen, the Dodgers suffered a loss that may well have ended their hopes of defending their title.

Now trailing the Phillies by 5 ½ games with a dozen games to play, there’s virtually no way the Dodgers can pass them and finish with the National League’s second-best record, which means instead of getting a week off they are headed for a dangerous three-game wild card series.

If they win the West over the San Diego Padres — no guarantee — they will play those three games at home. If they finish second in the West, they will play those three games on the road.

Either way, a team with a cooked bullpen and a sore-handed star catcher and all kinds of uncertainty surrounding their rotation won’t get the advantage of a much-needed rest.

“We want the bye, obviously,” Freddie Freeman told reporters last weekend.

It’s strangely not so obvious to everyone. Throughout the next two weeks there will undoubtedly be experts who will make the argument that the Dodgers don’t really want or need a bye week because it robs the team of its routine and rhythm.

Don’t be a dummy.

Dodgers pitcher Anthony Banda throws from the mound during a loss to the Phillies at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers were desperate for that bye. The Dodgers knew they needed that bye. They knew they needed to rest the relievers, set up a Shohei Ohtani-led rotation, and give Will Smith’s right hand time to heal.

Yes, the bye week bewitched them in 2022 and 2023, when the offense lost its swagger and the Dodgers were beaten in two stunning division series upsets by the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks.

But, then again, they earned the bye last year and you know how that ended up.

They needed to pass the Phillies. And they needed to start that process this week, as the Phillies’ remaining schedule includes a closing six-game stretch against the Miami Marlins and Minnesota Twins.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is understandably steering clear of the bye-no bye debate, telling the media, “We’re gonna try to win as many games as we can. … Where it falls out is where is falls out. … I don’t think it matters for me to say how important it is. … I kind of just want to win games and see where it all plays out.”

Here’s how it — ugh — played out Monday:

Banda starts the game as an opener and allows a shot into the right-center field stands by Kyle Schwarber.

Dreyer enters the game with a two-run lead in the seventh and allows a two-run homer to somebody named Weston Wilson.

Vesia allows a go-ahead homer by Bryce Harper in the eighth.

Dodgers pitcher Alex Vesia tosses a rosin bag in frustration after Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper homered at the top of the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium on Monday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Treinen doesn’t hold the runners on base in the 10th, allows a double steal, and JT Realmuto hits the eventual game-winning fly ball.

“I had the guys that I wanted, and that doesn’t always work out,” said Roberts.

It feels like it’s too late to work out.

“Trying to see which guys step up,” said Roberts. “Just gonna try to figure out who’s going to seize the opportunity.”

On Monday night, the opportunity seized them, dragging them into a three-game series that could cost them everything.

Tough to beat a wild card opponent with a bullpen that folds.

The Dodgers are planning to use Shohei Ohtani as a starting pitcher in the playoffs, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman confirmed Monday.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t certain scenarios in which he could also come out of the bullpen, as well.

“Things play out in October that you can’t foresee,” Friedman said before Monday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies — shortly after, coincidentally, catching up with new Phillies signing and ex-Dodgers favorite Walker Buehler, who made three starts in the Dodgers’ rotation last postseason before emerging for a title-clinching save in Game 5 of the Fall Classic.

“Walker Buehler was a starting pitcher for us last year, and finished out Game 5 of the World Series,” Friedman noted. “So you never know how things are going to play out.”

The possibility of Ohtani pitching in relief has been percolating for the last several weeks. Pitching coach Mark Prior said he could “absolutely” envision it during an appearance on the “Dan Patrick Show” last month. Manager Dave Roberts has more recently reiterated that the conversation regarding Ohtani’s postseason pitching role remains open as the regular season winds down.

“Could it change down the road in the postseason? Possibly,” Roberts said Sunday when pressed on the topic again. “But right now we see him as a starter.”

Friedman largely echoed that sentiment Monday, a day before Ohtani was set for his next scheduled start in a pivotal series against the Phillies (who entered this week’s visit to Dodger Stadium 4 ½ games ahead of the Dodgers for the No. 2 seed in the National League standings, and the first-round bye that comes with it).

Friedman praised Ohtani, who has returned from a second-career Tommy John surgery this year with a 3.75 ERA and 49 strikeouts over 36 innings, as “one of the best starters in the National League.”

Shohei Ohtani delivers against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards on Sept. 5.

(Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

He said the team’s expectation is that the right-hander “will impact us as a starting pitcher” in the playoffs — even though Ohtani might not pitch much past the fifth inning of games (the limit he has been held to in his recent regular season starts) and won’t be asked to make consecutive starts on normal four days of rest (he has gotten at least five days off between each of his outings this year).

“No one is taking on more than [he is with the] pitching and also hitting and running the bases,” Friedman said. “So just trying to be cognizant of that.”

However, pitching out of the bullpen in some specific, late-game situations could remain on the table.

Like Buehler last year, and Clayton Kershaw in many Octobers before that, a long postseason run would likely offer opportunities for the Dodgers to use Ohtani as a reliever in the days between his starts — perhaps in potential close-out games or on nights when the back end of the team’s struggling bullpen is low on other trustworthy options.

Ohtani does have memorable personal experience in such a role, having recorded the final outs of Team Japan’s victory in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

When looking ahead to this postseason, Friedman did not close the door on that possibility either; even though he said his focus has remained on navigating the final two weeks of the regular season first.

“We’re expecting him to be a starter for us,” Friedman said, “and depending on everything else, we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

Of course, Ohtani’s two-way status would add extra complications to any potential bullpen plans.

There are logistical questions — like how he would warm up if his spot in the batting order comes up the inning before he’s supposed to take the mound.

And then there is a technical dilemma — with MLB’s two-way rules having been written in a way that, if Ohtani were to enter the game as a reliever, the Dodgers would lose him as a designated hitter once he exits the mound.

“Once you fire him … and you decide to come out of it, you have to take that cost of losing the DH and losing him as a hitter,” Roberts said. “You got to be willing to take the chance.”

That reality might restrict Ohtani to pitching only out of the bullpen in the ninth inning of games, and could make the Dodgers more hesitant to use Ohtani in relief at all for fear of what would happen if a game extended past the end of his outing.

Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani remains a key bat for the team, adding weight to any decision to use him as a reliever.

(Eric Thayer/Eric Thayer For The Los Angeles Times)

“I think they missed the mark with it,” Friedman said when asked if he was frustrated by the language of the two-way rule; which was enacted by MLB several years ago in response to Ohtani’s emergence as a two-way star, but only allows him to remain in the game as a hitter after he exits pitching starts, specifically.

“I think the rule was put in place to try to encourage people to do it, to incentivize people,” Friedman said. “So yeah, I think they missed.”

Friedman noted he’d liked to see the rule eventually changed to also include relief appearances, but acknowledged “that’s more of an offseason, future thing.”

“Obviously,” he added, “it’s not reasonable for us to ask for that in-season.”

Thus, for now, the Dodgers will continue to weigh the complex pros and cons of how to use Ohtani’s arm once they reach October.

His current weekly pitching schedule has Ohtani lined up to throw in Game 1 of a potential wild card series, which will begin exactly two weeks from his Tuesday night start against the Phillies (though Friedman insisted that wasn’t intentional).

Whether his services are needed, even in narrowly conceivable circumstances, out of the bullpen beyond that remains to be seen — with the Dodgers continuing to leave that possibility open for now.

“I think so much of it is, when does he start? What’s that time off in-between? How lined up are our other starters?” Friedman said.

“Until we know that, it’s hard to get too much into it.”

Well, it is starting to appear that we are on the way to another in a series of mediocre football seasons at my alma mater UCLA.

I am now officially in the “I don’t care about UCLA Football anymore” camp. I graduated from UCLA in 1975 and while every once in a while UCLA will have a somewhat successful season, the best they seem to be able to do is be invited to a second-tier bowl game. The College Football Playoff? Forget about it.

Coach DeShaun Foster is very clearly in way over his head. I predict he will be gone after this season.

Bruce Dunklin
Thousand Oaks

It has to be painfully obvious that the DeShaun Foster experiment at head coach is a dismal failure. The loss to UNLV was not just embarrassing but shameful. It was once said that Foster was Karl Dorrell 2.0, but that is unfair. Dorrell had a 10-win season and beat USC. Coach “We’re Close” Foster is in way over his head. His team is undisciplined and unprepared. This clueless performance will lead to a completely empty Rose Bowl and eventual desertion of NIL sponsors. What is the athletic department going to do when we lose to New Mexico and go 0-12 for the year?

Thomas Auyong
Diamond Bar

DeShaun Foster has to be the worst head coach in UCLA history. If a team is a reflection of their coach, then this is the worst UCLA team every. Does the team have a weight program? They are getting pushed around out there and it’s only going to get uglier. We are going to lose 100-0 to Ohio State.

