Freeman

Hi and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. That was an incredible game.

Game 3 thoughts:

—Brad Paisley sang the U.S. national anthem. JP Saxe sang the Canadian national anthem. Apparently Bruce Springsteen and Paul Shaffer were unavailable.

—Hideo Nomo threw out the first pitch. If Lance Rautzhan was still alive, I’m sure it would have been him.

First inning

—Tyler Glasnow has to limit walks. Runners can steal on him and things could get out of hand in a hurry.

—I really could have lived without seeing highlights of George Springer in the 2017 World Series.

—Eight pitches to get out of the top of the first. That’s great.

—Leadoff double for Shohei Ohtani, which is a good sign. If he starts hitting again…..

—Now if only Freddie Freeman could get going.

Second inning

—Dodgers got a break there. A verrrrry slooooow strike call and Bo Bichette thought it was ball four and got picked off first. You have to wait for the call. Of course, we’d all be a lot more irate if it happened to the Dodgers.

—Two hits and a walk, and no runs scored.

—This is why you leave Teoscar Hernández alone. Yes, he looks terrible with four strikeouts in one game, but the next game he homers in his first at-bat.

Third inning

—Mookie Betts has become one of the best fielding shortstops in baseball. It’s so amazing to watch. To move to shortstop later in your career and excel is virtually unheard of.

—It may be time to give Alex Call a shot in the lineup in place of Andy Pages.

—Ohtani is back. He doesn’t get cheated on his home runs.

—Middle infielders need to learn to keep the tag on the runner in case his foot bounces off the bag. A few outs seem to be missed that way. Freeman’s foot bounced off the bag on his steal and he would have been out if Bichette maintained the tag.

—Dino Ebel gambles a lot at third base. There’s no way Freeman was going to score on a hard hit ball to Addison Barger, who has one of the best arms in the game. Keep him at third, and run up Max Scherzer‘s pitch count. This could be important later.

Fourth inning

—Tommy Edman‘s error was the first error of the series for either team.

—And it proved costly.

—You can’t give good teams extra outs, especially in the postseason.

—And then in the bottom half, the Dodgers go down quietly. This all stemmed from Freeman being thrown out at home. Ebel never should have sent him.

Fifth inning

—It seemed to be a struggle all night for Glasnow. He has erratic control, and that’s deadly against a team like Toronto. Now we go to the porous Dodger bullpen. Can they hold Toronto? If so, the Dodgers can come back. If not, this game could get ugly quickly.

—Anthony Banda is first man up. And he did fine to end the inning.

—I love the ad with Ken Griffey Jr. playing the organ. I mean, it no Limu Emu (and Doug) but it’s very good.

—Bringing in a left-hander to face Ohtani. Can he respond?

—He does. And that’s why he’s the best player in baseball.

—Freeman comes through too. Blue Jays manager John Schneider brought in Mason Fluharty to get Ohtani and Freeman, hoping he could also get Mookie Betts. Instead, he gets Betts, but can’t retire Ohtani or Freeman. Sometimes you can push all the right buttons and it doesn’t work.

—I wonder if Blue Jays fans are yelling at Schneider right now.

—I’m just glad Schneider was able to find work again after “Smallville” was canceled.

—Wait, I’m being told that’s a different John Schneider. No wonder Tom Welling isn’t one of his coaches.

Sixth inning

—Justin Wrobleski in to pitch now. Another left-hander. Why not stick with Banda? Playing three games in three days may have something to do with it.

—Maybe they can count on Wrobleski now too.

—Inning ends on another nice play by Betts.

—I also like the Bateman, not Batman, commercials. I’ve liked Jason Bateman ever since one of his first roles in the sitcom “It’s Your Move.”

—Great play by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first base throwing Teoscar out at third. But some bad baserunning. No need to take that chance with two out. That’s twice the Dodgers have run themselves out of an inning. What would have happened in those inning otherwise? We’ll never know.

Seventh inning

—George Springer hurt himself on a swing. Don’t like Springer, but I don’t want anyone to be injured. People cheering when he was taken off should be embarrassed.

—Hey, Blake Treinen came in and let the Blue Jays get ahead. Who would have guessed.

—I guess Dave Roberts is never going to give up on Treinen. I know they don’t have a lot of right-handed options, buy what about Will Klein. I mean, we KNOW what Treinen is going to do at this point. Maybe we can find another budding star. And if he can’t do it, you get him out quickly just like you did Treinen.

—This Ohtani guy is pretty good.

—My wife: “Why is he always up with the bases empty. Drop him down in the lineup.”

—Here’s a great thing about Ohtani. People told him “You can’t hit and pitch, you have to pick one.” And he refused to listen. Not to get over saccharin here, but you can apply that to your life, and it’s a great lesson for kids. If you have a dream, don’t let people tell you the many reason you can’t do it. You never know unless you try,

Most home runs in one postseason:

2020 Randy Arozarena, 10
2025 Shohei Ohtani, 8
2023 Adolis Garcia, 8
2020 Corey Seager, 8
2011 Nelson Cruz, 8
2004 Carlos Beltrán, 8
2002 Barry Bonds, 8

Eighth inning

—Jack Dreyer, last seen when Don Mattingly was the manager, now pitching.

—And just like that, Dreyer gives up two hits and is done. We’ll see him again in 10 years.

—It’s nice, and sad, to see the Dodgers wearing a No. 51 on their caps to show support for Alex Vesia.

—Roki Sasaki always looks scared. He’s not, he just has that look.

—A bobble by Max Muncy stops a possible double play. That could be important.

—Sasaki gets out of it. The Dodgers are now out of reliable relievers. They better score in the bottom of the eighth.

—That Amazon commercial where the teenage daughter walks in on her dad exercising in shorts that don’t fit right is a little creepy.

—Samuel L. Jackson is great in everything.

—Chris Bassitt pitching for the Blue Jays.

—The Dodgers go down meekly.

—The heart of the Blue Jays lineup bats in the ninth. Big inning. If the Dodgers get out of it, I think they will win.

Ninth inning

—Sasaki gets Guerrero, then pitches to Isiah Kiner-Falefa like he’s Babe Ruth and walks him.

—Great, great play by Tommy Edman, redeeming his earlier error.

—Great at-bat by Andy Pages with a poor ending.

—Intentionally walking Ohtani with the bases empty. Wow.

—And that’s why you hold the tag. And that’s why analytics hates stolen bases.

—We go to the tenth. The two best teams in baseball, battling it out in extra innings. This is fun, folks.

Tenth inning

—Emmet Sheehan in the game. He has been terrible this postseason. Can he told things around.

—More bad baserunning, this time by the Blue Jays. Davis Schneider had no chance to score on that, and Guerrero was on deck.

—Sheehan got hit hard. Does he come back out in the 11th if there is an 11th?

—Dodgers strand runners on first and second. We go to the 11th. And I can’t find my asthma inhaler.

Eleventh inning

—What a great game.

—Sheehan looked like the old Emmet Sheehan there.

—Braydon Fisher now pitching for the Blue Jays. The Dodgers traded Fisher to the Blue Jays on June 12, 2024 for the immortal Cavan Biggio, who is now with the Angels. Biggio played in 30 games for the Dodgers, hitting .192 and getting himself a World Series ring.

—Kiké Hernández has been very quiet this World Series.

—They walk Ohtani again with the bases loaded. This is against the spirit of the game. They should make a new rule: Walk a batter with the bases empty and he automatically gets placed on second.

—Ohtani has reached base every at bat. You have to wonder if this will be a problem tomorrow when he pitches.

—The Dodgers have wasted a lot of scoring opportunities.

—Where is my asthma inhaler?

Twelfth inning

—Sheehan is in there again. Clayton Kershaw is warming up. Are the baseball gods conspiring to get Kershaw into one more World Series game?

—The Dodgers walk the No. 9 hitter. You don’t see that often. Will they regret it? Giménez hit worse that Schneider during the season.

—And here comes Kershaw. Bases loaded, two out. Twelfth inning. No pressure at all.

—The baseball gods have set this up for Kershaw to get one more World Series win. Now the Dodgers need to score in the bottom half.

—Ellen Kershaw‘s reaction had more emotion than most two-hour movies.

—If Kershaw never pitches again, that was a great moment to go out on.

—Will Smith tried to win it for Kershaw with a couple of home run swings.

—Another left-hander comes in, Eric Lauer, who was a starter until Shane Bieber (the Game 4 starter) came off the IL.

—And the Dodgers go down quietly.

—Seriously, I think the dog took my asthma inhaler.

Thirteenth inning

—Edgardo Henriquez, who has not retired a batter this postseason and has an ERA of infinity, is now pitching.

—The Dodger Stadium crowd is very quiet and sounds tired. Must be thinking about that hour wait in the parking lot while trying to go home.

—Leadoff double is just what the Dodgers needed.

—And look at Miguel Rojas. Hasn’t played all series and lays down a perfect bunt.

—Now Alex Call, who rarely plays. Can he be the hero?

—Man on third, one out. You have to score here.

—And of course they are going to walk Ohtani.

—And they walk Betts intentionally too. Wow. Pitching to Freeman with the bases loaded.

—And the Dodgers fail to cash in. Freeman is not having a good series.

