dustin may

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers finally looked like the Dodgers again on Friday night.

Too bad it didn’t happen until they were already down six runs.

For the first time in a week, the highest-scoring offense in baseball finally rediscovered its high-flying form, handing San Francisco Giants ace Logan Webb his worst start all season while sending shivers up the spine of the orange-clad contingent at Oracle Park.

But by the time it happened, the club had already dug a hole too deep for even its star-studded lineup to climb out of, unable to completely erase an early six-run deficit in a 8-7 loss to their division rivals — sending the Dodgers to a seven-game losing streak that marks their longest skid since September 2017.

“I like the fight. I thought one through nine, there were good at-bats in there, scored some runs, had a chance to win again,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And unfortunately, on the pitching side, we just couldn’t prevent enough.”

Friday, of course, never figured to favor the Dodgers given the difference in caliber of the starting pitching matchup.

On one side stood Webb, the crafty and relentless All-Star right-hander who has largely dominated the Dodgers in his seven-year career.

On the other was Dustin May, the once-promising Dodgers right-hander who has yet to realize his tantalizing potential in what has been his first fully healthy big-league season so far.

Still, for a little while on a cold night along the San Francisco Bay, little separated the two sinker-ball specialists, the Dodgers and Giants locked in the kind of close contest that has been the hallmark of this rivalry in recent years.

In the top of the third, Shohei Ohtani even put the Dodgers in front, splashing his NL-leading 32nd home run of the season into McCovey Cove beyond right field for only the eighth splash-down home run by a Dodger player in Oracle Park history.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani tosses his bat after hitting a two-run home run in the third inning against the Giants on Friday.

(David Barreda / Los Angeles Times)

But eventually, May came unglued, giving up seven runs in less than five innings as the Giants surged to an 8-2 lead. And though the Dodgers (56-39) eventually got to within one, tagging Webb with a season-high six runs, they came up empty in their final couple trips to the plate, wasting plenty of positive subplots in another losing story.

“Today we were able to string some hits together, put some innings together,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “But we just come up short.”

After starting his night with increased fastball velocity and ruthless assault of the strike zone, May lost his command in the fourth inning.

Dodgers pitcher Dustin May delivers against the Giants on Friday.

(David Barreda / Los Angeles Times)

Rafael Devers walked on four pitches to start the inning. Matt Chapman received another free pass despite a mid-at-bat mound visit from catcher Will Smith. And with one out, Jung Hoo Lee laced a two-run triple over the outstretched glove of Teoscar Hernández, who returned to the lineup after missing the last four games with a foot contusion but still seemed hobbled while trying to track the ball down in the right-field gap.

“Just got a little bit out of sync, couldn’t time things back up,” May said of his delivery, which has teetered between flashes of dominance and stretches of frustration during his return from a second career elbow surgery.

“During my warm-up throws in the fourth, it felt a little off. Trying to get my foot down a little earlier didn’t really help. That’s been a cue. But yeah, it just went bad.”

Things got worse in the fifth, when the Giants (52-43) plated five more while sending 10 batters to the plate.

Dominic Smith led the inning off with a homer. May then gave up a single and two walks to load the bases. The Dodgers missed their chance to escape the inning, when Hyeseong Kim failed to turn a difficult but potential inning-ending double play quickly enough at second base.

May was replaced by Anthony Banda, who was greeted with another two-run triple by Willy Adames (who had already homered to open the scoring in the second inning) and a run-scoring infield single from Lee, who outraced Banda to first base to punctuate a painfully long inning.

“To win a big-league ballgame is tough, but you’ve still got to pitch well, you’ve got to catch it and you’ve got to take good at-bats,” Roberts said. “If all three of those things don’t line up in one night, it’s hard to get a win.”

Mookie Betts grimaces in pain after being hit by a pitch in the sixth inning against the Giants on Friday night.

(David Barreda / Los Angeles Times)

It was at that point, coming off a six-game stretch in which they’d scored 10 total runs, that the Dodgers’ bats finally came to life.

In the top of the sixth, Hernández launched a two-run double that Lee couldn’t quite corral on the run at the warning track, before Michael Conforto followed with a two-run homer that chased Webb and cut the deficit to two.

In the seventh, the Dodgers struck again, when Betts slid into third after hitting another ball just beyond Lee’s reach in center and later scored on Smith’s RBI single.

“It’s definitely more encouraging,” said Betts, who has been among the coldest hitters in the Dodgers lineup lately. “I can’t speak for everyone. But I haven’t done anything this whole time … Just to get us going, get some hits there, that’s the positive that you can take out of it.”