Ed Villanueva
Chino Hills

UCLA fell for the third consecutive game to open the season, with their drubbing at the hands of New Mexico. Maybe it’s time for AD Martin Jarmond to consider dropping the football program to a lower division, or just dropping football completely (the latter might help balance the athletic budget). Either way, coach DeShaun Foster and the Bruins are in for a long season.

Chris Sorce
Fountain Valley

My 98-year-old father and I are 25-year UCLA football season-ticket holders. We love our Bruin football, but let’s face facts. When our AD, Martin Jarmond, hired coach DeShaun Foster, he looked at us with a straight face and told us that they had interviewed upward of 40 candidates for the head coaching position and that Foster was the best of the group. A man with no offensive, defensive or head-coaching experience.

It sadly is now painfully obvious that Jarmond and Foster should be replaced with more experienced and qualified candidates.

Christopher Armen
Woodland Hills

In almost any other season, Dave Roberts might have made a different choice.

Even though Tyler Glasnow was pitching a no-hitter, Roberts would have at least considered removing the right-hander after six innings on Monday night.

Glasnow’s pitch count was already at 91.

This season is unlike any other, however. Up is down, down is up, and the Dodgers can’t rely on their bullpen.

The uncharacteristic problem required an uncharacteristic solution from Roberts, who kept Glasnow in the game.

What was most important about the series-opening 3-1 win over the Colorado Rockies wasn’t that Glasnow kept a no-hitter intact for another inning or that human propane tank Tanner Scott blew it by giving up a double to Ryan Ritter in the ninth.

Rather, the most promising development of the night was that Glasnow completed seven innings and threw 105 pitches.

Starts like this will be necessary for the Dodgers to overcome their most obvious weakness. Starts like this will be indispensable in their quest to repeat as champions.

For the Dodgers to have a chance to win another World Series, they will have to lean more than usual on their starting pitching.

“I do think that there’s certain times, if [the starters] give me the opportunity as far as efficiency and how their stuff is playing, to push them a little more,” Roberts said.

Roberts is already pushing them.

Two days earlier in Baltimore, Roberts granted Yoshinobu Yamamoto a chance to complete a no-hitter. Yamamoto came up short by an out.

Glasnow has completed seven innings in each of his last two starts.

“Those things are going to be good going forward,” Roberts said.

As much as Roberts continues to champion his relievers — “I believe in them,” he insisted — the reality is that the Dodgers’ bullpen ranks 19th in the majors in earned-run average entering play Tuesday. The less Roberts has to call on that group, the better.

Scott, the team’s $72-million closer, has a 4.47 ERA. Kirby Yates, another questionable offseason acquisition, is even worse at 4.71.

Blake Treinen was a postseason hero last year but he was sidelined for more than three months with a forearm sprain and has struggled with consistency since his return.

The only addition made to the bullpen at the trade deadline was Brock Stewart, who is on the injured list.

The situation could force the Dodgers to move away from the kind of bullpen-heavy game plans they have used in recent years and turn back the clock to the days when their starters accounted for an overwhelming majority of their innings.

Since the start of August, the Dodgers are second in the majors in innings pitched by their starters. Their starters have a combined ERA of 3.31 in that period, also second-best in the majors.

The Dodgers are expected to have four pitchers in their playoff rotation, and they have five legitimate candidates for those positions in Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Shohei Ohtani, Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw.

But pitching deep into a postseason game isn’t the same as pitching deep into a regular-season game. Snell and Glasnow have each started 10 playoff games. Snell didn’t complete six innings in any of them. Glasnow did it only twice.

Yamamoto crossed the sixth-inning threshold once in four postseason starts last year, as he pitched into the seventh inning against the New York Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series.

Kershaw’s last six-inning start in the playoffs was in 2020. Ohtani has never pitched in the playoffs, and the most he has pitched this season is five innings.

The pitching staff’s composition could lead to hard decisions for Roberts in October.

Yamamoto, Snell and Glasnow have each averaged 4 ⅔ innings in their postseason starts. If, say, Snell runs into trouble in the fifth inning of a playoff game, what should Roberts do? Could he trust this particular group of relievers to cover the last four-plus innings of a game? Would Snell be the more reliable option to record the final outs of the inning? Or would either choice lead to disaster?

There’s potential for irony. The manager previously second-guessed for removing starting pitchers too early could now come under scrutiny for leaving them in too long.

It was like Orel Hershiser could hear what Dodger fans were screaming at their TV.

Because, as slumping closer Tanner Scott came trotting into a nightmare ninth inning in Baltimore on Saturday night, the club’s color analyst on SportsNet LA immediately tried to offer a rationalization for his entrance.

“You might be asking, why Tanner Scott tonight?” Hershiser said, moments after the SNLA broadcast showed a clip of the left-hander getting walked off the night before, and moments before he’d get walked off again on a bases-loaded single to end Saturday’s disastrous loss to the Orioles.

Well, Hershiser continued, “If the Dodgers are going to go deep into October, and go back-to-back as world champions, the people Dave Roberts is bringing in have to get it right.”

An unsatisfying answer, perhaps. But one that reflects the precarious reality of the Dodgers’ bullpen situation — with the team feeling little choice but to rely on the high-profile relievers this year’s team was built around.

Granted, Saturday’s collapse epitomized just how difficult that faith has been to maintain.

It starts with Scott, the $72-million offseason signing who was supposed to cement the back end of the unit — not require an explanation from team broadcasters upon entering games in key situations.

It’s been compounded by inconsistencies elsewhere, from similarly scuffling offseason signing Kirby Yates; to Blake Treinen and the unreliable form he has shown since returning from an elbow injury, including a meltdown earlier in Saturday’s ninth inning that forced Scott into an unforgiving situation.

Injuries have also hampered the continuity of the bullpen time and again this season. Hard-throwing right-hander Michael Kopech has been limited to 10 appearances because of arm and knee troubles. Left-handed stalwart Alex Vesia has missed the last two weeks with an oblique strain (though he was set to be activated for this week’s homestand). The team’s only notable trade deadline reliever acquisition, Brock Stewart, made just four outings before going down with a shoulder injury. Evan Phillips is already out for the year with Tommy John surgery. It’s unclear if Brusdar Graterol will return from a shoulder procedure in time to pitch at all this year.

All of those names were supposed to make up the core of this year’s relief unit — the high-leverage pieces that the front office decided to invest in, and Roberts expected he’d be able to trust.

Instead, they’ve been the biggest culprits behind the bullpen’s 4.21 ERA on the season (which ranks 19th in the majors) and a spate of recent painful late-game losses that have kept the Dodgers mired in a two-month slump.

Moving forward, it has left Roberts and his club facing a difficult decision: Continue to trust that underperforming crop of supposed lockdown arms, or look for alternatives from less proven options elsewhere?

For now, the former appears to remain their preferred choice.

If the bullpen is to turn things around, they’ve decided, it will require their biggest names to simply start pitching better.

“These are the guys we signed off on, we believe in,” Roberts said Sunday. “Not to say that you’ve got to have blind faith forever. I understand that. But … I’m going to keep giving [opportunities] to them, until I don’t.”

Pitching coach Mark Prior echoed that same message, reiterating that “those are our guys, and we believe in them,” even as the team searches for late-season improvements.

“The results haven’t been there. It hasn’t been good,” Prior added. “[But we have to] move forward with the three weeks we have left in the season and get on a run. Things happen very fast in this game.”

Prior pointed to last season, when the Dodgers faced other — though much less alarming — bullpen questions leading up to the playoffs. At that time, they didn’t have a set closer in the ninth inning. Several key pieces were either hurt or scuffling in the second half.

Treinen, in particular, was one of the bigger uncertainties, after missing two weeks in August with a hip injury that also doubled as a reset amid a midseason slump. Once he returned, however, the right-hander transformed into the Dodgers’ most trusted late-game option. “Next thing you know, he’s the MVP of our team in the playoffs,” Prior said.

The stability he provided also helped the rest of the bullpen, which effectively carried the Dodgers to their World Series title, flourish around him.

“If they see a guy having some success, things just snowball,” Prior said, describing how successes (and failures) can often feel contagious among a bullpen at large.

That’s the kind of dynamic the Dodgers are trying to rediscover again this year.

It’s why Scott (despite his 4.56 ERA and 12 combined blown saves and losing decisions) keeps getting late-game opportunities. And why Treinen (4.26 ERA), Yates (4.71 ERA) and other disappointments in the Dodgers’ beleaguered relief corps have been given continued leash to work to get back to the best version of themselves.