—I think maybe my grandson hid my inhaler.

Fourteenth inning

—Rojas and Call stay in the game. Henriquez back on the mound. Will Klein is the only reliever left.

—Henriquez has looked good, but how long can he pitch?

—That foul ball by Giménez hit both of his legs. Baseball players must have tons of bruises at the end of the season. And it’s amazing that catchers can even walk.

—Someone on the Dodgers just needs to hit a home run and end this.

—And Will Smith came close.

—You know what Fox should do? Go around before the game and find some normal, average people at the game. Ask them their name and where they are from. Then, instead of showing the celebrities, “Justin Bieber is here. Sean Hayes is here,” say “Henry Blake from Lancaster is here with his wife Lorraine.” “Sherman Potter is here from Carson with his wife Mildred.”

—And Muncy came close before walking.

—Dieter Ruehle‘s fingers must be cramping by now.

—Tommy Edman has not been Tommy Tanks so far this postseason.

—And we go to the fifteenth. I believe a UFO flew down and teleported my inhaler away.

Fifteenth inning

—Will Klein now pitching for the Dodgers, who are now out of relievers. The Blue Jays are out of position players.

—The terrible Dodgers bullpen has been incredible tonight. 10.1 innings, 10 hits, four walks, eight strikeouts, one run. Now I’ve probably jinxed them, so they better score now.

—If Call reaches first, would they walk Ohtani intentionally?

—We won’t find out. He grounded to second.

—And they walked Ohtani again. He has reached base all eight of his plate appearances.

—Betts and Freeman need to cash this in.

—They do not. We go to the 16th. The record for longest World Series game is 18 by the Dodgers and Red Sox in 2018.

—We go to the 16th. I’ve given up on finding my asthma inhaler. I’ll just go ahead and pass out.

Sixteenth inning

—A lot of people are going to call out sick to work tomorrow.

—This has reminded me why I don’t obsess over every Dodger win or loss during the season. I get paid to watch and write about it. Truly a blessed life.

—Klein looks like a guy who should be higher on the Dave Roberts trust tree.

—According to the Fox telecast, the Dodgers will bring in a position player after Klein pitches the next inning. That would be very sad to see.

—Sixteen innings, and Hyeseong Kim still can’t get in a game.

—Dodgers are going down very quietly every inning.

Seventeenth inning

—You can’t say enough about this performance by Klein. Three innings, one hit, four strikeouts.

—If it’s true the Dodgers are bringing in a position player to pitch the next inning, then they really need to score now.

—Yoshinobu Yamamoto has volunteered to pitch the next inning. Will they need him?

—Brendon Little now pitching for the Blue Jays. He is their last reliever.

—Call singles. Will they walk Ohtani?

—They basically walked him. Didn’t give him anything to hit. Pitched around him.

—Again, the Dodgers can’t cash in. Who pitches the 18th?

—I need to shave again.

Eighteenth inning

—Klein’s arm must be about to fall off. His fastball is a couple miles per hour slower this inning. If the Dodgers win it all, he certainly earned his World Series ring.

—Kiner-Falefa was out at first.

—You’d think with all the power on these teams, someone would have hit one out. Must be a marine layer at the game.

—Klein’s career high in pitches is 36. He made 72 tonight.

—Max Muncy bats third this inning. He won the last, and previously the only 18-inning game with a home run in the bottom half of … Game 3 … against Boston in 2018.

—But we don’t need to wait for him. Freeman comes up big once again. He has cemented his Hall of Fame status the last two seasons.

—What an incredible game. Incredible. With the best ending, unless you are a Toronto fan. Two great teams. It seemed every player had a moment. Two bad bullpens were dominant.

—They get to do it again in a few hours.

—For those keeping track of this (and I appreciate the emails from those who are), Hannah and Mason were not in their assigned spots for the game, but came home in the 14th inning, and then the Dodgers won.

—My prediction remains, Dodgers in five.

—More importantly, we wish Alex Vesia and his wife the best as they go through a trying time.

In case you missed it

Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer lifts Dodgers to 18-inning win in World Series Game 3

What are your superstitions and lucky items to help the Dodgers win the World Series?

Mookie Betts on winning the 2025 Roberto Clemente Award

Shaikin: What are the motives behind Frank McCourt’s Dodger Stadium gondola plan?

Hernández: Don Mattingly reveals why his Dodgers managerial career ended a decade ago

Dodgers keep Andy Pages in Game 3 starting lineup; Shohei Ohtani laughs off Toronto chants

And finally

Freddie Freeman walks it off for the Dodgers, again. Watch and listen here.

Until next time…

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Freddie, meet Freddie.

It was excruciating. It was exhausting. It was ecstatic.

It was Fred-die, Fred-die, Fred-die, forever.

Repeating history, rocking the Ravine, winning the unwinnable, Freddie Freeman has done it again for the Dodgers, knocking a baseball for a second consecutive October into probably a second consecutive championship.

In the 18th inning of the longest World Series game in baseball history Monday, nearly seven hours after it started, Freeman smashingly ended it with a leadoff home run against the Toronto Blue Jays to give the Dodgers a 6-5 victory and a two-games-to-one lead.

This time last year he was hitting an extra-inning, walk-off grand slam against the New York Yankees that propelled the Dodgers to the title. At the time, he was being compared to Kirk Gibson and his memorable 1988 World Series homer.

This time, he can only be compared to himself, a guy who was struggling so much in the postseason that both Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts had been intentionally walked in front of him late in the game.

Three times in extra innings, he could have ended the game with a hit. Three times he left runners stranded.

But, finally, Freddie once again became Freddie, driving the ball deep over the center field fence, thrusting his right hand in the air, and watching his teammates dancing and jumping and screaming with a jubilation not previously seen by this workmanlike team this postseason.

“I don’t think you ever come up with the scenario twice,” said Freeman. “To have it happen again, it’s kind of amazing, crazy, and I’m just glad we won.”

Nobody seemed happier than Ohtani, who left the scrum to run down to the bullpen to embrace teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Despite throwing a complete game two days ago, Yamamoto was preparing to pitch in this game because the Dodgers had run out of arms.

It was that kind of night. It was two seventh-inning stretches. It was umpires nearly running out of baseballs. It was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. eating in the dugout.

“It’s one of the greatest World Series games of all time,” said Dodger Manager Dave Roberts while meeting the media after midnight. “Emotional. I’m spent emotionally. We got a ball game later tonight, which is crazy.”

When Ohtani returned toward the dugout he was hugged by water-spraying teammates, and for good reason.

Throughout the night Ohtani once again wrapped Dodger Stadium in his giant arms and shook it down to its ancient roots.

The win was set up after Tommy Edman made a perfect relay throw to the plate to gun down Davis Schneider in the top of the 10th, then Clayton Kershaw dramatically worked out of a base-loaded inherited jam in the 12th.

But before Freeman’s homer, Ohtani owned the night.

He led off the game with a ground-rule double. Then he gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with a third-inning homer. Then he closed a 4-2 deficit with a fifth-inning RBI double. Then he tied the game at 5-all with a seventh inning home run.

Then, his aura became even crazier.

Four times in a five-inning stretch from the ninth inning to the 15th, Ohtani was intentionally walked — drawing a fifth walk on four pitches in the 17th. Twice the bases were empty. Once he had to pause at second base to relieve leg cramping. It was nuts.

Imagine a player so dangerous he is given a base four times with a World Series game on the line. One can’t imagine. That’s Ohtani.

“He’s a unicorn,” said Freeman. “There’s no more adjectives you can use to describe him.”

Remember 10 days ago when Ohtani had three home runs and struck out 10? Monday night was nearly as impressive because it was in the World Series, his four extra-base hits tying a record that had last been set in 1906.

And, yeah, he pitches again Tuesday in Game 4, so by the time you comprehend all this, he may have done it again.

“Our starting pitcher got on base nine times tonight,” said Freeman with wonder.

Ohtani was so good, he was better than the Dodgers bad, which included bad baserunning, bad fielding, and a bit of questionable managing.

The Dodgers stranded the winning run on base in the ninth,10th, 11th, and 13th, 14th and 15th inning and 16th…and really should have won it in the 13th.

That’s when Roberts surprisingly batted for Kiké Hernández after a Tommy Edman leadoff double. Miguel Rojas bunted Edman to third, but Alex Call and Freeman couldn’t get him home.

That was only one of numerous potentially game-changing plays on a night when the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead, fell behind 4-2, tied it up at 4-all, fell behind 5-4, then tied it up again in the seventh. Who’d have thought it would remain tied for the next 11 innings?The Dodgers left 18 men on base. They were two-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

Max Muncy went 0-for-7. Mookie Betts went 1-for-8. Freeman was just 2-for-7.

“Weird how the game works sometimes, huh?” said Freeman.

The official time of this one was 6:39, which wasn’t so long that one thought of actor Jason Bateman’s reminder to the crowd during a pregame cheer. He noted that the Dodgers had not clinched a World Series championship at Dodger Stadium since 1963.

Two wins in the next two days and they’ll finally do it again.

After Monday’s doubleheader sweep, it’s hard to believe they won’t.

