The Chicago Cubs’ Kyle Tucker runs the bases after hitting a solo home run during the seventh inning of Game 4 of their NLDS against the Milwaukee Brewers.
(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)
The most obvious area of need for next year’s Dodgers will be in the outfield.
Andy Pages will be back, trying to build upon his 27-homer campaign in 2025. Teoscar Hernández will enter the second of his three-year contract, trying to rebound from his injury-plagued struggles this past summer.
But the third spot remains wide open, with Michael Conforto hitting free agency after his dismal performance on a one-year, $17 million deal this past year, and Alex Call having been used in more of a depth role after his arrival of this year’s trade deadline.
Internally, the Dodgers don’t have an immediate plug-and-play option, as top prospects Josue De Paula, Zyhir Hope, Eduardo Quintero and Mike Sirota remain a ways away from the majors.
Thus, don’t be surprised to see the Dodgers linked with big names on either the free-agent or trade market this winter, starting with top free-agent prize Kyle Tucker.
Since the summer, industry speculation has swirled about the Dodgers’ expected pursuit of Tucker this offseason. The four-time All-Star did not finish 2025 well while nursing a couple injuries, but remains one of the premier left-handed bats in the sport, and could command upward of $400-$500 million on a long-term deal — a hefty price tag, but certainly not one beyond the Dodgers’ capabilities.
Free agency will include other notable outfield options. Cody Bellinger is hitting the open market, though a reunion with the Dodgers has always seemed like a long shot. Harrison Bader and Trent Grisham could provide more glove-first alternatives, and have been linked with the Dodgers in the past.
Then there are potential trade candidates, from left fielder Steven Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians to utilityman Brendan Donovan of the St. Louis Cardinals, also players the Dodgers have inquired about in the past.
The Dodgers could construct their 2026 roster in other ways, thanks to the versatility Tommy Edman provides in center field. But another outfield addition remains their most logical priority this winter. And there will be no shortage of possibilities.
After taking his normal round of infield grounders during the Dodgers’ off-day workout Sunday, Kiké Hernández jogged to center field and spent a noticeable amount of time fielding fly balls there.
After using the same nine players in their starting lineup in six straight games since the start of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers have been considering a change for Monday — one that could drop struggling second-year slugger Andy Pages to the bench.
While the Dodgers’ overall offense has been inconsistent this postseason, Pages has endured the most glaring slump. He has collected just four hits in 43 at-bats, registering a .093 average. He has 11 strikeouts, no walks, and only one extra-base knock, providing little pop or spark from the No. 9 spot.
Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged before Game 2 that he was mulling whether to keep Pages in the lineup. And though the 24-year-old outfielder, who had 27 home runs and 86 RBIs in the regular season, had a hit and run scored on Saturday, Roberts reiterated Sunday that making a move with Pages was “still on the table” and “front of mind.”
“Just trying to figure out where he’s at mentally, physically,” Roberts said. “The performance hasn’t been there. So thinking of other options, yeah.”
One reason the Dodgers have stuck with Pages is because of their limited defensive alternatives — including, first and foremost, utilityman Tommy Edman being restricted to only second base this October because of a lingering ankle injury.
Edman, who split time last postseason between center field and shortstop, did say this weekend that his ankle was feeling better (even though he didn’t close the door on potentially needing surgery this offseason). But Roberts noted that Edman “hasn’t taken a fly ball out there in a month,” casting continued doubt over his ability to play anywhere else.
Without Edman, Hernández is the only other true center-field option for the Dodgers to use in their starting lineup, having also played there during the team’s World Series run last year. This postseason, Hernández has been a fixture in left (while also mixing in at third base). But if he were to slide to center field for Game 3, it could open left field for someone like Alex Call.
Call, a trade deadline acquisition who was a part-time player down the stretch in the regular season, does not represent as much of a power threat as Pages, but is a better contact hitter with more on-base ability.
Of course, the Dodgers’ offensive inconsistencies have gone beyond Pages.
They have not topped five runs in a game since the wild-card round. They have hit just .216 as a team since the start of the division series. Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman are still batting under .225 in the playoffs. Mookie Betts is batting .136 since the start of the NLCS.
During their Game 2 win, Roberts felt the club missed a lot of hittable pitches against Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, before Will Smith and Max Muncy finally broke through with home runs in the seventh.
That, Roberts felt, was a sign his lineup was “a little bit in between” in its approach, squandering opportunities to do damage against fastballs over the plate while also trying to protect against breaking stuff out of the zone.
“They have made good pitches, but we have missed pitches as well,” Roberts said. “I do think that coming home, I feel that we’re back into a little bit of a rhythm offensively.”
The Phillies had scored three runs off Shohei Ohtani in the bottom of the second. Citizens Bank Park was shaking on the scale of a small earthquake. And the Dodgers’ offense was doing nothing against Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez.
In the opening contest of a heavyweight series, the defending champions were down.
But, in their typically resilient fashion, far from out.
In a come-from-behind, statement-sending 5-3 win, the Dodgers did again what carried them a championship last October.