On paper, those are the most veteran, most experienced, and most trustworthy options on this year’s team. They have, as Roberts has repeatedly reiterated of late, the kind of “track record” the club is still willing to bet on. If just a couple of them can figure things out and get on a dominant run, more unit-wide success might follow in their wake.

“When you’re talking about winning 11 games in October, getting there [requires] guys that you can trust in that hot box of moments,” Roberts said.

“[This] is who we have, it’s not like that’s changing,” Prior added. “So we just gotta keep getting there.”

That doesn’t mean the team will endure more struggles forever. The clock is ticking on the Dodgers’ expected leverage group to finally find a way to realize their potential.

On Sunday morning, for example, Roberts said Scott could be shifted out of his ninth-inning role as he tries to iron out command problems that have led him to consistently miss down the middle. Later that day, the manager entrusted a late-game lead to three rookies in Edgardo Henriquez (who escaped a jam but had shaky command), Justin Wrobleski (who struck out five over two scoreless innings in one of his best outings this year) and Jack Dreyer (a steady left-hander this season who now has three saves to go along with his sub-3.00 ERA) to close out a skid-snapping win against the Orioles.

Come the playoffs, there could be another wild card. Two-way star Shohei Ohtani will likely be needed in the starting rotation, but Roberts acknowledged there have been “thoughts about” whether he could factor into some kind of potential ninth-inning role as well.

“I can’t answer that question right now,” Roberts said. “But I think that we’re going to do whatever we feel is the best chance to give us a chance to win. And I know Shohei would be open to whatever. We certainly haven’t made that decision yet, though.”

But before they get there, much will depend on the actual relievers they expected to be able to count on this season. For as ugly as the performances have been to this point, the Dodgers haven’t yet abandoned all hope for a turnaround.

“I live in a world of, what’s the alternative?” Roberts said. “I just don’t feel that Edgardo Henriquez, for example” — who has 17 career major-league innings — “is now the savior.”

“It’s not a knock on Edgardo, because he’s throwing the heck out of the baseball,” Roberts added. “But you look at our ‘pen, there’s a confidence thing right now that [other guys have] got to get over.”

Over the final three weeks of the regular season, the Dodgers feel their best bet is banking on them to do just that.

“Look, it can turn really quick,” Prior said. “This game is so much about feeling confident … Getting, and being able to stack good outings or quality at-bats. When you’re able to start stacking those things, you feel good. And like anything, if you feel good, you feel better about your stuff. You have more confidence. You feel that you can get anybody out in any situation.”

The Dodgers’ top relievers, of course, appear to be a long way from that at the moment.

But “at the core of it,” Prior insisted, even after the frustrations of the bullpen’s continued failures, “we believe in who we have.”

PITTSBURGH — Now is the time, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts believes, for his team’s intensity to rise.

And if the external pressures of a tight National League West race, postseason seeding implications and a looming World Series title defense in October don’t do it, then maybe, he hopes, increased internal battles for playing time will.

For a while on Tuesday night, in a series opener against the perpetually rebuilding Pittsburgh Pirates, the Dodgers showed fight. Clayton Kershaw gave up four runs in an ugly first inning, but the lineup clawed its way back to even the score — thanks, in part, to a 120-mph rocket of a home run from Shohei Ohtani in the third, his 46th of the season and 100th as a Dodger and a tying solo blast from Andy Pages in the fourth.

Kershaw, meanwhile, settled down to get through five innings without any more damage, retiring 13 of his final 15 batters to put the Dodgers in position for a come-from-behind win.

Instead…

The bullpen faltered, with Edgardo Henriquez (who hadn’t given up a run in his first 12 outings this year) and Blake Treinen (who had finally started looking like himself again after an early-season elbow injury) combining for three runs conceded to break the tie in the sixth.

The lineup couldn’t overcome another big deficit, scoring twice in the seventh only for the Pirates to get the runs back in the next two innings.

And once more, the Dodgers fell to a team miles behind them in the standings, losing 9-7 at PNC Park to drop their 10th game out of the last 14 against opponents with losing records this season.

“There were different points in the game that we showed some life,” Roberts said. “And then, unfortunately, we just couldn’t kind of put up that zero to build off of it.”

Still, the Dodgers’ inability to beat bad teams has underscored a persistent issue with the club.

They’ve been inconsistent, struggling to stack clean performances or any semblance of an extended winning streak. They’ve at times lacked urgency, failing to pull away from the slumping Padres in the division or get back in position for a top-two NL playoff seed (which would give them an all-important first-round bye in the postseason).

For all their efforts to rally on Tuesday, they also saw each of their three outfielders fail to snag tough but catchable balls, an eighth-inning wild pitch by Anthony Banda led to one key insurance run and a general lack of execution cost them in other key spots (like when they managed only one run from a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the second).

“Obviously we didn’t play well. We all know that,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “Don’t have to necessarily have a team come-to-Jesus [moment] about it. We’ve just got to find ways to win games. There’s no secret formula about it. It doesn’t matter if a team’s below .500 or above .500. Especially right now, we’ve got to find ways to win games. We’re not doing it.”

Still, neither a soft spot in the schedule nor the realities of the calendar has remedied that issue.

Thus, Roberts highlighted another potential solution in his pregame address — acknowledging that players who don’t step up their performance soon could see their playing time get cut as the roster returns to full health.

“We got some guys coming back, and guys are gonna get opportunities,” Roberts said. “As we get into September, where all these games certainly matter, you got to have guys that you trust.”

On Monday, when MLB rosters expanded to 28 players at the start of September, the Dodgers (78-60) activated two key pieces from the injured list: Infielder Hyeseong Kim, who had been out since late July with a shoulder injury; and reliever Michael Kopech, who had been limited to eight appearances this year because of arm troubles and a meniscus surgery in his knee.

Next homestand, more reinforcements could be on the way, with Max Muncy and Tommy Edman beginning rehab assignments with triple-A Oklahoma City this week.

Before long, the Dodgers’ long-shorthanded depth chart could suddenly be crowded. And as a result, tough decisions could loom in left field, at second base and in the bullpen — forcing the issues for a number of players at various spots on the roster.

“I do think just kind of naturally it raises the level of performance and intensity,” Roberts said, pointing to veteran infielder Miguel Rojas as one example of someone who is “fighting for playing time” with recently improved play.

“I tip my cap to him,” Roberts said. “I’m expecting that from a lot of other guys as well.”

Roberts said Edman will play mostly center fielder during his rehab stint, something he had been unable to do earlier this season while battling an ankle injury. Once he’s back, that means someone such as Michael Conforto (who went 0-for-three with a walk Tuesday to dip to .189 on the season in batting average) could drop to the bench, leaving the corner outfield spots for Pages and Teoscar Hernández.

In the infield, Kim will likely figure in at second base (though could also kick out to left field, where he saw time during his own recent rehab assignment). That will create one more slice in an infield pie that is already being divvied between Rojas, Kiké Hernandez and Alex Freeland. Once Muncy is back at third, at-bats will be at even more of a premium.

The same situation could unfold in the bullpen, which will also get Alex Vesia and Brock Stewart back this month from their own injuries. That will raise the pressure on struggling offseason signings Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to continue earning leverage opportunities.

How it all shakes out remains unclear.

But where there are more options, the Dodgers believe, better production — and intensity — will follow. To this point, nothing else seems to be consistently raising the team’s level of play.

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Padres’ bullpen is considered one of the best in baseball. Their lineup, revamped by a couple of key trade deadline acquisitions, at least rivals the recently inconsistent version the Dodgers have gotten out of theirs.

But this weekend, with first place on the line in the teams’ final meeting this season, the Dodgers were supposed to have one distinct advantage.

Their starting rotation was healthy, fresh and lined up to throw three of its best arms at Petco Park.

The Padres, on the other hand, were banged up and starting three veterans with a collective earned-run average north of 5.00.

Yeah … so much for all that.

For the second-straight night on Saturday, in San Diego’s 5-1 win, a Padres starter unexpectedly dominated the Dodgers, while a Dodgers starter disappointingly stumbled in the fourth inning. This time, it was Nestor Cortes who was in cruise control, spinning six scoreless innings while retiring his first 16 batters. On the other side, it was Tyler Glasnow who ran into trouble, yielding three runs in the fourth to leave the Dodgers for dead.

Just like that, what was a two-game division lead for the Dodgers (73-57) at the start of this week, coming off their sweep of the Padres in Los Angeles last weekend, is a one-game advantage for San Diego in the National League West standings, with the Padres (74-56) primed to sweep the Dodgers right back.

A night after managing just one run and one hit off Yu Darvish on Friday (after he entered the game with an ERA close to 6.00), the Dodgers looked even more overmatched by the left-handed Cortes — who was out for redemption after giving up Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the World Series while playing for the New York Yankees last season.