Northampton Saints: Hendy, Freeman, Hutchinson, Dingwall (c), Todaro, Smith, Mitchell; Fischetti, Smith, Davison, Lockett, Van Der Mescht, Coles, Pearson, Pollock

Replacements: Wright, Iyogun, Green, Prowse, Chick, McParland, Belleau, Litchfield

Yellow card: Pearson (40)

Saracens: Malins, Caluori, Tompkins, Farrell, Bracken, Burke, Bracken; Mawi, Dan, Riccioni, Itoje, Tizard, Gonzalez, Onyeama-Christie, Willis

Replacements: Hadfield, Carre, Street, Isiekwe, McFarland, Earl, Simpson, Hall

Yellow card: Riccioni (54)

Referee: Anthony Woodthorpe

When Shohei Ohtani was asked about his woeful performance at the plate in the Dodgers’ National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies last week, he first gave credit to the opposition.

Then, after a series that saw the Phillies counter him with one left-handed pitcher after the next, he was also quick to point out that he wasn’t alone.

“It was pretty difficult for left-handed hitters,” Ohtani said in Japanese amid the Dodgers’ clubhouse celebration following their Game 4 victory. “This was also the case for Freddie [Freeman].”

The Phillies did indeed make life tough on the Dodgers’ best lefty bats.

Freeman was only three for 15 in the series, albeit with a key Game 2 double and a .294 on-base-percentage.

Max Muncy was four for nine in the series, but spent most of it waiting on the bench, not getting a start in any of the three contests the Phillies had a southpaw on the mound.

And as a team, the Dodgers hit just .199 with 41 strikeouts in the four-game series.

However, no one’s struggles were as pronounced as Ohtani’s — the soon-to-be four-time MVP winner, who in the NLDS looked like anything but.

Ohtani struck out in each of his first four at-bats in Game 1. He didn’t get his first hit until grounding an RBI single through the infield in the seventh inning of Game 2.

After that, Ohtani’s only other time reaching base safely was when the Phillies intentionally walked him in the seventh inning of Game 4.

His final stat line from the series: One for 18, nine strikeouts and a whole lot of questions about what went wrong.

Ohtani, who was coming off a three-hit, two-homer wild-card round, did acknowledge Thursday night that “there were at-bats that didn’t go the way I thought they would.”

But, he quickly added: “The opposing pitchers didn’t make many mistakes. They pitched wonderfully, in a way that’s worthy for the postseason. There were a lot of games like that for both teams.”

The real question coming out of the series was about the root cause of Ohtani’s unexpected struggles.

Was it simply because of the tough pitching matchups, having faced a lefty in 12 of his 20 trips to the plate? Or had his faltering approach created more legitimate concerns, the kind that could threaten to continue into the NL Championship Series?

“I think a lot of it actually was driven by the left-handed pitching,” manager Dave Roberts said Saturday, as the Dodgers awaited to face either the Chicago Cubs or Milwaukee Brewers in an NLCS that will begin on Monday.

However, the manager also put the onus on his $700-million superstar to be better.

“Hoping that he can do a little self-reflecting on that series, and how aggressive he was outside of the strike zone, passive in the zone,” Roberts said. “The at-bat quality needs to get better.”

For the Dodgers, the implications are stark.

“We’re not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance,” Roberts continued. “So we’re counting on a recalibration, getting back into the strike zone.”

From the very first at-bat of Game 1 — when he was also the starting pitcher in his first career playoff game as a two-way player — Ohtani struggled to make the right swing decisions.

He chased three pitches off the inside of the plate from Phillies lefty Cristopher Sánchez, which Roberts felt “kinda set the tone” for his series-long struggles, then took a called third strike the next two times he faced him.

From there, the 31-year-old slugger could never seem to dial back into his approach.

He went down looking again in Game 1 against left-handed reliever Matt Strahm. He led off Game 2 with another strikeout against another lefty in Jesús Luzardo. On and on it went, with Ohtani continuing to chase inside junk, flailing at pitches that darted off the plate the other way, and finding his only reprieve in a rematch with Strahm in Game 2 when he got just enough on an inside sinker.

Roberts’ hope was that, moving forward, Ohtani would be able to learn and adjust.

“Understanding when he faces left-handed pitching, what they’re gonna try to do: Crowd him in, off, spin him away,” Roberts said. “He’s just gotta be better at managing the hitting zone. I’m counting on it. We’re all counting on it.”

Roberts also conceded that Ohtani’s at-bats on the day he pitched in Game 1 seemed to be especially rushed.

“[When] he’s pitching, he’s probably trying to conserve energy, not trying to get into at-bats,” Roberts said. “It hasn’t been good when he’s pitched. I do think that’s part of it. We’ve got to think through this and come up with a better game plan.”

After all, while Ohtani might not have been the only struggling hitter in the NLDS, his importance to the lineup is greater than anyone’s. The Dodgers can only endure without him for so long.

PHILADELPHIA — Phillies starter Jesús Luzardo had set down 17 batters in a row going into the seventh inning of Monday’s National League Division Series game. The Dodgers hadn’t had a hit or a baserunner since the first.

And it didn’t look like they’d get another.

“Luzardo,” said Dodger first baseman Freddie Freeman, “was amazing.”

Yet it was Freeman who brought Luzardo’s masterful night to an end and pushed the Phillies’ season to the brink, keying a 4-3 Dodger win that sends the best-of-five series to Los Angeles for Game 3 on Wednesday with Philadelphia a loss away from spring training.

“It’s huge. It’s absolutely huge,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of the two-game sweep on the road. “Guys are really stepping up.”

Especially in the seventh, when the Dodgers batted around, producing the kind of inning they rarely managed in the regular season, one that featured aggressive at-bats, smart baserunning and three two-out RBIs.

“All that coming together; just really good at-bats up and down the lineup,” Roberts said.

Teoscar Hernández got it started with a single to center. Freeman followed with a hit off the end of his bat into the right-field corner, a single he turned into a double when he refused to stop at first, surprising outfielder Nick Castellanos.

“I was trying to keep things going, put pressure on them,” Freeman said. “I just wanted to push the envelope in that situation since we hadn’t had anything going on since the first inning.”

Luzardo had given up one hit through six innings; now he’d given up two in the span of five pitches.

“He retired 17 in a row. He had 72 pitches. He’s pitching great,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said.

But after Freeman’s hit he was done, with Thomson summoning reliever Orion Kerkering. The Dodgers, however, were just getting started, and an out later Hernández put them ahead to stay, breaking smartly from third on Kiké Hernández’s slow roller by the mound, then sliding to the back of the plate to beat shortstop Trea Turner’s wide throw home.

Pinch-hitter Max Muncy followed with a four-pitch walk to load the bases for Will Smith, whose two-out single on the first pitch he saw drove in two more runs.

“In that situation, it’s very easy to try to want to do too much,” Muncy said. “You have a chance to drive in a couple runs. It’s very easy to chase a pitch. But you’ve just got to be diligent with what you’re trying to do up there and just pass the baton to the next guy.”

Dodgers’ Will Smith hits a two-run single during the seventh inning of Game 2 of the NLDS on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers’ rally had been built around a double that should have been a single, a run-scoring fielder’s choice that barely passed the mound, a walk and Smith’s one-hop single to left, the hardest-hit ball of the inning. When Shohei Ohtani grounded a single by diving second baseman Edmundo Sosa, the Dodgers led 4-0.

“Obviously some huge two-out hits by Will and then Shohei. Great play by Teo getting his foot in,” Freeman said. “A lot of good things happened in that seventh inning.”

The inning also silenced the sellout crowd of 45,653, which minutes earlier had been louder than a rock concert during a NASCAR race. When Matt Strahm, the third pitcher of the inning, finally got Mookie Betts for the third out, the fans booed the Phillies off the field.

The crowd came alive again in the ninth, when Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen once again melted down on the mound, gave up three hits and two runs without getting an out to let the Phillies back in the game. But Roki Sasaki then took them out again, retiring Turner on a groundball with the tying run on third, earning his second save in as many games.

When it was over the Phillies, who had the best home record in the majors this season, had lost consecutive games at home for the first time since June 1. And the Dodgers, unbeaten this postseason, were a win away from the NL Championship Series.

“Lots to unpack in that one,” Roberts said.

Freeman managed to put it all in perspective.

“We were just sitting at our lockers and Kiké said, ‘we just took two here’,” he said. “This is a hard place to play. Incredible fan base. It’s loud here.

“We obviously put ourselves in great position going into Wednesday.”

To Andrew Friedman, something like this was a virtual impossibility.

“If you had said that we would have a six-week stretch where our offense would rank 30th in baseball, I would have said there was a zero percent chance,” the Dodgers president of baseball operations said last month.

“I would have been wrong,” he quickly added.

Over a five-week stretch from July 4 to Aug. 4, the Dodgers inexplicably ranked 30th (out of 30 clubs) in scoring. And though they’ve been slightly better in the five weeks since, questions about their supposed juggernaut lineup still abound.

In the first half of the season, the Dodgers boasted the best offense in the majors, leading the majors in scoring (5.61 runs per game), batting average (.262), OPS (.796) and hitting with runners in scoring position (.300) and went 56-32 over their first 88 games.