They shrugged off the early adversity, with Ohtani conceding no further damage over a six-inning start, finishing his postseason pitching debut with nine strikeouts and four monumental scoreless innings.
Their lineup chipped away at the deficit, knocking Phillies ace and Cy Young Award candidate Sánchez out of the game on Kiké Hernández’s two-out, two-run double in the sixth.
Then, they landed the actual knockout blow, with Teoscar Hernández flipping the game — and the feel of this best-of-five series — with a two-out, three-run, stadium-silencing home run in the seventh.
Game 2 will be back here in South Philadelphia on Monday night. And the Dodgers will go into it with, given the way Saturday started, an unexpected 1-0 series lead.
It could not have started worse for the Dodgers.
Sánchez was carving them up with wicked sinkers and fall-off-the-table changeups. Ohtani, meanwhile, ran into early trouble in the bottom of the second.
The inning started with a walk to Alec Bohm, when Ohtani missed on a full-count fastball. That was followed by a single from Brandon Marsh, who got a down-the-middle fastball in a 2-and-2 count and shot a base hit to center.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani delivers during the third inning against the Phillies on Saturday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
As Ohtani tried to settle down, a chorus of taunting chants — Sho-Hei! Sho-Hei! — came raining down.
A crowd of 45,777 was ready to explode.
Then, J.T. Realmuto gave them the chance.
After missing with a first-pitch slider to Realmuto, Ohtani left a 100.2-mph heater in the dead heart of the zone. The location rendered the velocity irrelevant. Realmuto barreled it up, sent a line drive screaming into right-center, then chugged all the way to third after the ball got past Teoscar Hernández in the gap.
A fly ball two batters later — which worked for a sacrifice fly thanks to Hernández’s inability to cut the ball off — made it 3-0.
In the moment (and with the way Sánchez was pitching early), the lead felt almost insurmountable.
The Dodgers, however, didn’t wilt.
The turnaround began with Ohtani, who followed Realmuto’s triple by retiring the next 10 he faced. His only other trouble came in the fifth, when the bottom two hitters in the Phillies’ order reached base with one out. But even then, Ohtani buckled down, getting Trea Turner to line out and Kyle Schwarber to swing through a curveball that ended the inning.
Eventually, the Dodgers’ offense found life too.
With two outs in the sixth, and Sánchez having given up only two hits all night, Freddie Freeman sparked a rally with a five-pitch walk. Tommy Edman took a sinker the other way to put two aboard.
That brought up Kiké Hernández, who had already begun reprising his role of October hero with four hits in the team’s wild-card series sweep of the Cincinnati Reds.
On cue, Hernández came up clutch again, jumping on a slider from Sánchez that caught a little too much plate and roping it down the left-field line for a two-run double — the latter run coming when Edman ran through a stop sign at third base.
Just like that, Sánchez was knocked out of the game. What had been a raucous crowd earlier in the night suddenly grew tense.
That dread only grew in the next-half inning, when Ohtani completed his start with a 1-2-3 bottom of the sixth.
Then, in the seventh, the Dodgers made the comeback complete — getting the biggest swing of the night from another postseason savior, Teoscar Hernández.
Teoscar Hernández celebrates after hitting a three-run home run in the seventh inning for the Dodgers against the Phillies on Saturday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
After Andy Pages led off the inning with a single and Will Smith (who entered the game in the fifth inning for his first appearance of this postseason after missing the wild card round with a fractured hand) was hit by a pitch from David Robertson, the Phillies summoned top left-handed reliever Matt Strahm to face Ohtani.
As he did in his prior three at-bats, Ohtani struck out, taking a fastball down the middle, punching out in four-consecutive at-bats in a game for only the second time in his MLB career.
But by getting Strahm on the mound, the Dodgers had favorable right-on-left matchups behind him. Mookie Betts couldn’t take advantage, popping out to third for the second out of the inning. Hernández, on the other hand, didn’t miss.
On an elevated fastball in a 1-and-0 count, Hernández launched a towering fly ball to the right-center field gap. The Phillies outfield went back on it. But the ball kept carrying into the stands. The ballpark went silent. Hernández practically glided around the bases.
The drama didn’t end there.
Projected Game 4 starter Tyler Glasnow came on in relief in the seventh, when he retired the side on a double-play grounder, then returned for the eighth, when he loaded the bases on a single and two walks. That threat was extinguished by left-hander Alex Vesia, who induced a harmless fly ball from pinch-hitter Edmundo Sosa to quiet a stirring crowd once again.
The ninth inning then belonged to Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old converted rookie starter who has ascended to closing duties less than two weeks after returning from a months-long shoulder injury. He picked up the save in straightforward fashion, retiring the side in order for his first career save.
SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers have gotten back to the basics this week, preaching the importance of the little things in daily hitters’ meetings, in-game dugout conversations and even simulated drills in early batting practice sessions.
After a 2 ½ month slump over the second half of the season, they were searching for a more dependable style of offense. Like simplifying their approach at the plate. Shortening up swings and using the big part of the field with two strikes. Capitalizing on situational opportunities with runners on base. And making sure that, amid a resurgence from their rotation, they were finding ways to more consistently manufacture runs.