Since that fateful October night, Cortes has switched teams twice. In the offseason, he was dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he made two early starts before suffering an elbow injury. At the deadline, he was one of seven players the Padres acquired to bolster their roster for the stretch run.

San Diego Padres starting pitcher Nestor Cortes delivers against the Dodgers in the third inning Saturday.

(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)

Cortes had offered minimal help in his first three Padres outings, giving up seven runs in 15 innings while averaging barely 90 mph with his fastball.

But on Saturday, he found a rhythm with his trademark cutter, throwing it more than any other pitch while recording at least one out with it in all six innings he pitched.

The Dodgers hardly threatened in the first, with Shohei Ohtani leading off with a strikeout and Mookie Betts rolling over a center-cut cutter to third base. In the second, Cortes won his rematch with Freeman; throwing a down-and-in fastball all so similar to the one that landed in the right-field pavilion of Dodger Stadium last year — only to turn and watch another deep drive die at the warning track, this time to straightaway center field at Petco Park.

From there, the outs kept coming.

In the sixth inning, Miguel Rojas finally broke up the no-no, adjusting to yet another cutter for a line-drive single to right.

But by then, Glasnow had already dug a hole too deep for the Dodgers’ slumping lineup to climb out of.

After retiring his first six batters, Glasnow started losing his command in the third. He issued a leadoff walk to Ramón Laureano, another to Fernando Tatis Jr., and only escaped the jam after a 10-pitch at-bat against Luis Arraez ended in a grounder.

In the fourth, the Padres wouldn’t come away empty-handed again.

Walks to Manny Machado (on four pitches to lead off the inning) and Xander Bogaerts (on a string of fastballs that missed the zone) were sandwiched around a single from Ryan O’Hearn. Then, with the bases loaded, Laureano lined a two-run single to right. Jake Cronenworth tacked on a sacrifice fly. And just like on Friday, the Dodgers stared down the deficit — and found no way to erase it.

Cortes stranded Rojas, with the inning ending on a fly out from Ohtani. After that, the Padres’ talent-rich bullpen kept things at an arm’s length, with a pinch-hit home run from Alex Freeland (his second in as many nights) representing the Dodgers’ only scoring for a second-straight night.

Dodgers starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers against the Padres in the fifth inning Saturday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

To do some quick math so far this weekend…

The Padres’ two starters have combined for 12 innings, one run and two hits compared to the 12 innings and five runs the Dodgers’ rotation has allowed.

The Dodgers have totaled five hits, three walks and 14 strikeouts. The Padres have 10 hits, eight walks and only 10 Ks against Dodger pitching.

And, most critically, the Padres have two wins — putting them back alone in first place by one game, and on the verge of a sweep that (at least based on the pitching matchups) few would have seen coming.

Lately, the only thing the Dodgers excel at is losing games they should win. When they hit they can’t pitch and when they pitch they can’t hit. They can’t move runners over or get a clutch hit and, of course, the relievers still can’t throw strikes. It all adds up to a good year … for the Padres.

Alan Abajian
Alta Loma

To paraphrase the old adage, you can put lipstick on the Dodgers — for example, so and so is coming back … or recovering.

But any team that has played as inconsistently as they have at the plate, in the field, and on the pitcher’s mound is very unlikely to survive in multiple playoff short series. It’s virtually certain that type of team will get tripped up along the way. Especially one predicted to win 120 games.

Kip Dellinger
Santa Monica

Mr. Plaschke is saying that the Dodgers’ failure to trade for bullpen help is the problem with the bullpen. Maybe he should point the finger at the guy (mis)using them.

John Vitz
Manhattan Beach

Re: Bill Plaschke’s column on Dodgers at trade deadline — The Dodgers didn’t have an “inability” to improve their bullpen, it was an “unwillingness.” With the talent in their system, the Dodgers could have easily put together a package to get Mason Miller, David Bednar or similar. Impossible to know if there was any meaningful undisclosed trade talk to get better bullpen help, but it sure looks like the Dodgers simply decided not to do it. It also looks like it could be a big mistake.

John Merryman
Redondo Beach

Truth be told, the story was about the incredible Angel comeback/sweep of the Dodgers. Once again the columnist focuses on the Dodgers’ injuries instead of the Angels’ mind-blowing bottom of the ninth rally. Will the “Summer Bummer” continue when the Padres invade Dodger Stadium?

Patrick Kelley
Los Angeles

Who ARE these people and what have they done with our Dodgers?

Sarah Tamor
Santa Monica

Only one player in the last 110 years has tried to do what the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is doing this season, which is to pitch and hit successfully at the big-league level.

Babe Ruth twice won more than 20 games and led the American League in ERA and starts before the Red Sox, then the Yankees, decided pitching was distracting from Ruth’s hitting and put him out to pasture in right field.

Over the next three seasons, Ruth broke the major league record for home runs three times.

The Dodgers and Ohtani insist he’ll remain a two-way player for the time being, but recent performances suggests both the Red Sox and Yankees may have been on to something when they took Ruth off the mound.

Ohtani made his eighth start of the year Wednesday and it was his best as a Dodger, with the right-hander giving up just a tainted run on two hits and striking out a season-high eight in four innings. Perhaps more important, he also slugged his first home run in 10 games in the third inning of a 5-3 matinee loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.

It was the first truly Ruthian two-way performances for Ohtani since he joined the Dodgers but it was one the team’s defense and bullpen wasted, with three relievers combining to yield four runs on 10 hits over the final five innings.

The two most important ones came in the eighth, when the Cardinals turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead, greeting Alex Vesia with a pair of singles before a two-out hit from Jordan Walker drove in the tying run and the winning one scored on a throwing error by third baseman Alex Freeland.

“It never feels good,” manager Dave Roberts said of the loss, his team’s 17th in 30 games since July 1. “Is there a level of frustration the way the second half has started off? Yeah. We just haven’t synced up. We just can’t get on track offensively. We’re not playing great.”

That can’t be said of Ohtani, although the effort he gave at the plate Wednesday equaled what he’s been doing on the mound recently. He has posted a 2.37 ERA and struck out 25 in 19 innings in his eight starts, yet in the same eight games he’s batted .219. In his last six starts on the mound, he’s gone just three for 24 at the plate.

That’s part of a slump that began in mid-June, when Ohtani made his pitching debut for the Dodgers. At the time he led the majors in runs and led the National League in homers and slugging percentage. Since then, his strikeout rate has risen, his average has plummeted more than 20 points and he’s clubbed just 14 homers, one fewer than he had in May alone as a designated hitter.

Ohtani said he can’t explain the difference.

“I don’t really try to think too differently on days that I pitch and hit and on days that I only hit,” he said through a translator. “I’m thinking of adjusting how I work out and do my work in between my outings. Especially now that I’m going to be throwing more innings.”

Ohtani both pitched and hit on his way to two MVP awards with the Angels. But last season, the first in five years in which he didn’t pitch while recovering from a second elbow surgery, Ohtani sent career highs in virtually every offensive category and led the NL in runs (134), homers (54) and RBIs (130) while becoming the first player in history to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in a single season.

That won him a third MVP award and a World Series ring, replicas of which were handed out Wednesday to the 44,621 sun-splashed fans who came to see Ohtani pitch. But in 2021, when he topped 10 starts for the first time with the Angels, he hit a full-season career-low .257 and struck out a career-high 189 times.

For Ohtani, the manager said, the challenge now is finding comfort in the crowed new routine.

“It’s not the norm,” he said. “It’s been over two years since he’s done this, so he’s still sort of getting adjusted to this lifestyle, as far as kind of the day to day.”

“I don’t think he’s there yet. It’s only going to get better as he gets more time doing it.”

Ohtani breezed through his longest start as a Dodger, topping 100 mph multiple times and retiring the first six Cardinals in order. It would have been seven but shortstop Mookie Betts and second baseman Miguel Rojas lost Walker’s popout in a high sky leading off the third. That went for a hit and Walker came around to score on a stolen base, a ground out and Brendan Donovan’s infield single.

Ohtani struck out the next four hitters he faced while giving his team the lead in the third, following Alex Call’s leadoff double — his first hit as a Dodger — with a two-run homer to center. The hit was the 1,000th in the majors for Ohtani while the homer was his 39th of the season.

The Dodgers added another run in the fourth when Andy Pages led off with a single, moved to second on a wild pitch, stole third and continued home when the throw from catcher Pedro Pagés hit the bat of Miguel Rojas and ricocheted toward the Dodger dugout.

Then came the daily bullpen meltdown, with the Cardinals pushing a run across against Justin Wrobleski in the sixth, setting the stage for their eighth-inning rally against Vesia. Brock Stewart gave up the final run in the ninth.