Since then, however, everything has flipped.

It started with a July slump that was as stunning as it was unforeseen, with the Dodgers averaging just 3.36 runs in a 25-game stretch commencing with Independence Day. Since then, there have been only marginal improvements, with the Dodgers entering Friday ranked 24th in scoring (4.21 runs per game), 25th in batting average (.237), 18th in OPS (.718) and 22nd in hitting with runners in scoring position (.245) over their last 58 games — a stretch in which they’ve gone 26-32.

“Not scoring runs,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said last week, “it’s just not who we are.”

On the surface, the root causes seemed rather obvious. Much of their lineup was either on the injured list or scuffling in the wake of previous, nagging injuries. Healthy superstars were grinding through flaws with their swings. What little depth they had failed to compensate.

To that end, the team is hopeful it has turned the page.

Shohei Ohtani, after a midseason lull, is back to his MVP-caliber norms. Mookie Betts is back to looking like himself at the end of an otherwise career-worst season. Max Muncy and Tommy Edman have returned from injuries, providing the batting order with much-needed length. Significant playing time is no longer going to the likes of Buddy Kennedy, Alex Freeland, Estuery Ruiz or any of the other anonymous faces that populated the clubhouse during the campaign’s darkest days.

“Our lineup, our team, looks more whole,” manager Dave Roberts said this week. “I think that we’ve all been waiting for our guys to come back to health, and see what we look like as the ballclub that we had all envisioned.”

Still, when asked whether the Dodgers’ second-half slump could just be pinned on personnel issues, Roberts and his players said it wasn’t that simple.

The Dodgers might not have been whole. But they weren’t doing fundamental things — like stressing opposing pitchers, driving up pitch counts, or executing in leverage situations — either.

“We’d lost sight of playing the game the way we’re capable of playing,” Roberts acknowledged.

“For a little while,” Betts added, “we were having just some bad at-bats.”

This is the dynamic the Dodgers have honed in on fixing, hoping to turn their summer-long frustrations into a valuable learning experience as October nears.

In recent days, a renewed and deliberate emphasis has been placed on the importance of competitiveness at the plate. Daily hitters’ meetings have included film sessions reviewing situational at-bats from the previous night. In-game dugout conversations have centered on a more basic message.

“It’s more about your approach, your plan,” Freeman said. “That’s been the focus.”

This week, the team took what it hopes are important first steps, ambushing the Rockies with seven- and nine-run performances in which they advanced baserunners, capitalized on scoring opportunities and built the kind of big innings that been missing over the two months beforehand.

“We said a few games ago, ‘This needs to be like how we focus for the playoffs,’” Freeman said. “Focus on the little things that help win games.”

The Dodgers, of course, have seen what a broken offense looks like before.

And they know what happens when it doesn’t get rectified before the playoffs.

Late in 2022, as co-hitting coach Aaron Bates recalled this week, the team slipped into bad habits while nursing a massive National League West lead: “It felt like that whole month of September was swing camp, or spring training,” he said, “in the sense of guys working on their swings individually too much, as opposed to playing the game in front of them.”

The results then were costly: A four-game NL Division Series elimination to the San Diego Padres in which the Dodgers repeatedly failed with runners in scoring position.

The next year was more of the same: The team losing its identity while coasting down the stretch, before being swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three listless games.

Last season, the Dodgers finally avoided such pitfalls. They batted .278 with runners in scoring position during their postseason run to the World Series. Their tying and go-ahead runs in the Fall Classic clincher came on a pair of productive at-bats in the form of sacrifice flies.

The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has showed his MVP form in recent games, homering twice in last Sunday’s win against the Baltimore Orioles.

(Eric Thayer / For The Los Angeles Times)

But this summer, after a first-half outburst that met every lofty expectation of their $400 million roster, more troubling patterns began to resurface again.

Betts’ slow start devolved into a career-worst slump, bottoming out with a .205 average during July. Freeman began to fade right alongside him, with his .374 season average at the end of May plummeting to .292 less than two months later. Edman and Teoscar Hernández struggled after returning from first-half injuries. Michael Conforto never found his footing while Andy Pages endured an extended sophomore slide.

When coupled with Muncy’s prolonged absence — he missed 48 of 56 games because of a knee injury and oblique strain — the Dodgers suddenly had a lineup of players either grinding to rediscover their swing, or struggling to make up for the firepower they were missing.

And as easy scoring dried up, their inability to work consistent “team at-bats” quickly became magnified.

“It happened incrementally, every day, little by little,” Bates said. “Where it’s like, you’re a little off, you want to see what’s wrong with your swing, and you don’t realize that it snowballs. Before you know it, you’re thinking so much about your swing, you’re off of the situations out there.”

It was a problem, Bates insisted, borne of good intentions. Most of the roster was battling swing flaws. Too much daily energy was spent on players trying to individually get their mechanics right.

It led to mindless swings were wasted on bad pitches. It caused scoring opportunities to carelessly, and repeatedly, go frustatingly by the wayside.

“Guys just got so internal with their mechanics,” Bates said, “they weren’t able to shift their focus once the game starts to just competing in the box.”

Bates started sensing the trend while watching the team from afar, gaining a different perspective during a two-week medical absence in early August to address blood clots in his leg.

In the clubhouse, players began voicing similar observations after particularly puzzling offensive performances in recent weeks.

“I feel like a lot of swings that we took today weren’t really good swings to get on base,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said after the Dodgers managed only one hit in six innings against Padres left-hander Nestor Cortes on Aug. 23. “We know we’re more than capable of putting up better at-bats and more hits together to create some traffic.”

“We individually are trying to find ways on our own to make sure that we’re just hitting better than we are,” Ohtani echoed, through an interpreter, after the Dodgers’ one-run performance in a series-opener in Baltimore last weekend. “But I think the side effect of that is, we’re a little too eager, and putting too much pressure on ourselves.”

Thus, this week, the team endeavored to make changes.

In their daily pregame hitters’ meetings, the club has started holding what fellow co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc described to SportsNet LA as “NFL-style” film sessions; in which players were asked to review situational at-bats from the night before, and analyze their ability to execute their plan of attack.

“The game rewards you for having those ‘team at-bats,’” Bates said. “So you just preach to them by holding each other accountable, talking about them after the fact, not shying away from it.”

Freeman added that, in the dugout, players have also made an effort to emphasize that message among themselves.

“Don’t get upset because your swing didn’t feel good,” he said. “Like, if you go 0-for-four but move a runner over four times, that’s a great game for us. It might not be for your stats. But you gotta throw that out the window. That’s what we’ve been trying to clean up.”

The hope is that this renewed focus will naturally help hitters sync-up their swings.

On Monday night, for example, Betts moved a runner to third base with a fly ball in the sixth inning, before coming back to the plate and roping a tie-breaking two-run single with two outs in the eighth.

“He said it in the hitter’s meeting [the next day],” Freeman relayed, “how that little positive thing of moving [a runner] over helped him build confidence going into his next at-bat.”

Little moments like that, the Dodgers hope, will help kick-start their offense as they come up on the playoffs. They might not have been able to envision the struggles of the last two months. But now, between better health and improving at-bat quality, they finally see a way to fix their ailing offense.

“Now, we’re at least having good at-bats, getting a walk, extending innings, finding ways to manufacture runs,” Betts said.

“I do think that presently, the guys are engaged,” Roberts added. “Guys are playing as one right now.”

SAN DIEGO — The Dodgers finally landed a lot of little jabs as an offense Sunday against the San Diego Padres.

And in a pivotal, sweep-evading 8-2 win at Petco Park — which once again tied the two teams for first place in the National League West standings — it allowed their slumping lineup to deliver some badly needed knockout blows.

For the first time this weekend, the Dodgers looked like themselves at the plate.

They bashed four home runs, none bigger than a tie-breaking three-run shot from backup catcher Dalton Rushing in the seventh that ultimately decided the game.

They strung together seven hits and four walks, cracking a Padres pitching staff that had smothered them over the first two games in this rivalry’s final renewal of the season.

Most importantly, however, they did all the little things that have too often gone missing during their recent two-month funk; one in which they’ve ranked 24th in the majors in scoring since the start of July, and let what was once a nine-game lead in the division turn into a dogfight down the stretch.

They extended at-bats. Battled with two strikes. And, at long last, earned the kind of pitches their star-studded roster could wallop.

“For us to come out here and execute as an offense, way better than we did the last couple days, that’s a big boost for us,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who had two home runs to help the Dodgers salvage the series finale.

“When you expand the zone, the slugging percentage is going to go down, because pitchers are going to continue to expand,” manager Dave Roberts added. “But when you earn good counts and get good pitches, control the zone, then slug happens. You can’t always chase it. Which, I thought, today we did a really good job of.

Ahead of first pitch, Roberts spoke at length about the team’s recent offensive struggles — following up on his Saturday night critique of the club’s increasingly all-or-nothing approach.

“We haven’t really been in-sync,” Roberts said. “It’s been disjointed a lot, as far as the offense.”

Freddie Freeman, right, is congratulated by third base coach Dino Ebel after hitting a home run in the sixth inning Sunday.