That, however, was as close as the Dodgers got. Smith was left stranded to end the seventh. Kim’s two-out double in the eighth was squandered. And, in the most frustrating of endings, a two-on, one-out opportunity in the ninth went by the wayside when Smith rolled into a double play.

The division lead is down to four.

And as the Dodgers continue to stumble toward the All-Star break, moral victories remain the only wins in sight.

“I know it sucks, but you have to try to take some positive out of it,” Betts said. “At least we battled back.”

Dave Roberts had some goals in mind for starting pitcher Dustin May on Thursday. And they had little to do with the final result.

“The first thing is his ability to go deeper in games,” the Dodger manager said. “The sweeper has got to be a more effective pitch. His sinker has got to be more effective.

“I know he’s working through some delivery things with the pitching coaches. I’m kind waiting to see what to expect tonight.”

May would give Roberts far more than he asked for, setting down the first 16 batters in order and pitching into the eighth inning for the first time in his career in a 6-2 win over the Chicago White Sox.

The win was the Dodgers’ fourth in a row and ninth in their last 10 games.

The start was May’s 16th of the season and the seven innings he threw gave him 89.2 for the year, both career highs. Consistency, however, has been an issue. He won just once in June, when his 5.67 ERA was highest among Dodger starters.

His first start in July was a different story, with May (5-5) giving up just two hits and striking out nine — one shy of his career high — in seven shutout innings before tiring in the eighth.

The Dodgers needed just three batters to give the right-hander the lead with Shohei Ohtani drawing a lead-off walk, then scoring on Freddie Freeman’s one-out double into the right-field corner.

Freeman padded that lead in the third, going the other way and looping a two-run double into the left-field corner. It was Freeman’s first three-RBI game in nearly two months. When Michael Conforto followed two batters later with a two-run homer, it was 5-0 Dodgers.

And the lead could have been larger: Freeman lost a homer of his own in his next at-bat when Chicago right fielder Michael Tauchman reached a couple of rows into the right-field bleachers near the foul pole to bring his fifth-inning drive back.

Mookie Betts closed the Dodgers’ scoring with a one-out solo homer in the seventh, just his second since May 19.

May, meanwhile, was cruising, talking a perfect game into the sixth before Brooks Baldwin singled sharply to right. He took a shutout into the eighth before Baldwin ended that, too, with a two-run homer.

May got help from a couple of sterling defensive plays, with Conforto taking a hit away from Miguel Vargas with a sliding catch in left to the start the fifth and Freeman diving to his right to stab Josh Rojas’ low line drive to start the sixth.

Relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates followed May to the mound, throwing a hitless inning apiece to close out the win.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dave Roberts has a high bar for his $400 million baseball team.

Sure, the Dodgers entered Friday winners of 13 of their 17, tied for the best overall record in baseball and leading the National League West by six games.

Sure, they already have one guaranteed All-Star in Shohei Ohtani, and seven other finalists who advanced to the second stage of fan voting that will begin next week.

But, in the eyes of their manager, “I still just don’t believe we’re playing our best baseball,” Roberts said Friday afternoon. “I don’t think we’ve played complete baseball for a stretch.”

On Friday night, the Dodgers still weren’t at their best. Dustin May managed just four innings in a four-run start. The lineup produced only four total hits. Teoscar Hernández made a defensive blunder in the outfield. And the bullpen danced in and out of trouble down the stretch.

But right now, amid this soft portion of the team’s schedule, flawed performances have often still been enough.

And in Friday’s 5-4 win over the badly slumping Kansas City Royals, that once again proved to be the case.

Shohei Ohtani hits a home run in the first inning against the Royals on Friday.

(Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)

For all the Dodgers’ shortcomings, they did just enough to compensate in a series opener at Kauffman Stadium.

May gave up a run in the first after letting three straight batters reach with two outs, but not before Ohtani opened the scoring with a leadoff blast.

Hernández let a hard-hit but catchable line drive get over his head in right field in the third, fueling a three-run Royals rally that was punctuated by Bobby Witt Jr.’s two-run blast. But that was sandwiched by a two-run homer from Max Muncy in the second, and a game-tying triple from Ohtani in the fifth.

Mookie Betts eventually put the Dodgers in front one at bat after Ohtani’s triple, singling him home to give the Dodgers a 5-4 lead.