“If you look at the last couple weeks, I think our bullpen has been good,” Roberts said of a relief corps that has failed to covert a third of its 52 save opportunities. “We didn’t finish it off today. But I think in general, the bullpen in the last couple weeks has been pretty stable.”

So much for the Dodgers ruining baseball.

They won’t finish this season with the best record in history, as they could win every one of their remaining games and still not realize the 120-win season that was envisioned for them.

They might not even finish this season with the best record in the National League — or in their own division, for that matter.

The Dodgers look beatable.

Their perceived vulnerability didn’t necessarily inspire the frenzied action around baseball before the trade deadline, but it certainly didn’t discourage it either.

With blood in the water and the World Series field wide open, several contenders moved to prepare their rosters for October. No team changed as much as the San Diego Padres, who are suddenly positioned to turn the Dodgers’ title defense into a humiliation exercise.

“We went in knowing, OK, we have a team that can compete and play deep and ultimately we have these needs and let’s go fill them,” Padres general manager A.J. Preller said.

Mason Miller, who throws a fastball with an average velocity of 101 mph, will turbocharge what was already the No. 1 bullpen in baseball. Ramon Laureano and Ryan O’Hearn will improve the balance of a top-heavy lineup featuring Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. Freddy Fermin will address a hole at catcher. JP Sears and Nestor Cortes will add depth to a rotation on the mend.

Particularly revealing of the Padres’ ambitions was what Preller didn’t do. He didn’t trade closer Robert Suarez, an impending free agent. He didn’t trade underperforming former All-Star pitcher Dylan Cease, who will also hit the market this winter.

The Padres were only three games behind the Dodgers at the trade deadline, making Preller’s team a legitimate threat to overtake them in the division and cost them a top-two seed in the NL, for which the reward is a first-round bye in the playoffs.

The danger didn’t compel the Dodgers to act, their relative inactivity in this situation reflecting the contrasting philosophies of the two organizations.

The Dodgers make deals on their terms. When president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman overpay for players — the combined $85 million the Dodgers spent over the winter on relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates is an example — it’s usually by accident.

The mentality often results in the market dictating to the Dodgers what they can and can’t do. For better or worse, the Padres have elected a proactive approach.

Landing Miller required to part with Leo De Vries, an 18-year-old shortstop who is widely considered one of the five best prospects in the entire sport.

Preller knew what he gave up.

“He’s going to be a very good major league player,” Preller said of De Vries.

Preller has done this before, He traded Max Fried and he traded Emmanuel Clase and he traded Josh Naylor. When he acquired Juan Soto at the 2022 trade deadline, he sent the Washington Nationals a package that included three future All-Stars in CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore and James Wood.

Impact players have considerable price tags, and they’re higher in some years than in others. The Dodgers examined the prices of the best relievers and outfielders available, and they settled for more affordable options. The Padres went for it, with Preller saying he was confident the team’s scouting and player development departments would once again replenish the farm system.

“In different points in time over the last few years, we’ve been able to be in this position, to be able to make these types of decisions and calls,” Preller said. “It’s just because we have good players that other teams want.”

The Padres weren’t alone. The two New York teams reconstructed their bullpens, the Philadelphia Phillies found a closer in Jhoan Duan and the Seattle Mariners added some pop to their lineup by dealing for Eugenio Suarez and Josh Naylor.

Why wouldn’t these teams be bold?

The Dodgers couldn’t make this a one-horse race. Their inability to separate themselves from the pack presented competitors with opportunities to pass them by at the trade deadline. Some of them might have.

Before trade rumors heated up and dream scenarios were briefly envisioned, before the Dodgers were linked to a string of big names who all wound up anywhere but Los Angeles, the team’s front office foreshadowed what proved to be a rather straightforward, unremarkable trade deadline on Thursday afternoon.

“This group is really talented,” general manager Brandon Gomes said last week. “I would argue it’s better than the team that won the World Series last year.”

“It’s really about our internal guys, and the fact that these are veteran guys that have well-established watermarks,” echoed president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, amid a July slump that fueled deadline speculation about what the team would need.

“I think the fact that we see the work they put in, how much they care, just makes it easier to bet on.”

On Thursday, maintaining faith in their current group is exactly what the Dodgers did.

The team did address its two main needs ahead of MLB’s annual midseason trade deadline. In the bullpen, it reunited with right-handed veteran Brock Stewart in a trade with the Minnesota Twins. In the outfield, it added solid-hitting, defensively serviceable 30-year-old Alex Call in a deal with the Washington Nationals.

But compared with the flurry of blockbuster deals that reverberated around them in the National League — from a head-spinning seven-player shopping spree by the San Diego Padres, to a bullpen arms race between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies — the Dodgers’ moves were mild, tame and certainly cost-conscientious.

They didn’t splurge for one of the several established closers that were dealt for sky-high prices throughout the league. They didn’t remake their lineup by landing someone such as Steven Kwan, or any other hitter with anything close to All-Star pedigree.

In fact, the Dodgers hardly gave up much at all, content to round out the margins of their roster while parting with little in the way of prospect capital.

High-A pitchers Eriq Swan and Sean Paul Liñan (the 16th- and 20th-ranked players in their farm system by MLB Pipeline) were shipped to Washington. But otherwise, the only other departures were 40-man roster players unlikely to factor much into the team’s late-season plans: James Outman, who went to Minnesota in exchange for Stewart; Dustin May, who was dealt to the Boston Red Sox for a prospect a few months before entering free agency; and minor league catcher Hunter Feduccia, who was part of a three-team deal late Wednesday night that netted the Dodgers two pitching prospects and a journeyman catcher.

The Dodgers’ James Outman (33) celebrates after hitting a three-run home run during a game against the Miami Marlins in May.

(Marta Lavandier / Associated Press)

Compared to last year — when the Dodgers added Jack Flaherty (their eventual Game 1 starter in the World Series), Tommy Edman (the eventual National League Championship Series MVP) and Michael Kopech (a key piece in a bullpen that carried the team to a World Series title) — it all felt rather anticlimactic.

Which, as the Dodgers’ top two executives had noted the week before, appeared to be perfectly fine by them.

In Stewart, the team got a lower-cost addition in what was an expensive seller’s reliever market.

The 33-year-old has only two career saves, and is unlikely to fix the Dodgers’ ninth-inning problems. But, he is having a strong statistical season with 14 holds and a 2.38 ERA, 14th-best in the American League among relievers with 30 innings. He will give the Dodgers a stout option against right-handed hitters, who have just a .104 average and .372 OPS against him. And he comes with familiarity in the organization, still thought highly of after starting his career with the Dodgers from 2016-2019 — back before he reinvented himself with a fastball that now sits in the mid-to-upper 90 mph range.

In Call, the Dodgers gave themselves more versatility in the outfield.

The right-handed hitter has appeared in just 277 career games over four MLB seasons with the Nationals and Cleveland Guardians.

But the former third-round draft pick is having a nice 2025 season, highlighted by a .274 batting average, .756 OPS and decent (if unspectacular) defensive grades at all three outfield positions.

While Call’s role wasn’t immediately clear, he could factor into a platoon with recently resurgent left-handed hitting outfielder Michael Conforto. He also gives the Dodgers another option in center field, specifically, which would allow Andy Pages to spend more time in a more naturally suited corner outfield spot.

For those Dodgers, the moves checked off their two big priorities: Adding another dependable right-handed reliever in the bullpen, and improving their defensive options in the outfield.

What was missing from the Dodgers’ deadline, however, was the kind of big splash so many other contenders reeled off this week. The Padres acquired Mason Miller, Ramon Laureano, and Ryan O’Hearn without sacrificing any key big-league pieces. The Mets added Tyler Rogers, Ryan Helsley and Gregory Soto to their already stout bullpen, while the Phillies upgraded theirs with the addition of Jhoan Durán.

Already this year, the rest of the NL was keeping pace with what was billed as a seemingly invincible Dodgers team. Suddenly, the competition looks that much stronger, not only for the club to defend its World Series, but even to preserve the narrow three-game lead it holds over the Padres in the NL West.

The Dodgers, however, see internal improvement as the key to the rest of the season.

Already, their pitching staff is getting healthy. Tyler Glasnow, Blake Treinen and (as of this coming Saturday) Blake Snell are all back from extended injuries. Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol, Tanner Scott and Roki Sasaki are also scheduled to return over the final two months.

Offensively, the club is confident that slumping stars Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Tesocar Hernández will get back on track, and that Max Muncy will provide a jolt in his return from injury next week. All that — coupled with the MVP-caliber play of Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith — they believe should yield a lineup capable of repeating a run to the World Series.