(Derrick Tuskan / Associated Press)

When asked if that meant his team needed to adopt more of a small-ball mentality, however, Roberts pushed back.

“I think it’s a fair question,” he said. “But I couldn’t disagree more.”

After all, his team is still stocked full of All-Stars, MVPs and future Hall of Famers. At their core, they are built to bludgeon opponents — not slap singles and drop down sacrifice bunts.

“Slugging is still a part of it,” he said. “I definitely don’t want guys to hit like I did.”

Around the margins, though, there were ways Roberts felt the Dodgers (74-57) could better position themselves to do that. Like trying to work better counts, stay alive with two strikes, and striking a better balance between patience and aggression.

“I want my cake, and [to] eat it as well,” he quipped, a devilish smile on his face.

“I’d be shocked,” he added, “if we don’t see a different offensive output from here forward, starting today.”

The change started in the first inning, with the Dodgers putting Padres starter Nick Pivetta under immediate stress.

Shohei Ohtani drew a five-pitch leadoff walk. Mookie Betts shortened up his swing on an 0-and-2 slider to line a single up the middle. Freeman loaded the bases by grinding out a full-count free pass.

It was a string of small victories, that provided cleanup hitter Teoscar Hernández the perfect chance to slug.

Hernández tried to, getting a fastball over the plate in a 3-and-1 count and launching a deep fly ball that seemed destined to be a grand slam. The drive, however, hung up just enough for Ramón Laureano to rob it at the wall.

The sacrifice fly brought in the Dodgers’ only run of the inning — giving them a 1-0 lead that would soon be erased on Elias Díaz’s two-run homer in the third off Yoshinobu Yamamoto (the only runs he allowed in a six-inning start).

Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto delivers against the Padres in the first inning Sunday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Still, it set the tone for a flurry of offense that would follow, when a weekend of non-existent offense finally started to turn.

“Getting the guys on and scoring in that first inning was huge,” Freeman sad. “Even though we could have got more out of it, just getting one run across was a good boost for us coming off the last couple games.”

In the sixth, Freeman hit his first home run of the day, crushing another center-cut fastball from Pivetta to right-center for a tying blast.

Then, against Padres reliever Jeremiah Estrada in the seventh, the club put all the pieces together in a five-run rally.

Andy Pages rolled a single through the left side to lead off. Michael Conforto came up next, fouled off a full-count slider, then took a borderline fastball at the top of the zone for a stress-inducing walk.

Miguel Rojas couldn’t get a bunt down after that, eventually swinging away for a fly out to center.

But, in what was easily his best moment of a trying rookie season, Rushing connected on the fatal blow seven pitches later — resetting after a bad first strike call, fouling off his own two-strike slider to keep the at-bat alive, then clobbering another slider to right for his go-ahead three-run homer.

“When I’m in the box and I get put in a hole, it’s almost like, ‘All right, I’m going to find my way out,’” said Rushing, who entered the day batting just .184 with two home runs. “I kind of played the game with him. He threw every pitch that he had, and I was totally banking on just being able to put a good swing on the ball whatever he threw.”

“I think today,” Roberts added, “was a big step in the right direction for him.”

The same, of course, was true of the Dodgers’ entire offense — which also got a second homer from Freeman later in the seventh, then another when Ohtani belted his 45th homer of the season in the ninth.

They got back to doing the little things right. They reeled off one big swing after another as a result.

“Today was more indicative of what we’re going to do, we expect, going forward,” Roberts said. “The fight, the grind, taking what the pitcher is giving you — and then if there’s slug there, it’s there. Just the byproduct of good at-bats all day.”

When Clayton Kershaw signed a one-year deal with the Dodgers last February, it looked like it could have marked the start of a goodbye tour. The left-hander would take one more trip around the league, then settle into a rocking chair and wait for the Hall of Fame to call.

Instead, Kershaw has shown flashes of the pitcher who won three Cy Young Awards in four seasons, though now he gets by on guile and guts more than curveballs and sliders. On Sunday, however, he was undone by his defense in a 6-5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

It was the Dodgers’ third loss in as many games since the All-Star break and 10th in a dozen games overall, the team’s worst 12-game slump since 2018.

And the losses keep mounting in other ways as well, with first baseman Freddie Freeman sustaining a left wrist contusion after being hit by a José Quintana pitch in the sixth inning. Freeman is among the Dodgers’ leaders in batting average (.292) and is third in runs (47) and hits (95). With the team already missing third baseman Max Muncy and utility player Kiké Hernández, the possibility of losing Freeman for any stretch would be a significant blow.

The game ended with the slumping Mookie Betts lining out to center field with the bases loaded.

The Dodgers’ rotation has also been battered by injury, which is why Kershaw’s performances have been so important. Despite missing the first seven weeks of the season, he ranks third on the team with 11 starts and has given up two or fewer earned runs in eight of them — including Sunday, when he scattered five hits over 4 1/3 innings, exiting the game with the score tied 3-3 in the fifth.

Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers in the first inning Sunday against the Brewers.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Kershaw, who left without a decision, would have pitched longer had a throwing error by third baseman Tommy Edman and a misplayed fly ball by center fielder Andy Pages not extended the Brewers’ fourth inning twice, forcing Kershaw to throw 29 pitches in the inning. And he battled to get that far, working with a fastball that rarely topped 90 mph and a curve he bounced to the plate more than once.

“It just speaks to the guy,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts before the game. “Even when he doesn’t have his best on that particular day, he does what’s called of him each time out.”

“He has adjusted, as far as using his whole pitch mix more,” Roberts continued. “He’s incorporating a lot more pitches and trying to keep guys more off a particular set, attacking guys differently.”

The Dodgers (58-42) gave Kershaw an early lead with a three-run third. Pages led with a double to left, then scored on a line-drive sacrifice fly by Dalton Rushing. After Betts followed with a single, Shohei Ohtani sliced a 2-0 sinker over the left-field wall for league-leading his 34th home run.

The defense gave all three runs back in the fourth with a two-out throwing error by Edman letting in a run and Pages misplaying a ball that bounced off his glove near the warning track in center for a tying double.

Esteury Ruiz’s first home run for the Dodgers put them back in front in the fifth, but the Brewers (59-40) went in front to stay in sixth, scoring three times off relievers Alex Vesia and Lou Trivino (3-1) on a double, three singles and a walk.

The Dodgers’ bullpen earned-run average of 4.38 ranks 12th in the 15-team National League. The team hasn’t gotten a scoreless game from its bullpen since July 3.

After Rushing’s bases-loaded infield single pulled the Dodgers to within a run in the ninth, Betts, who was elevated to the leadoff spot in the order in an effort to end a slump that had seen him start July hitting .174 with as many strikeouts as hits, lined out to center. He finished one for five, dropping his average to .240.

Notes: Pitchers Blake Snell and Blake Treinen made rehab appearances for triple-A Oklahoma City on Sunday. Snell, who has been on the injured list since April 6 because of left shoulder inflammation, made 58 pitchers over four innings, giving up a run on four hits while striking out six. It was his third rehab appearance. Treinen, out since April 19 with a forearm strain, followed with a perfect fifth inning in which he struck out two. He could return to the Dodgers’ roster this week.

ATLANTA — There were no tears.

There were no tears when he addressed the crowd in a Fox interview that was played over the Truist Park sound system.

There were no tears when manager Dave Roberts removed him from the game in the top of third inning so the fans could salute him once final time.

Freddie Freeman didn’t cry Tuesday at the All-Star Game.

“I didn’t know how it was going to go,” Freeman said.

This was the kind of setting that could have very easily turned the emotional Freeman into a sobbing mess, and he admitted as much the previous day. He was returning to the market in which he spent the first 12 years of a career to play in the kind of event that is often a source of reflection.

The absence of tears represented how much can change in four years, especially four years as prosperous as the four years Freeman has played for the Dodgers.

“Time,” Freeman said, “heals everything.”

For both sides.

The same fans who watched him transform from a 20-year-old prospect to a future Hall of Famer warmly cheered for him during pregame introductions — just not with the kind of back-of-the-throat screams they once did.

The same fans who used to chant his name chanted his name again — just not as long as they used to, and definitely not as long as the fans at Dodger Stadium now chant his name.

Freeman will never be just another visiting player here. He won an MVP award here. He won a World Series here.

Braves fans appreciate what he did for them. They respect him. But they have moved on to some degree, just as Freeman has.

“You spend 12 years with Atlanta, you pour your heart into it,” Freeman said. “Now I poured my heart into four years with the Dodgers and still got many more hopefully to go.”

Gaining such a perspective required time.

Freeman acknowledged he was wounded by the decision the Braves made after they won the World Series in 2021. They didn’t offer him the six-year contract he wanted and traded for Matt Olson to replace him as their first baseman. Freeman signed a six-year deal with the Dodgers.

“To be honest, I was blindsided,” Freeman said at the time. “I think every emotion came across. I was hurt.”

He carried that hurt with him into his return to Atlanta, which came a couple of months into his first season with the Dodgers. He spent much of the weekend in tears.

Now looking back, Freeman said, “It does feel like a lifetime ago.”

So much so that Freeman said it was “a little weird” to be back this week in the home team’s clubhouse at Truist Park.

