LOS ANGELES — Two weeks ago, when the Dodgers pulled off the blockbuster trade the rest of the league feared was coming and landed Tarik Skubal from the Tigers, the reaction from the wider baseball world was one of doom and gloom. The rich got richer, and baseball’s new version of the Evil Empire was even more equipped to reign supreme over the rest of the league.
But even the Death Star had a fatal flaw. And these days, the Dodgers are full of them.
Sunday’s mistake-prone 6–2 defeat to the Brewers capped a weekend to forget for the two-time defending champions. The lineup managed just six hits. Los Angeles made two errors that led to three unearned runs, not including a fly ball in the ninth inning that Kyle Tucker misplayed, which led to two insurance runs for Milwaukee. Skubal, making his third start for his new team, labored under the hot sun, though on the whole was a rare bright spot, managing to get through six innings while allowing just two runs (one earned) on a season-high 109 pitches.
Kyle Tucker is being booed by the Dodger Stadium crowd on Sunday.
— Noah Camras (@noahcamras) August 16, 2026
He's 0-for-19 on this homestand.
He just dropped this ball in right field.
It's been a miserable season for the Dodgers' $240 million man. pic.twitter.com/GNUeq79GWx
Still, it wasn’t enough to paper over the rest of the team’s shortcomings. The Dodgers dropped three of four games to Milwaukee to fall three games off the National League lead, losing the season series between the two sides in the process.
The root of the once-seemingly invincible Dodgers’ problems? A little bit of everything.
Punchless lineup
Let’s start with the offense, which has been in a funk dating back to before the All-Star break. For the series, Dodgers hitters went 23-for-127 (.181) against a slew of highly capable Brewers pitchers, who logged 35 strikeouts compared to just eight walks.
Over a long weekend with plenty to critique, this was manager Dave Roberts’s primary concern after Sunday’s defeat.
“This has been cumulative. It’s been a long time since we’ve been consistent offensively. … I just don’t see a consistent plan of attack, one through nine,” Roberts said. “The results are hard, hitting is hard, but I do think that fighting and winning pitches, spoiling pitches, that’s [about] care and hunger.”
Hitting, like all aspects of baseball, comes in waves. The best in the sport fail seven out of 10 times, the adage goes, and even the very best fall well short of that mark from time to time over the course of a six-month season. But the team’s current struggles, Roberts asserted, go well beyond normal ebbs and flows. This is a matter of process and attention to detail, of “valuing every single pitch” and understanding how chasing the first pitch of an at-bat and being in an 0–1 hole vs. being ahead 1–0 can significantly swing the odds in the other team’s favor.
For too long, in Roberts’s view, the Dodgers’ hitters have been consistently on the wrong side of that equation. And the numbers support his stance.
Since the start of July, Los Angeles ranks 23rd in runs scored per game (4.02), 22nd in wRC+ (91), 22nd in walk rate (8.0%) and 20th in on-base percentage (.308). A sweep of the lowly Royals earlier in the week gave some reprieve from the prolonged malaise. But tasked with facing the vaunted Brewers’ pitching staff, the Dodgers’ biggest stars were simply overmatched.
Tucker, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts—the team’s four highest-paid hitters who, combined, make more money ($153.5 million in AAV) than the entire Brewers roster ($142 million, per FanGraphs)—went 5-for-50 in the series. Both Tucker and Freeman were hitless over the four games. Tucker, after showing modest signs of finding a rhythm, is hitless in his last 23 plate appearances and is batting .188 since the All-Star break.
That the Dodgers still rank fourth on the season in runs scored despite this extended dry spell—and season-long slumps for Tucker and Betts, along with injuries to catchers Will Smith and Dalton Rushing—is a testament to the lineup’s depth. Still, it’s difficult to envision another deep playoff run without improved play from this group.
Late-inning issues
While Roberts focused Sunday’s postgame remarks on the rudderless offense, it was a different tune at the start of the series Thursday, when Edwin Díaz suffered a calamitous ninth inning to blow a save and balloon his ERA to 11.57 on the year. Asked afterward whether he would consider a change in the ninth inning, Roberts lamented a lack of viable options.
With a pair of relief pitchers (Diaz and Tanner Scott) whose contracts combine for over $150 million, that sounds like the definition of a champagne problem. Still, Roberts’s frustrations over his bullpen are based in reality—Dodgers relief pitchers rank 21st in ERA (4.51) since the beginning of July and have the league’s highest walk rate (12.6%). They’re also tied for the most blown saves (nine) during that span.
As the offense struggles to find its stride, blowout wins have been hard to come by, putting an added strain on an underperforming bullpen. With so much trending in the wrong direction, how can such an accomplished (and well-paid) group turn things around?
“That, I don’t know,” Roberts admitted Sunday. “It’s a long season, we’re certainly going through it right now as far as not playing our best baseball. I don’t know that answer right now.”
Help is on the way
If the playoffs started today, the Dodgers would be the National League’s No. 3 seed, and thus have to play a three-game series in the wild-card round. They did the same thing last October, so that’s far from being a cursed fate. But given all the dynasty talk that’s followed this team throughout the year, it’s an odd situation to envision given the lofty heights this roster is capable of reaching.
The blueprint for another magical October this season could look nearly identical to last year: high-octane starting pitching.
Adding Skubal to a pitching staff this star-studded made the Dodgers’ biggest edge over the rest of the playoff field even more stark. And while Skubal has been good, not great, in his first three outings, there’s little reason to doubt his ability to overwhelm opposing lineups when it matters most. And help is on the way as L.A.’s Rotation of Death takes its full form.
Blake Snell (you know, the other two-time Cy Young Award winner) returned from his three-month stint on the injured list on Monday, striking out 10 Royals over six dominant innings. Tyler Glasnow, out since early May with a back injury, is on a rehab assignment and could return within a week or so. Justin Wrobleski did land on the IL on Sunday, though Roberts said the team is not concerned the All-Star lefty’s absence will be a lengthy one.
And to top it all off, Ohtani—who hasn’t pitched since July 3—threw a bullpen session on Friday, inching closer to returning to the mound amid a season in which he owns a 1.79 ERA over 14 starts. Add in Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s steady, ace-level production, and the greatest advantage in the sport is almost fully operational.
That’s a future this team can dream on. The longer its current struggles persist, though, the more difficult it is to give the roster the benefit of the doubt that this current funk will eventually wilt away.
The Dodgers came into the season with targets on their backs, not just because of their status as back-to-back champions, but also the belief held by many fans that the way they conduct business is bad for baseball—a stance notably embraced by the league’s owners in their quest to finally institute a salary cap. That dynamic only intensified after getting Skubal, and so far, the team has not raised its play to the level of its reputation.
Of course, there is still time for baseball’s villains to regain their swagger. Until they do, though, the questions Roberts is struggling to find answers for will only get louder.