“It’s always tricky when you’re in the midst of a swoon in team performance, because in those moments you feel like we need everything,” Friedman acknowledged leading into the deadline, with the team enduring a 10-14 slide in July. “So for us, it’s about, all right, let’s look ahead to August, September. Let’s look at what our best-case scenario is. Let’s look at, if we have a few injuries here and there, what areas are we exposed? What areas do we feel like we have depth?”

Apparently, the Dodgers still liked what they already had, rolling the dice on their current group while other contenders stocked up all around them.

CINCINNATI — What’s the opposite of a splash?

Because that’s how the Dodgers started their trade deadline activity late Wednesday night.

On the eve of MLB’s annual trade deadline (which is Thursday at 3 p.m. PDT), the Dodgers were the tertiary party in a three-team trade with the Cincinnati Reds and Tampa Bay Rays.

While the biggest piece in the deal — starting pitcher Zack Littell — went from Tampa Bay to Cincinnati, the Dodgers were included in a swap of some lesser-name players.

Minor league catcher Hunter Feduccia, a longtime Dodgers farmhand having a nice season with triple-A Oklahoma City, was sent to Tampa Bay.

In return, the Dodgers received pitching prospect Adam Serwinowski from the Reds, as well as reliever Paul Gervase and catcher Ben Rortvedt from the Rays, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly.

Serwinowski is the most intriguing name the Dodgers acquired. A 21-year-old left-hander who was ranked as the No. 10 prospect in the Reds’ farm system by MLB Pipeline, the former 15th-round draft pick has been a favorite of Dodgers’ evaluators for a while, according to another person with knowledge of the team’s thinking.

While Serwinowski has a 4.84 ERA in high-A this season, the Dodgers are excited by his potential and add him to a farm system that is lacking the depth of impact pitching prospects it usually touts.

Gervase is a 25-year-old reliever who debuted in the majors this year with the Rays, posting a 4.26 ERA in five outings this year.

Rortvedt is a 27-year-old journeyman catcher who will help provide organizational depth in Feduccia’s absence, alongside current triple-A backstops Chris Okey and Chuckie Robinson.

For a team that has been linked to some of the bigger names on this year’s trade market, it was far from the blockbuster many fans have been waiting on.

Granted, the Dodgers are still expected to be active on Thursday.

Their need for a reliever remains, even though they remained idle on Wednesday as other top options, from Jhoan Durán to Ryan Helsley to Tyler Rogers, were dealt elsewhere.

The club is still hoping to add another hitter to their lineup too, with an upgrade in the outfield (especially defensively) seen as a priority, according to a person with knowledge of the club’s thinking.

Whether the Dodgers can land the impact additions they seek, in what has been a seller’s market defined by high acquisition costs to this point, remains to be seen.

But at least they won’t go into deadline day without having made any deals, with Wednesday night’s late-night transaction expected to be the first of several moves they make ahead of Thursday’s trade cutoff.

For 2 ½ hours of a sun-splashed Wednesday afternoon, the Dodgers were playing up to — or perhaps down to — recent expectations.

Their offense consisted mainly of a Shohei Ohtani home run while the starting pitching kept them in the game, but then everything appeared to go off the rails when manager Dave Roberts went to his bullpen.

This time there was a surprise ending though, with Freddie Freeman lining a two-strike, two-out, two-run single to left field to give the Dodgers a walk-off 4-3 win over the Minnesota Twins.

The win was just the second in six games since the All-Star break. But with the team beginning a nine-game, three-city road trip, its longest of the second half, Friday in Boston, Roberts believes the comeback could provide the spark the Dodgers have been missing.

“I hope so,” he said. “How we got here today, showing the fight, willing ourselves to get Freddie at bat. Freddie [taking] probably his best swing in a month. And to win a game like that, that’s momentum building.“

Maybe. Yet there was little reason to think the Dodgers were headed in the right direction entering the ninth inning.

Ohtani had given them the lead with a solo home run in the first inning. It was his fifth straight game with a home run, a career high that equaled the franchise record, giving him 37 for the season. Royce Lewis got that run back for the Twins in the third, leading off with his fifth home run of the season just inside the left-field foul pole. The score stayed that way until the seventh, when Tommy Edman looped a single over a drawn-in infield, putting the Dodgers back in front.

Which is when the game took a turn.

Tyler Glasnow, pitching for the third time since returning from the injury list, was brilliant again, holding the Twins to a run on three hits while striking out 12 batters over seven innings. But he was out of bullets after throwing 106 pitches, so Roberts went to the bullpen — and five batters later the Dodgers trailed, with the Twins scoring twice without ever getting the ball out of the infield.

Kirby Yates was first to the mound and he walked the bases loaded, missing the plate on 12 of his 18 pitches. Alex Vesia came in next to get Willi Castro to hit into a double play, but that allowed the tying run to score.

Pinch-hitter Harrison Bader then promptly untied it with a poorly hit ball that got over the leaping Vesia before dying on the infield grass as Brooks Lee raced home from third.

It was a script the Dodgers had seen before: Over the last four weeks, the team’s bullpen ERA has ballooned to 4.43. Only six teams in the majors entered Wednesday with a higher mark.

The rotation is largely to blame because, after losing three of his projected five starters in the season’s first two months, Roberts has had to use everything short of masking tape and bailing wire to keep a starting staff together. As a result, the Dodgers have used 16 starters this season and 37 pitchers overall.

Shohei Ohtani flips the bat after hitting a 441-foot home run to left-center in the first inning against the Minnesota Twins.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

That rotation is getting healthier now that Glasnow, who has missed most of the season because of an inflamed shoulder, could soon be rejoined in the rotation by two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, The left-hander, out since April 2 with shoulder inflammation, is scheduled to make his final minor-league rehab start Saturday.

Until now the bullpen has had to shoulder much of the load of those injuries: Dodger starters have thrown a big-league low 467 3/2 innings this season, averaging less than five innings a start, while their exhausted relievers have pitched a major-league-leading 452 2/3 innings.

So perhaps it’s no coincidence that in the last two days the team has lost two relievers, with Tanner Scott going on the injured list because of elbow inflammation and Ben Casparius limping off the mound with a right calf cramp, joining 11 pitchers already on the sidelines.

Casparius underwent an MRI exam, which was negative, and is expected to be available on the road trip. He admitted Wednesday that the bullpen’s recent struggles led him to try to pitch through the soreness, likely making the injury worse.

“Going through the back of my mind [was] kind of gutting it out,” he said. “I think you can look at it a bunch of different ways, but I’m not necessarily sure I put the team in the best spot.”

If Casparius failed to pick the team up, however, Freeman didn’t miss his shot.

After leaving the bases loaded in both the seventh and eighth innings, the Dodgers were down to their last strike when the slumping Mookie Betts beat out a weakly hit ball to third. The ball didn’t travel 90 feet but it went far enough for Betts to beat the throw by a whisker for his third hit in his last 29 at-bats.

The Twins then walked Ohtani intentionally before Esteury Ruiz worked a walk of his own to bring Freeman to the plate. And after taking two strikes, he fouled off a tough 1-2 pitch, then sliced a liner to left that fell in front of diving Bader to win the game.

“We needed that one,” said Freeman, who was hitting .210 in July before collecting two hits Wednesday.

The Dodgers celebrated by heading to the airport to board their charter to Boston, where they might be without Betts for at least a game.

Roberts said “everything is OK” with his shortstop but added that “there’s some things going on personally for him. We’ll see if he’s going to be there for the Friday game.”

As for the rest of the team, there’s hope the 6,300-mile trip, which includes stops in Cincinnati and Tampa Bay, will be long enough to get the Dodgers around the corner.

“Momentum is everything,” said Casparius, echoing his manager. “Maybe getting on the road and being uncomfortable might help us out a little bit in a weird way too. It’s a tough part of the year. Everybody around the league is going through this type of stuff.

“I think we’re going to turn a corner.”

Notes: Reliever Blake Treinen was scheduled to make back-to-back appearances for triple-A Oklahoma City on Wednesday and Thursday, and if things go well, he could re-join the Dodgers on the road trip. Treinen went on the injured list April 19 with forearm tightness. … Third baseman Max Muncy is scheduled to face live pitching at the Dodgers’ Arizona complex Thursday and could begin a minor-league rehab assignment next week, far sooner than expect. Muncy was the Dodgers’ hottest hitter when he sustained a bone bruise in his left knee three weeks ago. It was anticipated he would miss a month and half.

It’s an age-old question when it comes to the Dodgers, cast upon a new-look roster battling familiar injury-related headaches.

In a best-case scenario, the Dodgers could end the season with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani (in some capacity) headlining their rotation.