“I was sitting with [Braves manager Brian Snitker] in the office and seeing him and talking to him, seeing all the home clubhouse guys and then it kind of just comes all flying back that, like, well, it has been four years,” Freeman said.

Freeman has since returned to Southern California, where he was born and raised. He’s been embraced by an entirely new fan base that supported his family when his now-five-year-old son was temporarily paralyzed last year because of a rare disease. His postseason heroics — particularly his walk-off grand slam in the Game 1 of the World Series last year — has made him one of the most beloved players on a stacked roster.

“Now, everything’s in the past,” he said. “I get to play in front of my family every single day and we won a championship, so everything’s OK.”

His experience in Los Angeles has liberated him from the negative feelings associated with his breakup with the Braves, allowing him to focus on his positive memories with the organization.

Because of that, Freeman was grateful he was offered a chance to speak directly to the fans before the game.

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you,” he told them.

He was also thankful of how Roberts replaced him with Pete Alonso at first base while the American League was batting. The crowd gave Freeman a standing ovation. Freeman saluted the crowd in return.

“I really appreciate the moments,” Freeman said.

Freeman grounded out in his only at-bat, which was preceded by respectful applause and a brief chant of his name. Another NL first baseman elicited louder cheers when he stepped into the batter’s box, however. That player was Olson, his successor in Atlanta. Freeman wasn’t the only one who had moved on.

DENVER — As the Dodgers completed a sweep of the Colorado Rockies on Thursday, it was two of their cornerstone hitters who helped lead the way.

In what was then a tie game in the top of the sixth inning, Mookie Betts led off with a double in the gap, Freddie Freeman brought him home with a line drive to right, and the Dodgers took a lead they wouldn’t relinquish, completing a three-game sweep that kept them tied for the best record in baseball.

For much of the last four years, that would’ve been an unremarkable sequence. Shohei Ohtani might be the most potent hitter in the Dodgers’ lineup, but Betts and Freeman have long been the bedrock of their offense; All-Stars in each season they’ve played in Los Angeles, and MVP candidates more often than not.

On Thursday, however, their sixth-inning heroics had a different feel. Because, for the last three weeks, both superstars have been mired in startlingly stark slumps.

Over Betts’ last 17 games, the former MVP is batting .191 with only one home run and eight RBIs — dropping his season-long production to just a shade above league average (he has a 106 OPS+, an all-encompassing stat in which 100 is considered league average).

Freeman’s last 20 games have been even worse, highlighted by a .160 average that marks the lowest of any single-season, 20-game stretch in his entire career — diminishing the stellar numbers he had this year beforehand.

Such coinciding struggles haven’t triggered any “long-term concerns,” manager Dave Roberts said this week. Thursday’s game provided some long-awaited production, a sigh of relief for two veteran sluggers who don’t often need one.

But still, the numbers are the numbers. A trip to even hitter-friendly Coors Field failed to fully bring them back to life. And until they rebound, external questions about their bats will linger, while their personal search for answers will carry on.

“I’ve been frustrated for about six weeks now,” Freeman said recently.

“If I knew [what was wrong],” Betts echoed this week, “I promise you I wouldn’t keep doing it.”

The Dodgers’ Mookie Betts remains adamant that playing shortstop is not the reason his numbers are down at the plate this season.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

It wasn’t long ago that both Betts and Freeman were on polar opposite trajectories, surging through most of May and early June on offensive heaters that evaporated their slow (and physically hampered) starts to the campaign.

On April 28, Betts was hitting only .230 with an OPS nearly below .700, clearly affected by a stomach virus that drained him over the two weeks leading up to opening day.

Then, in a 32-game stretch from April 29-June 7, his typical levels of production suddenly reappeared. He hit .312 with four doubles, four home runs and an .835 OPS. And he did it all while showing defensive mastery of shortstop, quieting a growing narrative that the toll of his new position was curbing his capabilities at the plate.

“It’s not about shortstop,” Betts said last month. “Because remember, last year, I was playing pretty well [offensively while] playing at shortstop. I had no idea what I was doing. Now, I’m way more confident in how I show up and prepare each and every day. The shortstop argument can’t be it.”

Given his recent skid, however, such speculation is back.

“I’m gonna hold to no,” Roberts said when asked about the dynamic again this week. “I think it’s a fair debate. But all I can go with is what Mookie is saying, as far as the separation of the hitting to the defense, the comfort level with the defense … So I don’t think there’s a correlation.”

Instead, Roberts pointed to a lack of power as a bigger factor. Betts’ .392 slugging percentage thus far is 50 points worse than his previous career-low (which came in his rookie 2014 season). He ranks below league-average in underlying metrics such as exit velocity, hard-hit percentage and bat speed most of all (slipping to the 11th percentile among MLB hitters in that category).

“I think it’s the lack of hitting the ball on the barrel,” Roberts said. “He’s a guy that knows how to find the barrel. But there’s times that he’s chasing a little bit more than he usually does. And then there’s a lot more pop-ups than typical. So to get power, you gotta find the barrel. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Freeman has endured even more whiplash amid his rollercoaster season.

At the end of May, he was leading the National League with a .374 batting average. He was seemingly compensating for whatever lingering pain remained in the right ankle he had surgically repaired in the offseason, then re-aggravated with a slip in the shower at the end of March.

Even at age 35, he appeared primed for a potential career season, well on track for an elusive first batting title.

“He’s just been relentless,” Roberts said last month.

Now, however, one of the game’s best hit collectors can’t seem to buy a knock most days. His batting average has fallen all the way to .309 entering Friday. Before his Thursday afternoon single, he was 0-for-11 in the Rockies series and one-for-his-last-22 overall.

“I have seen some signs where he’s hit some balls hard and hasn’t gotten anything to show for it,” Roberts said, searching for positives amid Freeman’s highly uncharacteristic slump. “That’s discouraging for him. But I just know he’s gonna find his way out of it.”

To this point, though, he hasn’t, with his usual routine of slump-busting drills — from a net exercise designed to promote an inside-out bat path, to mental cues intended to help him stay back in his swing — having yet to get his mechanics re-aligned.

“I’ve gone through every cue 16 times over again in the last six weeks,” he said. “So just waiting for it to click.”

Though Freeman, who also battled a minor quadriceps injury in recent weeks, still looks hobbled while running the bases and playing defense at times, he insisted the problems aren’t injury-related.

“The only pain is the swing,” he said.

And despite his best efforts to conceal such frustrations during games, Roberts has noticed the toll his slump has started to take.

“I think he just wants consistency from his swing,” Roberts said. “Wants to feel right consistently.”

Somewhat amazingly, the Dodgers haven’t missed a beat even with their superstar pairing clearly out of tune. The team is 13-4 in its last 17 games. The offense has scored six runs per game in that span, half-a-run better than its already MLB-leading season average. Other middle-of-the-order bats — from current NL batting leader Will Smith, to June player of the month candidate Max Muncy and rising second-year star Andy Pages — have helped pick up the slack.

Ohtani, meanwhile, leads the National League with 28 home runs even while returning to two-way duties.

But in the long run, much of the Dodgers’ success still figures to run through Betts and Freeman. They are still the two most veteran, experienced producers in a lineup full of All-Star caliber talent.

At the very least, Roberts insisted, Thursday offered “something to build on.”

But with the way the last month has gone for each, there remains a lot of work left to do.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. Shohei Ohtani pitched! We will have more on that in Friday’s newsletter.

Top 10 first basemen

Here are my picks for the top 10 first basemen in Dodgers history, followed by how all of you voted. Numbers listed are with the Dodgers only. Click on the player’s name to be taken to the baseball-reference.com page with all their stats.

1. Gil Hodges (1943, 1947-61, .273/.369/.487, 120 OPS+, 8-time All Star, 3 Gold Gloves)

Hodges made his debut with the Dodgers in the final game of the 1943 season. And it could have been his final game ever, as he joined the Marines after the season ended and was a gunner for the 16th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion. In April 1945, Hodges and his battalion stormed the beaches of Okinawa and were involved in heavy fighting. He was awarded a Bronze Star for heroic service in a combat zone. In a letter to his family, Hodges wrote about the experience.

“We arrived here [Okinawa] the first of April and things really cut loose. We were always having air attacks and the ships were really knocking down the planes. It’s just like being tied down when you’re on board a ship because you can’t do a thing but just stand there and wait for something to happen. One Japanese plane, a Zero, came circling around where we were anchored and when everyone saw it they really cut loose. I don’t see how it was possible for him to escape with so much firing being done at that time. He was the plane that really gave all of us a scare. He started to pull away from the firing and then he got hit and started circling around, then into a suicide dive. He started coming down and boy he was really moving. He crashed on the bow of another LST not very far from our ship and exploded. I don’t know how many got hurt but I’m sure there were quite a few. Well, that’s just one incident and I don’t want to go into any other at the present time because I could probably sit here and write all day and still not be through.”

You can read more about Hodges’ time in the Marines here.

Hodges was discharged before the 1946 season and returned to the Dodgers. He spent 1946 in the minors, but came up to the majors in 1947 to stay. He broke in as a catcher, but with the Dodgers wanting to get his bat in the lineup and realizing he would never be better behind the plate than Roy Campanella, they converted him to first base before the 1948 season. As manager Leo Durocher said, “I put a first baseman’s glove on our other rookie catcher, Gil Hodges. Three days later I’m looking at the best first baseman I’d seen since Dolph Camilli.”

