Slumping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PITTSBURGH — It was a pivotal moment, in a pivotal game, in what’s become a pivotal week for the Dodgers in the National League West standings.

Which, rather predictably given their recently floundering form, meant they found a new way to mess it all up.

In the top of the second inning on Wednesday night at PNC Park, the Dodgers appeared to be in optimal position.

Earlier in the day, the second-place San Diego Padres had been swept by the woebegone Baltimore Orioles, opening the door for the Dodgers to extend their 2½-game lead in the division. And despite trailing by a run in their own showdown against a last-place team, the Dodgers had the Pittsburgh Pirates on the ropes, loading the bases with no outs for a chance to take the lead.

The task, at that point, was simple.

Get the ball in play. Manufacture some early scoring. And, at the very least, set a positive tone for a night in which the NL West lead could grow.

“That’s a situation where you get shorter with your swing, use the big part of the field and you’ve got to drive in a run,” manager Dave Roberts said.

That approach, however, never materialized.

Over the rest of an inexplicable 3-0 loss to the Pirates, what happened next would instead loom large.

First, second-year outfielder Andy Pages came up, worked another full count against Pittsburgh starter Braxton Ashcraft … then went down swinging chasing a slider that would’ve been ball four.

Next, rookie infielder Alex Freeland again ran the count full, got an elevated slider up in the zone to hit … but kept the bat on his shoulder as the umpire rung him up for a called third strike.

A Kiké Hernández flyout would ultimately end the inning. But it was the first two at-bats that had Roberts fuming afterward.

“You never want to say that one inning kind of win or loses a game,” Roberts said. “But the second inning, bases loaded, nobody out — I just felt that we had two bad at-bats and didn’t come away with anything.”

“That flipped the game,” Roberts later added. “It flipped the momentum.”

Indeed, on a night the Dodgers (78-61) failed to score any of their 11 baserunners or record a hit in seven at-bats with men in scoring position, no sequence was more frustrating than their second-inning fizzle.

It was the latest epitome of the team failing to produce in a clutch situation. Another example of their roster flunking some basic fundamentals.

“We’ve got to collectively get all of us on board understanding the magnitude of each at-bat, each situation,” Roberts bemoaned from his office postgame. “I sound repetitive [about how] it’s got to get better. But I do believe that having the right approach, the right mindset, the right urgency in a particular at-bat lends itself to better results.”

This has been a recurring theme for the Dodgers during the second half of the season; the kind of fine-margin miscues that have haunted them during a perplexing 22-29 stretch since July 4.

Sometimes, it’s their big-name superstars that falter. In other cases, it’s younger contributors like Pages and Freeland who fail to execute when required.

The only constant: Every time the Dodgers seem to be turning a corner, they find another way to trip themselves up.

“I do believe that the guys that we have in the room are capable of putting together consistent team at-bats of urgency from the first pitch on,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day — and I’m sure our players are echoing the same message — we just got to get it done.”

This week’s series at PNC Park (the fourth straight the Dodgers have dropped here over the last four years) has exemplified the club’s maddening current rut in other ways.

One night, they explode at the plate for seven runs … only for their pitching staff to give up nine as it did in Tuesday’s loss.

The next, they piece together a decent pitching effort (even after Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his scheduled start because of an illness) … only for the offense to squander every single opportunity they had to take control of the contest (and lose catcher Will Smith along the way to a bruised hand he suffered on an errant foul ball, though postgame X-rays came back negative).

“We haven’t really put it together at all for a while now,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We need to start playing better.”

On Wednesday, the Pirates jumped in front in the first inning, when Bryan Reynolds homered in the 12th pitch of his at-bat off spot starter Emmet Sheehan. Andrew McCutchen doubled the lead in the second, adding to the sting of the Dodgers’ squandered bases-loaded opportunity with a line-drive home run in the game’s very next at-bat.

After that, “we just really couldn’t put anything else together,” Roberts said.

Or, more precisely, they failed to finish any other chances off.

The Dodgers loaded the bases again with two out in the third, before Alex Call hit a dribbler up the first-base line to retire the side.

The team had two runners aboard again in the fifth and seventh, but continued to come up empty each and every time.

“We had guys on, we just didn’t get the hit,” said Freeman, who rolled into a fifth-inning double-play to extinguish that threat. “Frustrating night.”

The only saving grace right now is that the Padres (who have lost four in a row while dealing with a string of deflating injuries) haven’t made up ground against them.

“I’m very much aware of that,” Roberts said. “But they’re feeling the same thing we are. We’ve got to control what we can control. And we’re certainly not.”

A different approach in Wednesday’s second inning might have changed all that. Instead, it served as another regrettable failure, turning a potentially pivotal chance to stretch the division lead into one of the season’s most dispiriting losses.

Smith update

Smith exited Wednesday’s game after the second inning, when a foul tip bounced off the dirt and hit his right throwing hand as it was hanging behind his right thigh.

Because Smith’s X-rays came back negative, Roberts said the club was hopeful he could avoid the injured list. However, given the swelling and soreness he was feeling postgame, the team was still planning to call up a third catcher on Thursday for more roster insurance.