In the bullpen, they could have Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech and Brusdar Graterol bolstering more heavily-used arms like Tanner Scott, Alex Vesia and Kirby Yates — plus wild card options in Ben Casparius, Emmet Sheehan and Jack Dreyer to serve in more versatile roles on the mound.

But best-case pitching scenarios, of course, have often been unrealized fantasies with the franchise in recent years.

Thus, down the stretch this season, the Dodgers’ top priority (after winning the division and securing a first-round bye) will be keeping their arms as healthy as possible.

That will be most important with Glasnow (who just returned from a shoulder injury) and Snell (who should be back from his own shoulder problem in the next couple of weeks). To this point, the Dodgers have signaled a reluctance to urgently pursue a starter at the trade deadline. And even if they did, the lack of available front-line options means it’d be difficult to insure against either (or, in a nightmare world) both going down again.

The Dodgers have been interested in adding to the bullpen, and might set their sights on a legitimate closer given Scott’s season-long struggles. But still, much of their depth will depend on Treinen (who is also nearing a return from a forearm injury), Kopech (who went on the 60-day IL after a knee surgery, but is still expected back this season) and Graterol (who is also still expected to return after missing the first half recovering from offseason shoulder surgery).

The Dodgers also have their fingers crossed on Roki Sasaki (hoping he can return in late August from his own shoulder issue) and haven’t yet ruled out Tony Gonsolin (though he has remained shut down since suffering an elbow injury). But for now, their primary hope is to keep Glasnow and Snell upright, and replenish an overworked bullpen with late-season reinforcements.

SAN FRANCISCO — They’ve underperformed relative to preseason expectations, but worked around serious roster limitations.

They’ve wowed with an undefeated 8-0 start, a star-studded offense that tops the majors in scoring, and a comfortable division lead in a competitive National League West. And yet, they’ve left so much to still be desired, both on the mound from their injury-plagued pitching staff and at the plate amid uncharacteristic slumps from several veteran stars.

No, the Dodgers have not played like “The Greatest Team Ever” in the first half of the season. Their record-setting $400-million payroll is not bidding for any all-time wins mark.

But, after grinding out a 5-2 extra-innings win over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday to enter the All-Star break with a key divisional series victory, their first half has been a quiet success nonetheless, concluding with the Dodgers (58-39) holding a 5 ½-game lead in the NL West, the top record in the NL and still the best odds of being baseball’s first repeat champion in a quarter-century.

“I think the win-loss, the standings are great,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But I think there’s just a lot of improvement that we need to do, we need to be better at.”

Indeed, Sunday epitomized the duality of the Dodgers’ first 97 games.

Their starting pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, completed his stellar start to the season with a seven-inning gem, keeping the Giants (52-45) off the scoreboard while giving up three hits, two walks and striking out seven batters.

If the Dodgers were to pick a first-half MVP, perhaps only Shohei Ohtani would outpace Yamamoto, who enters the break as a first-time All-Star thanks to his 9-7 record, 2.59 earned-run average and six separate outings of six or more scoreless innings (tied for second-most such starts in the majors this year, behind only Tarik Skubal).

“He’s been really good,” Roberts said before the game, wholly convinced the 26-year-old Japanese right-hander would bounce back from his ugly five-run first inning in Milwaukee last week. “He’s just to the point where he knows he’s a really good pitcher, he’s an All-Star and he has high expectations for himself. He’s just been very valuable.”

However, the back end of the bullpen remained a problem, with closer Tanner Scott blowing a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the ninth by giving up a two-run home run to pinch-hitter Luis Matos on a hanging slider at the knees.

Scott, a $72-million signing this offseason, has converted only 19 of his 26 save opportunities this year. He has a 4.09 ERA and eight home runs given up. And his struggles have made the bullpen a prime area of need for the Dodgers entering the trade deadline.

“[He’s] just in-zone too much,” Roberts said, “and getting beat by [the slider] or getting beat by the fastball in similar locations.”

The Dodgers’ offense has been equally quixotic.

Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman both hit the midway point mired in extended slumps — though Freeman made a couple key contributions Sunday, lining an RBI double in the fourth inning before putting the Dodgers back in front in the 11th with a bloop single that dropped in center.

“It’s just good to actually hit a couple balls,” Freeman deadpanned postgame. “That’s been the hardest thing the last couple months.”

Freddie Freeman hits a run-scoring single in the 11th inning Sunday against the Giants.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

Meanwhile, Ohtani has pitched superbly in his limited action on the mound, but his offense has declined since resuming a two-way role. When he singled in the fifth inning Sunday, it marked his first hit this year to come on the day immediately following one of his pitching starts.

“When you’re starting to try to break it down, I think you can cut it any way you want,” Roberts said when asked about Ohtani’s increasingly noticeable dip in production. “But when he’s in the lineup, he makes the lineup better.”

And though catcher Will Smith has a healthy lead for the NL batting title, earning his third-straight All-Star nod with a .323 mark, others toward the bottom of the lineup have been cold, from Teoscar Hernández (who is hitting barely .200 since returning from an adductor injury in May; though he added an infield single in Sunday’s 11th inning rally) to Andy Pages (whose All-Star candidacy fizzled with a .220 average in his last 16 games, despite also chipping in with an RBI single in the 11th) to Tommy Edman (whose defensive versatility has been valuable, but finished the first half in an 0-for-23 slump).

“I always expect more from our guys,” Roberts said, sounding less than satisfied with the state of his club at the midseason marker. “And they expect the same thing.”

Such struggles, after all, are reminders of how the Dodgers remain fallible in their pursuit of another World Series.

Their banged-up pitching staff remains another wild card in their pressure-packed title defense (though Tyler Glasnow has already returned, Blake Snell and Blake Treinen should be back shortly after the All-Star break, and Roki Sasaki is on track for a late August return after throwing a long-awaited bullpen session this week).

And for large swaths of the first half of the season, it all made the Dodgers look exceedingly mortal; none more so than during the seven-game losing streak that preceded their back-to-back wins against the Giants to close out this weekend’s series.

“I mean, obviously, we didn’t want to lose nine in a row going into the break,” Freeman said. “So getting a couple of wins and ending it on a good note after a really good first half that we played, that was big today.”

However, their issues have still done little to no damage to the team’s long-term chances, with a frustrating but fruitful opening act to this campaign leaving the Dodgers right where they want to be — even if, as Sunday epitomized, they haven’t gotten there the way they would have hoped.

“First place is first place,” Freeman said. “I think we’re OK with where we’re at.”

MILWAUKEE — Yoshinobu Yamamoto was one pitch away from a clean first inning Monday night.

Instead, it devolved into a sudden, unstoppable nightmare.

In the shortest start of his MLB career, and in an outing that somehow rivaled his disastrous debut in the majors last March in South Korea, Yamamoto missed one chance after the next to escape the bottom of the first against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field. Poor defense and bad batted-ball luck didn’t help in what became a 41-pitch collapse.

By the time it was all over, the Brewers were leading by five runs, manager Dave Roberts was summoning a reliever just two outs into the game, and the Dodgers were well on their way to a fourth consecutive defeat, never coming close to a comeback in a 9-1 loss to open a six-game road trip.

The trouble started quickly beneath an open retractable roof on a mild summer night in Wisconsin.

Sal Frelick hammered a hanging curveball for a leadoff double. Willson Contreras drew a walk when Yamamoto couldn’t locate his splitter near the zone. And the two outs that followed — a fly ball from Jackson Chourio and grounder from Christian Yelich — proved to be only a temporary reprieve.

In the next at-bat, newly acquired Brewers slugger Andrew Vaughn came to the plate in his first game with the team. He got three straight sliders from Yamamoto to start, fanning on the first before laying off two that missed the zone next. Then, after a called strike on a fastball at the knees evened the count 2-and-2, catcher Will Smith dialed up another curveball from Yamamoto again.

It was supposed to be down and on the outside corner. Instead, it fluttered up and above the zone. Vaughn connected with a mighty upper-cut swing. The ball soared beyond the left-field wall, making it 3-0 Brewers just like that.

Somehow, the inning would only get worse from there.

Despite entering the night coming off a first-career All-Star selection, and leading the majors in road ERA at 1.57, Yamamoto failed to settle down.

In a 1-and-2 count against Isaac Collins, he left a fastball down the middle that was hammered for a single. After falling behind 3-and-0 to Brice Turang, Yamamoto worked the count full only to miss badly with a fastball and issue an inning-extending walk.

With his pitch count climbing at that point, Roberts began to stir the bullpen.

Yamamoto appeared to finally find an escape route against Caleb Durbin, inducing a grounder with a splitter that was hit straight to shortstop Mookie Betts. But, in a rare defensive lapse at his new position, Betts spiked a throw to first that Freddie Freeman couldn’t corral. Collins came racing around from second to score. The inning stayed alive when it once again should’ve ended.