This weekend in San Francisco, they finally enjoyed the fruits of those labors, blowing out the Giants 10-2 on Sunday to win a three-game series and remain 2 ½ games up in the National League West standings.
“Quality of at-bat, winning pitches, using the whole field, not punching [out] — I think all those things, you know it’s in there,” manager Dave Roberts said, after the Dodgers racked up 18 hits, worked six walks and scored in six of their nine trips to the plate.
“We’ve seen it. Maybe not with the consistency we would’ve liked. But when you’re facing really good arms, to see us do what we did… it’s certainly encouraging.”
Indeed, coming off a 13-run outburst Saturday night, the Dodgers picked up right where they left off at Oracle Park on Sunday afternoon, slowly sucking the life out of a recently resurgent Giants team trying to sneak into the playoffs.
Teoscar Hernández continued a recent surge with a team-high four hits, making him 11 for his last 24. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Michael Conforto each had three knocks, with Conforto’s day getting his batting average back to .200. As a team, the Dodgers combined for a whopping 16 singles while forcing 207 pitches from the Giants’ staff of arms. And most amazing, they did it with Shohei Ohtani reaching base only once, and that didn’t even happen until his sixth at-bat in the top of the ninth.
“It’s quality at-bats, quality outs, moving guys over, getting sac flies, bringing defenses in if you move them over,” Freeman said. “It creates more traffic, more things that are able to happen on the baseball field. Just think the quality of at-bats have been really good over the last week.”
The onslaught started in the second inning, when two walks and a Freeman single loaded the bases, setting up Kiké Hernández for a sacrifice fly. It continued in the third, when a pair of productive outs (plus a bobbled ground ball from San Francisco third baseman Matt Chapman) turned singles from Betts and Teoscar Hernández into another hard-earned run.
Then, in the fifth, it all culminated in a four-run rally, one that knocked Giants starter Robbie Ray out of the game, and turned a low-scoring affair into a series rubber-match rout.
Freeman lined a double to right field, after Betts walked and Teoscar Hernández again singled. Conforto came off the bench for a two-run, pinch-hit, bases-loaded single that he managed to slap past a drawn-in infield. A run-scoring balk from reliever Joel Peguero added to the deluge, which included a pair of walks from Tommy Edman and Ben Rortvedt.
In the sixth, what was already a 6-1 lead was stretched a little further, with Miguel Rojas’ two-run single — with the bases loaded once more — putting the Dodgers’ sixth win in seven on ice. The Dodgers nonetheless added more runs in both the eighth and ninth, giving them their first back-to-back double-digit run totals since all the way back at the end of April.
The Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow pitched into the seventh inning on Sunday to pick up his second win in as many starts.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
“It’s definitely the kind of baseball we want to be playing down the stretch and for the rest of the season,” Conforto said. “I think we’re doing a lot of the little things right. That’s kind of been the theme as we finish up here.”
It all represented a new look from the Dodgers’ star-studded offense, with only one of their 23 runs the last two days requiring a ball to go over the fence.
For much of the year, the team has been overly reliant on home runs, scoring via the long ball at the fifth-highest percentage in the majors (45%) at the end of play Friday. During their second-half slide, that dynamic had prevented them from working around injuries and mechanical flaws from much of the lineup, or finding alternative ways to build big innings and hang crooked numbers.
Hence, their recent re-emphasis on more dependable fundamentals — allowing them to paper-cut an opposing pitching staff to death in a way that is typically for success in October.
“When you can be able to do it, and know you can do it, as we’re leading up to that point [of the playoffs], it definitely is a big confidence booster,” Freeman said. “We don’t have to rely on the two-run, three-run home run all the time. I think that was just big. The last week, [this is] what we’ve been trying to do. And we’ve been able to actually do it in the games.”
The offense wasn’t the only positive sign Sunday.
On the mound, Tyler Glasnow was able to settle down after looking frustrated with his command early, when he walked four batters (and hit another) in his first three innings. At a point he has so often spiraled in his up-and-down Dodgers tenure, the right-hander instead found a rhythm by retiring 10 in a row, managing to pitch into the seventh in a 6 ⅔ inning, one-run outing.
“It’s encouraging,” said Glasnow, who has a 3.06 ERA on the season and a 2.66 mark since returning from a shoulder injury in July “Since I got back from the IL, it’s been easier to kind of put [those kind of struggles] out of my head and go compete. If my stuff sucks, it’s kind of whatever. Just compete, try to get in the zone, get some weak contact. It’s helpful.”
It led to the kind of performance the Dodgers are banking on from their rotation in the playoffs. This is still a team that, at its core, will have to be carried by its pitching.
The only way that strength will matter, however, is if the lineup can find some long-awaited consistency. This weekend, signs of it finally arrived. Everything the Dodgers had been preaching at last came to fruition.
“As we come down to the end [of the season, we’re] just kind of recognizing what it is that really puts us in the right spot to win games,” Conforto said. “It’s go time now, and we got to do all those things if we want to get to where we want to get to.”
