The Los Angeles Dodgers were supposed to be baseball’s unstoppable superteam. Right now, they look anything but unstoppable.
Los Angeles has lost six straight games, dropping to 69-46 and just 3.0 games behind MLB-leading Milwaukee in the overall standings shown above. The Dodgers are also just 2-8 over their last 10 games, an almost unbelievable stretch considering how much talent is on this roster.
And that’s what makes this slump so strange.
Look at the numbers. Shohei Ohtani is hitting .297 with 26 home runs and a .954 OPS in the screenshots above. Freddie Freeman is batting .310. Max Muncy has 22 homers. Yoshinobu Yamamoto owns a 2.76 ERA, while Ohtani has been dominant on the mound with a 1.79 ERA through 14 starts.
This team has also added Tarik Skubal, arguably the biggest acquisition any contender made at the deadline.
Yet they’re losing.
Injuries certainly haven’t helped. Catcher Dalton Rushing suffered a UCL tear during the losing streak while Will Smith has also been dealing with a neck issue. The pitching staff has had health problems as well, including Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow.
Still, at some point, the excuses run out.
The Dodgers have scored an MLB-best-looking 584 runs in the standings shown above and have a +140 run differential, second only to Milwaukee’s +141. On paper, almost everything still screams World Series favorite.
But baseball isn’t played on paper.
Six consecutive losses don’t destroy a season, especially for a team this loaded. But after Los Angeles spent years assembling what looks like an All-Star roster, stretches like this are going to receive extra attention.
Dave Roberts said it himself: “We’ve lost six straight, we’ve got to flush it.”
The Dodgers probably aren’t broken.
But for the first time in a while, baseball’s supposed superteam is looking surprisingly vulnerable.