Yamamoto’s leash finally ran out on pitch 41, when Andruw Monasterio lobbed a bloop RBI single down the right-field line in the next at-bat. As another run scored, Roberts came walking out of the bullpen to give the team’s season-long ace an unimaginably early hook.

The two teams played the final eight innings. But the result already seemed well in hand.

The Dodgers’ lineup was shorthanded, missing Teoscar Hernández with a bruised foot and Tommy Edman with a pinky toe fracture (both are expected back in the lineup by Wednesday). Before the game, Kiké Hernández was also put on the injured list with an elbow injury that had been bothering him since he made an awkward slide in Cleveland in late May, and flared up to the point of requiring a cortisone shot this past weekend. Not to be forgotten, Max Muncy also remains sidelined by his bum knee.

In their places, the Dodgers started James Outman in center field (who was called up from triple A pregame), Miguel Rojas at third base and Hyeseong Kim at second against Brewers All-Star right-hander Freddy Peralta.

The outcome was predictable: Six innings of shutout ball in which the Dodgers managed only five hits, one walk and struck out seven times.

The Dodgers’ starting pitcher had no problems on Saturday afternoon.

It was the bulk guy who followed him who ran into issues.

In a 6-4 loss to the Houston Astros at Dodger Stadium, Shohei Ohtani showed more encouraging signs as a pitcher, throwing two scoreless innings that included a double play in the first and a strikeout of the side in the second.

But, in a reminder of the still-tenuous pitching depth the Dodgers have relied on for much of this first half, long man Justin Wrobleski came back down to earth in a five-run, 4 ⅔-inning outing thereafter, sending the team to a defeat that clinched a series loss to the Astros.

Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts is tagged out by Houston Astros third base Isaac Paredes while trying to stretch a double into a triple at Dodger Stadium on Saturday.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

In the big picture, this weekend has offered hope for the Dodgers’ long-term pitching plans.

On Friday, manager Dave Roberts said injured $136.5-million right-hander Tyler Glasnow is on track to return from his shoulder problem during next week’s road trip.

Before Saturday’s game, injured $182-million left-hander Blake Snell threw his second live batting practice of the week, striking out four of the eight hitters he faced in what is expected to be his final simulated session before going on a minor-league rehab assignment. Both he and injured reliever Blake Treinen, who also threw an inning of live batting practice Saturday, are lined up to be activated from the IL “at some point in time shortly after the All-Star break,” per Roberts.

Then there was Ohtani, who despite once again being limited to a short workload in his fourth pitching start of the season, was also once again dominant in a 31-pitch display.

After Isaac Paredes singled to lead off the game, Ohtani broke Cam Smith’s bat on a 96-mph fastball for a double-play grounder to second. In the second inning, Ohtani fanned Christian Walker with a slider, then Victor Caratini and Yainer Díaz on a pair of big-breaking sweepers — all while also touching 101 mph on the radar gun.

In his six total innings this year, Ohtani has given up just one run, one walk and four hits while striking out six batters on what was his 31st birthday.

And though it remains unclear exactly when he’ll be fully stretched out — or exactly how built up he will eventually get this year, coming off a second career Tommy John surgery — the Dodgers are inching steadily closer to having the rotation they envisioned this year: One with Ohtani, Snell and Glasnow joining likely All-Star Yoshinobu Yamamoto in a star-studded quartet the club has spent lavishly the last two offseasons to build.

“We can see a little squint of light,” Roberts said. “It’s taken a little longer than we’ve all expected or hoped for, as far as getting our guys together. So we haven’t gotten there yet. But we’re hopeful and excited.”

In the short term, however, the Astros have put a dent in the optimism the club had clung to among its stable of young pitching depth.

After Ben Casparius was knocked around in a historic blowout on Friday night, Wrobleski suffered a similar fate against Houston’s surging lineup. Upon entering the game at the start of the third, he quickly blew an early 2-0 Dodgers lead, giving up a leadoff single to Cooper Hummel and back-to-back two-strike doubles to Mauricio Dubón (who fouled off fastball after fastball before whacking a full-count heater the other way) and Zack Short (who got three-straight off-speed pitches, pulling the last one down the third-base line to score two runs).

Miguel Rojas, tapped to play third base Saturday in place of the recently injured Max Muncy, made matters worse by misfiring on a tough throw to first on a soft ground ball from Smith with one out, allowing a run to score. Then Walker, an unlikely Dodgers killer over his career, lined a two-out single to right to make it a four-run inning and a 4-2 Astros lead.

Wrobleski did eventually settle down, but not before Díaz homered at the start of the third to put the Astros up there.

That deficit proved insurmountable for the Dodgers. They made it 5-4 when Rojas homered in the fourth (he also had an RBI single in the second inning, and drew a walk in the fifth) but stranded a string of opportunities down the stretch, finishing the day one-for-five with runners in scoring position and with nine men left on base.

Game 81. The halfway point of the season arrived at Angel Stadium — and the Angels, albeit squarely in contention at .500, were dealing with a bit of organizational uncertainty.

Angels general manager Perry Minasian announced before Friday’s game that manager Ron Washington would remain on medical leave for the rest of the season because of an undisclosed health issue.

Bench coach Ray Montgomery took over on June 20 as the acting — now interim — manager as the Angels entered Friday winners in seven of their last 10 games.

The Angels are in a much better spot than 2024. This time last season, after game 81, they were 11 games under .500 — squarely out of the postseason hunt.

Friday, however, even after losing 15-9 in a three-hour, 11-minute slog of a series opener against the Washington Nationals (34-48), the Angels (40-41) still are just two games out of the third American League wild-card spot.

In a game where the Angels and Nationals combined for 24 runs and 30 hits — with the 19 hits and 15 runs given up by the Angels’ pitching staff representing season-worst marks — what ultimately separated the teams was the Angels’ inability to come through with runners on base.

In the sixth and seventh innings — down one and two runs, respectively — the Angels had opportunities to take the lead or tie the score with runners in scoring position, but failed to capitalize. From there, the Nationals’ lead grew, with Hunter Strickland giving up four runs in the ninth as part of a 10-run barrage against the bullpen.

“It kind of just felt like an off-night tonight all the way up and down,” Montgomery said. “Those guys have been asked to do a lot over the last few weeks, and they’ve responded. So tonight wasn’t the night.”

Angels interim manager Ray Montgomery, second from left, waits on the mound with catcher Logan O’Hoppe during a pitching change in the fifth inning Friday.

(Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Associated Press)

In the early innings, the Angels had plenty of opportunities against Nationals starting pitcher Jake Irvin, who struggled against the heart of the lineup.

Jo Adell struck a 92-mph fastball high and away to right field for a solo home run — his 18th overall and 11th in June — in the second. An inning later, Nolan Schanuel and Taylor Ward received hanging breaking balls — a high curveball and slider, respectively — and pulled the ball for short-porch home runs.

“The idea is that if we’re hunting the pitches that we want to do damage with pitcher to pitcher, we’ll avoid the chase and kind of be able to get better pitches to hit,” Adell said, who has helped the Angels post four or more walks in the last four games. “You know, our thing is, you’re only as good of a hitter as the pitches that you get.”

Three home runs in three innings helped the Angels build a three-run lead. Across 4 ⅓ innings of work against Irvin, the Angels’ lineup continued to click. They tallied nine runs (eight earned to Irvin) on nine hits — just enough for an early lead as José Soriano trudged through his worst outing of the season.

Soriano couldn’t get out of the fifth against the Nationals. The shutdown pitching he had featured in his last three starts — giving up just two runs across 20 ⅔ innings — looked like a distant memory. The right-hander struck out four and walked two, while giving up eight earned runs and nine hits.

“I mean, that’s not what we would have expected, given what he did in his last three outings and what we talked about a little bit yesterday,” Montgomery said. “Just wasn’t sharp, didn’t feel crisp from the get go.”

Added Soriano in Spanish through team interpreter Manny Del Campo: “I feel a little bit upset because of my performance tonight. … I feel upset because I wasn’t able to help win tonight.”

Angels shortstop Zach Neto (shoulder) returned to action, striking out in the seventh inning as a pinch hitter.

Before the game, Neto said that he’d likely be able to hit before throwing — something he’s yet to do — after jamming his shoulder on a stolen base attempt Tuesday.

“He proved to me, proved to the medical staff, proved to everybody else he was capable of coming in,” Montgomery said. “We thought it was a good time to give it a shot right there.”

The Angels will try to even the series Saturday with right-hander Kyle Hendricks (5-6, 4.83 earned-run average) on the mound.