Hodges hit at least 20 homers in 11 consecutive seasons and drove in at least 100 runs in seven consecutive seasons.

After never being voted into the Hall of Fame in his 15 years on the regular ballot, Hodges was elected by the Golden Era Committee in 2021. “It’s a great thing that happened for our family,” Gil Hodges Jr. said. “We are all thrilled that Mom got to see it, being 95. We’ve all waited a long time, and we are just grateful and thankful that it’s finally come to fruition.”

2. Steve Garvey (1969-82, .301/.337/.459, 122 OPS+, 1 NL MVP award, 8-time All Star, 4 Gold Gloves)

One of the most beloved Dodgers while he was playing, Garvey was an integral part of the longest-lasting infield in baseball history, the Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey infield.

Garvey was drafted by the Dodgers in 1968 and made it to the big leagues one year later. He had a hard time sticking there, however, because he was a terrible third baseman. He had a weak arm and little range. He played 85 games at third in 1972, making 28 errors, mostly on throws.

It was more of the same in 1973, with Garvey mainly riding the bench as a pinch-hitter. On June 23 of that year, both left fielders, Von Joshua and Manny Mota, were injured. Bill Buckner, the regular first baseman, went to manager Walter Alston and suggested they put him in left and Garvey at first base (Buckner and Garvey were teammates in the minors and Buckner remembered that Garvey had played well in a few games there).

As Buckner later recounted, “I never played first base for the Dodgers again.”

Garvey had an off year, for him, in 1982, hitting .282 with 16 homers, good for a 101 OPS+. He was a free agent after the season, but there’s no way they would let Mr. Dodger leave, right? Wrong.

“Final offers had to be made,” Garvey recounted in his book. “Peter O’Malley said his final offer was $5 million for four years, no incentives. We drew the line at $6 million for four years.” Garvey signed with the San Diego Padres for five years, $6.6 million.

A lot of Dodger fans believe Garvey should be in the Hall of Fame. With 75% needed for induction, Garvey never got higher than 42.6% of votes on the Hall of Fame ballot, back in 1995. Some fans mistakenly believe he is already in the Hall.

Although the Dodgers usually only retire the numbers of people who make the Hall of Fame as Dodgers, they did not hand out Garvey’s No. 6 after he signed with the San Diego Padres before the 1983 season until Jolbert Cabrera was given the number in 2003.

3. Freddie Freeman (2022-current, .316/.399/.524, 143 OPS+, 3-time All Star)

You could put the Nos. 2-4 guys in almost any order and be fine. If Freeman continues to play like he has so far with the Dodgers, then he’ll be No. 1 one day. There’s not much to write about Freeman that I haven’t covered the last few seasons, so let’s just watch his World Series grand slam again.

4. Dolph Camilli (1938-43, .270/.392/.497, 136 OPS+, 1 NL MVP award, 2-time All Star)

Camilli was an offensive machine with the Dodgers, leading the league in homers (34) and RBIs (120) in 1941, and leading in walks in 1938 (119) and 1939 (110).

He immediately made the Dodgers better and led them to the NL pennant in 1941, their first since 1920.

While playing for the Dodgers, he developed a real hatred for the Giants. This was during an era that featured a lot of dirty play, such as the sharpening of spikes and stepping on first basemen. The Giants targeted Camilli often because he was the best player on the Dodgers.

When the Dodgers traded him to the Giants in July 1943, he refused to report to his new team, instead going home and spending the rest of the season on his ranch. “I hated the Giants,” Camilli told the New York Times. “This was real serious; this was no put-on stuff. Their fans hated us, and our fans hated them. I said nuts to them, and I quit.”

5. Wes Parker (1964-72, .267/.351/.375, 111 OPS+, 6 Gold Gloves)

Many consider Parker to be the best fielding first baseman in history. He’s certainly the best one in Dodgers history.

In 2007 he was voted by fans as the best defensive first baseman since the Gold Glove award was established in 1957 and was named to the all-time Gold Glove team. He is the only member of that team not in the Hall of Fame. He never even appeared on the ballot since he played only nine seasons, leaving him one short of the 10 needed for eligibility.

His numbers on offense are also better than they appear because he played in one of the greatest pitchers’ eras in baseball history. He drove in 111 runs in 1970 despite hitting only 10 homers. He led the league that season with 47 doubles and also hit .319. Parker has been criminally underrated by many because of the era he played in and the fact he retired young, quitting after the 1972 season when he was only 32.

“By the time I retired, we had winning records, but we weren’t winning pennants,” Parker told biographer David Krell. “My friends were gone. Tommy Davis was traded. Maury Wills was released. Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Wally Moon, and Jim Gilliam had retired. The game was changing. It was becoming more individualized. Plus, I got tired of the traveling.”

6. Jake Daubert (1910-18, .305/.365/.395, 123 OPS+, 1 NL MVP award)

Daubert was named NL MVP in 1913 when he led the league with a .350 average. He also led the league with a .329 average in 1914 and led the Dodgers to their first World Series appearance in 1916.

Daubert is probably the second-best fielding first baseman in Dodgers history and was considered one of the best fielders of his era.

He was also ahead of his time, wanting players to form a union, which is one of the reasons the Dodgers traded him to Cincinnati after the 1918 season. He led the Reds to the World Series title in 1919 (the infamous Black Sox scandal Series).

He was still with the Reds in 1924 when he left to have an appendectomy. He died one week after the operation.

7. Adrián González (2012-17, .280/.339/.454, 119 OPS+, 1-time All Star, 1 Gold Glove

González was acquired on Aug. 25, 2012, along with Josh Beckett, Nick Punto and Carl Crawford from the Boston Red Sox for James Loney, Iván DeJesús Jr., Allen Webster, Jerry Sands and Rubby De La Rosa. In his first at-bat with the Dodgers that same day, he hit a three-run home run against the Miami Marlins, which was apropos because he was one of the Dodgers’ best clutch hitters for four seasons.

In his final at-bat as a Dodger, González homered, making him the rare player who has homered in his first and last at-bat with a team. He was traded after the 2017 season along with Charlie Culberson, Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy to Atlanta for Matt Kemp.

González was a very popular Dodger who led the majors in RBIs in 2014 with 116. He was the heart of the Dodger offense for several seasons until age, injuries and the infield shift all seemed to catch up to him at the same time.

8. Eric Karros (1991-2002, .268/.325/.454, 109 OPS+, Rookie of the Year)

The Dodgers finished 63-99 in 1992, their worst season since moving to L.A., and the biggest bright spot to the season was Karros, who in 149 games hit 30 doubles, 20 homers and was named NL Rookie of the Year.

Over the next six seasons, Karros seldom drew the headlines on a team that had Mike Piazza and Raul Mondesi, but you knew what you were going to get from him every season: Around 145 games played, a batting average around .270, 25 homers, 25 doubles and 100 RBIs. One of the secrets to having a good team over a long period of time is finding guys who can produce consistently. Karros was that for the Dodgers.

He still holds the L.A. record for most career homers, and you can probably win a few bets with that knowledge.

He was also one of the slowest Dodgers in history. And he had a fielding quirk at first base. When there were two outs and he took a throw from another infielder, he pulled his foot off the bag and started running toward the dugout at almost the same exact second he caught the ball, even before the ump could make a call. I’m convinced he stole a few outs for the Dodgers during his career by doing this. The ump would see him running full speed off the field and on a call that could go either way, say “Well, I guess he was out then.”

9. Jack Fournier (1923-26, .337/.421/.552, 157 OPS+)

One of the best hitters the Dodgers have ever had, Fournier led the NL in homers in 1924 with 27 and drove in 130 runs in 1925.

If you are just going by offensive numbers, then Fournier should be in the top three. However, Fournier was really bad defensively. He was born about 50 years too soon to be a designated hitter.

For what it’s worth, in his “Historical Baseball Abstract,” Bill James has Fournier listed as the 35th-greatest first baseman of all time, just behind Camilli (29th), Hodges (30th) and Garvey (31st). That, of course, counts their time with other teams as well.

Fournier has ties to Los Angeles: He played for the Los Angeles Angels minor league team for three seasons and he also coached UCLA’s baseball team from 1934 to 1936.

10. Tim Jordan (1906-10, .263/.356/.384, 139 OPS+)

Only one Dodger has led the National League in home runs twice, and it’s not Duke Snider or Mike Piazza. It’s Jordan, who led the NL in 1906 and 1908 with 12 home runs, which was a lot in the dead-ball era.

Jordan got the Dodgers’ first base job in an unusual way. Acquired from Baltimore before the 1906 season, he was set to become the backup to regular first baseman Don Gessler. On April 18, a devastating earthquake hit San Francisco, and several major league teams held benefit exhibition games, with proceeds going to relief help. Jordan started the game held in Brooklyn, went three for three with a double, and manager Patsy Donovan decided to make him the starter.