And though May’s high pitch count forced him to exit early against the Royals (38-44), a worn-down Dodgers bullpen patched together five scoreless frames, escaping their biggest jam in the ninth when closer Tanner Scott induced a game-ending double play with the bases loaded.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was still enough to move the Dodgers into sole possession of the best record in the majors at 52-31.

That extended stretch of dominance is still eluding them. But for now, they’re finding ways to win anyway.

Fifteen minutes before first pitch on Sunday, Giants catcher Logan Porter trotted in from the visitor’s bullpen. He’d usually be accompanied by the starting pitcher, which was set to be left-hander Kyle Harrison.

Instead, Porter stood on the first-base line for the national anthem, turned to his left and whispered to his teammates. As they all received the information from Porter — reminiscent of the children’s game “Telephone” — other Giants teammates likely learned one-by-one that Harrison had been traded.

“It was crazy,” Dodgers second baseman Tommy Edman said. “You don’t expect a trade like that this time of year and just getting the pitching change at the last minute.”

The odd scene at Dodger Stadium was because of a reported blockbuster trade that involved the Boston Red Sox sending infielder Rafael Devers to the Giants in exchange for Harrison, right-hander Jordan Hicks and two prospects — a move that further bolsters the talent in the L.A.-San Francisco rivalry.

“Those guys over there are doing a great job of putting a team together and obviously, they want to win,” said shortstop Mookie Betts, who was teammates with Devers in Boston from 2017 to 2019.

San Francisco manager Bob Melvin was forced to turn to long reliever Sean Hjelle, who rapidly warmed up for the start, against a Dodgers offense that had scored 11 runs Saturday night. As Betts said after the game, no matter who the Giants were going to throw at them in response, they were prepared. The Dodgers had done their “homework,” he said.

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It was more of the same from the Dodgers’ offense in a 5-4 victory Sunday. The top of the order manufactured a run via an Andy Pages sacrifice fly in the first inning. Edman hit a solo home run — his 10th — in the second. Pages put a cherry on top in the fifth after Shohei Ohtani (three for three, one walk) and Mookie Betts set the table with singles.

The Cuban slugger’s three-run home run helped the Dodgers (43-29) restore a two-game lead over the Giants (41-31) in the NL West standings.

“It’s really emotional, a special moment to hit a home run in that situation because I haven’t seen him,” Pages said through an interpreter, speaking about his father back in Cuba. “It’s hard sometimes. But it was really special to hit a home run on Father’s Day.”

On the mound, Dustin May was looking to get back on track.

May’s recent starts left more to be desired from the former top prospect who had been struggling with his command and not tallying many swinging strikes. He had struck out just six batters across his last 11 innings — striking out just one in his last outing.

Although May couldn’t find his strikeout pitch, his start Sunday was the sixth time he had pitched through the sixth inning in 2025. He walked four batters for the second time in as many starts — the only time he’s issued at least four free passes in back-to-back games in his career — and struck out three batters. He didn’t have his best stuff, but showed his mettle in the fifth inning.

Dodgers pitcher Dustin May delivers against the Giants at Dodger Stadium on Sunday.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

Whereas he crumbled in the fourth, giving up a two-RBI triple to Jung Hoo Lee to give the Giants a 3-2 lead, he battled out of a bases-loaded jam to keep San Francisco at bay, inducing Porter into an inning-ending groundout.

After Pages further strengthened his All-Star case with his 13th home run, the Dodgers’ bullpen took care of business. Alex Vesia tossed a shutout seventh, while Kirby Yates (one run) and Tanner Scott (zero runs and struck out the side) finished it off in the eighth and ninth, respectively.

“It was good to see us find a way to win a ballgame,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Dustin got a little traffic there in the fourth but he finds a way, as he has shown, to still manage to get through six and to use the guys we wanted to and win a ballgame.”

Sasaki’s status uncertain

Ohtani will start Monday against the San Diego Padres, but it’s still not clear when right-hander Roki Sasaki will return. Roberts said Sasaki (right shoulder impingement) recently halted his throwing program.

“There was some rubbing, is the word he used,” Roberts said. “He’s pain-free. When we start that build-up, it should be soon. He’s already moving around. We all feel encouraged where he’s at right now, as far as the pain.”

The Dodgers placed the 23-year-old rookie on the injured list May 13. Roberts did not specify what Sasaki’s condition is other than that he’s out indefinitely.

Piecing together the starting rotation for the week ahead, Emmet Sheehan is set to be activated Tuesday or Wednesday, Roberts said.