Jordan was one of the best power hitters in the league, and he was fast. Four of his 12 homers in 1906 were inside-the-park homers. It also helped that ballparks back then were much more spacious. The wall in center field at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park was 515 feet away.

Jordan held out for more money after the 1909 season, but Brooklyn had Jake Daubert (sixth on this list) and were in no hurry to give Jordan more money. He hurt his knee and finally reported, but his knee injury pretty much ended his career in the majors. He was released in May, and played in the minors until 1920. He worked as a security guard, opened his own restaurant, and died in 1949 at the age of 70.

The next five: Dan Brouthers, Del Bissonette, James Loney, Eddie Murray, Greg Brock.

The readers’ top 10

1,352 ballots were sent in. First place received 12 points, second place nine, all the way down to one point for 10th place. Here are your choices:

1. Gil Hodges, 825 first-place votes, 14,475 points

2. Freddie Freeman, 360 first-place votes, 11,625 points

3. Steve Garvey, 147 first-place votes, 11,483 points

4. Eric Karros, 13 first-place votes, 8,471 points

5. Wes Parker, 7,402 points

6. Adrián González, 5,802 points

7. Dolph Camilli, 4,433 points

8. Eddie Murray, 3,123 points

9. Jake Daubert, 1,845 points

10. James Loney, 1,462 points

The next five: Nomar Garciaparra, Jack Fournier, Albert Pujols, Norm Larker, Greg Brock.

Top 10 second basemen

Who are your top 10 Dodgers first basemen of all time (including Brooklyn)? Email your list to [email protected] and let me know.

Many of you have asked for a list of players to consider for each position. Here are the strongest second baseman candidates, in alphabetical order.

Hub Collins, Álex Cora, Tony Cuccinello, George Cutshaw, Tom Daly, Delino DeShields, Mark Ellis, Jim Gilliam, Mark Grudzielanek, Billy Herman, Orlando Hudson, Jon Hummel, Jim Lefebvre, Howie Kendrick, Jeff Kent, Pete Kilduff, Lee Lacy, Davey Lopes, Gavin Lux, Bill McLellan, Charlie Neal, Willie Randolph, Jody Reed, Jackie Robinson, Juan Samuel, Steve Sax, Ted Sizemore, Eddie Stanky, Chase Utley, John Ward, Eric Young.

A reminder that players are listed at the position in which they played the most games for the Dodgers, which is why Gilliam and Robinson are listed here and not at other positions they played.

And finally

Gil Hodges and Ernie Banks compete on “Home Run Derby.” Watch and listen here.

Until next time…

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

There’s a line in Eric Coomer’s defamation lawsuit against Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, that strikes me as the perfect description of what happens when influential partisans belch lies about innocent people in these insanely charged political times:

“The real world consequences for the subjects of those lies,” says the lawsuit, “have been devastating.”

Indeed.

Think of Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, whose lives were destroyed when Rudy Giuliani, once President Trump’s top campaign lawyer, claimed the pair had rigged the 2020 election outcome in their state. Giuliani even invented a blatantly racist story about the women passing drugs to each other at their Fulton County polling place. Trump amplified the claims. The two women received death threats, were loath to leave home even for groceries and had to go into hiding. I will never forget how sad and broken they seemed during their testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Happily, Freeman and Moss won a $148-million settlement from Giuliani, leading the former New York mayor to unsuccessfully sue for bankruptcy in an effort to dodge his obligation. Now stripped of his license to practice law in New York, Giuliani has fallen so far he’s not even a punchline on late night TV anymore.

Just like Freeman and Moss, Coomer, the former director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, was subjected to a torrent of false claims about election rigging by Lindell and other right-wing conspiracy theorists and media outlets. Like Freeman and Moss, he was terrorized and driven into hiding.

He left his job, moved to a new location, placed guns around the house he borrowed from a friend, experienced depression and panic attacks, and believes he will not be able to return to his profession.

“People were essentially taking bets on how my brother’s corpse would be found and which nefarious shadow group would be behind his death,” Coomer’s brother told the New York Times in 2021. “He would be executed by the state or he would be found with a falsified suicide note and two gunshots in the back of his head.”

Coomer, like others, became collateral damage in the misbegotten MAGA campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Fox News hosts, including Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, completely lost their minds, and the company allowed its highest-profile stars to spew lie after lie about the election in general and Dominion Voting Systems in particular, knowing full well (as News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath) that Dominion was blameless and that Joe Biden had won fair and square.

That unsavory chapter ended up costing Fox $787.5 million in a settlement to Dominion, which allowed the right-wing network to avert a trial.

Coomer, who has filed lawsuits against Giuliani and several others who spread lies about him, now gets his day in court against Lindell. The defamation trial, which began Monday, is expected to last through the end of this week. (Coomer settled suits against conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell; Newsmax; One America News Network, or OAN; and an OAN correspondent. His suit against Guiliani is pending.)

The false claims against Coomer were dreamed up by a conservative Colorado podcaster, Joseph Oltmann, who told listeners that he had infiltrated an “Antifa conference call” in which “Eric, the Dominion guy” claimed to have rigged the election against Trump. (Coomer’s defamation suit against Oltmann is also pending.)

“Oltmann,” says Coomer’s lawsuit, “claimed this supposed call happened on some unspecified date months before the election, but that he did not think to take action until after the election was called for President Biden …. Oltmann’s story is inherently implausible.”

Not to mention, outlandish and preposterous.

In his campaign against Coomer, Oltmann posted a photo of the Dominion executive’s home on his social media and urged his followers to “blow this sh— up. Share, put his name everywhere. No rest for this sh—bag … Eric we are watching you.”

Lindell, who seems never to have come across a right-wing conspiracy theory he couldn’t embrace, picked up on Oltmann’s fantasies about Coomer and began spreading them far and wide — in interviews, on his website, in social media, etc.

On his FrankSpeech media platform, Lindell addressed Coomer directly: “You are disgusting and you are treasonous. You are a traitor to the United States of America.” (Classic case of projection, imho.)

Lindell could have settled as so many others have done. Instead, he has chosen to fight on, hawking pillows, sheets and slippers to pay his legal bills as he goes. His attorney said that because he believed what he was saying was true, it’s not defamation. “It’s just words. All Mike Lindell did was talk,” Lindell’s attorney told the jury. “Mike believed that he was telling the truth.”

Before the trial, Lindell stood on the federal courthouse steps in Denver and proclaimed that his only goal in all this was to ban electronic voting machines and replace them with paper ballots.

“If we can get there,” he said, “I would sacrifice everything.”

If Coomer wins his defamation case against Lindell — and I really hope he does — Lindell will have lost a lot and gained very little. First, the case has nothing to do with the validity of voting machines. Second, an estimated 98% of American voters already cast ballots that leave a paper trail because that’s one way voting machines record votes.

But Lindell, like so many of his MAGA compatriots, still won’t let reality stand in the way of Trump’s Big Lie.

@rabcarian.bsky.social Threads: @rabcarian

Tears flowed from Freddie Freeman as he sat in a Dodger Stadium interview room Aug. 5 and described the arduous recovery his 3-year-old son Max was making from a rare neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves.

Max had returned home from a five-night stay at Children’s Hospital Orange County, and Freeman was back in the Dodgers lineup after missing eight games to be with his family during the ordeal.

Two months later, the Dodgers were playing host to the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series. A police officer approached Freeman’s wife, Chelsea, to ask how Max was doing.

A photograph of Officer Samuel Riveros provided by the Baldwin Police Department.

(Baldwin Police Department.)

The officer, Samuel Riveros of the Baldwin Park Police Dept., smiled and handed her a police patch to give to Max.

Riveros was killed Saturday in Baldwin Park when a gunman fatally shot him in the head while Riveros was rushing to the aid of a fellow officer who also had been shot, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told The Times.

Chelsea Freeman related meeting Riveros on her Instagram Stories and offered her family’s condolences.

“Our hearts are heavy hearing of his passing this week,” she posted. “We met during the Dodgers/Mets playoffs. He came up to me, asked how my son Max was doing and handed me his police patch to give to him.

“A small gesture that meant so much.”

Freddie Freeman was a World Series hero for the Dodgers in 2024, hitting a walk-off grand slam to win Game 1 against the New York Yankees. He is off to a hot start in 2025, currently leading the NL with a .368 batting average.

Riveros had been a Baldwin Park officer since 2016, joined the agency’s SWAT team in 2019, and had recently become a field training officer, which in a statement the agency called a “testament to his leadership and mentorship.”

Riveros was known for his devotion to the Dodgers, even traveling to the stadiums of opposing teams to watch them play, according to Baldwin Park Police Chief Robert A. López.

“Officer Riveros gave his life in service to others, a profound testament to his unwavering dedication to duty and selfless courage,” the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept. wrote in a statement. “His loss is profoundly felt — not only by his family and colleagues, but by the entire Baldwin Park community and law enforcement family.”

Eduardo Roberto Medina-Berumen, 22, was arrested on suspicion of murder and is being held in lieu of $4 million bail, according to the Sheriff’s Department. He lives with his mother at the Baldwin Park address on Filhurst Avenue, where gunfire erupted Saturday night, a source said.

“This tragic shooting is a sobering reminder of the danger our first responders face when they answer the call,” Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said in a statement.