News Dodgers Team Notes

[Los Angeles Dodgers]

Shades of Yamamoto’s Dodger debut in 9-1 loss to Brewers

Photo by Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Yamamoto left the first inning after giving up five runs on four hits and two walks on 41 pitches.

As if getting outscored by 23 runs over the weekend wasn’t bad enough for the Dodgers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto had the shortest start of his career as the Dodgers were nearly shut out against the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday, losing 9-1.

Shohei Ohtani entered Monday’s contest hitting just .100 over his last 34 plate appearances. He swung hard at an 0-1 offering from Freddy Peralta, but the ball dribbled down the third base line at 54 1⁄2 miles per hour, rolling fair past the bag for an infield single. Peralta left him stranded at first after inducing an inning-ending double play of Freddie Freeman.

Sal Frelick ambushed Yamamoto early for a leadoff double before William Contreras walked to put two men on base with nobody out. Yamamoto managed to retire the next two hitters he faced, and needed just one strike to complete a scoreless first inning. Andrew Vaughn, who was making his Brewers debut, caught up to a high slider above the strike zone, and clobbered it into the left field seats for his first Brewer home run, giving Milwaukee a three run lead.

Yamamoto found himself in an identical situation after allowing a single and a walk to Isaac Collins and Brice Turang. Yamamoto got Caleb Durbin to hit a soft ground ball to Mookie Betts which looked to end the inning, but his throw to first base was low and couldn’t be dug out by Freeman, allowing a run to score on the error. Andruw Monasterio blooped in a single down the right field line to cash in Milwaukee’s fifth run of the inning, chasing Yamamoto out of the game.

Similarly to Yamamoto’s Dodger debut in Seoul last season, Yamamoto gave up five runs in the first inning. This time around, he couldn’t complete a single inning of work as his pitch count ran up to 41 before being pulled. It was the first time in Yamamoto’s big league career that he failed to record a single strikeout.

Jack Dreyer immediately extinguished the flames to put an end to a nightmare bottom of the first inning. He retired all seven men he faced in order, adding a pair of strikeouts to his day. Lou Trivino kept the trend going by setting down the three hitters in order in the bottom of the fourth inning to make it 10 straight Brewers set down.

Will Klein came on in the fifth inning after suffering the loss in Sunday’s series finale against the Houston Astros. Klein once again loaded the bases after recording two outs, this time giving up a pair of runs on a Brice Turang single to extend the Milwaukee lead to seven.

The Dodgers on offense had no responses against Peralta, as the Brewers’ lone All-Star dazzled on the mound for six shutout innings, allowing five hits and a walk while striking out seven and securing his MLB-leading 10th win of the season. They had just one base runner advance to third base against Peralta while leaving five men on base.

The Dodgers were four outs away from being shutout by Milwaukee until pinch-hitter Esteury Ruiz grounded a ball that ricocheted off of reliever Aaron Ashby into right field to bring home Ohtani— who had his first multi-hit game since June 27— for the Dodgers’ lone run of the game.

Julian Fernández made his Dodger debut on Monday, his first big league appearance since 2021 with the Colorado Rockies. Fernandez was able to record the final six outs on the mound for the Dodgers, but gave up an opposite field two-run home run to Christian Yelich in the seventh inning to bring Milwaukee’s lead to nine.

The Dodgers now tie their longest losing streak of the season as they dropped their fourth in a row, with a run differential of -31 over those four losses.

Game particulars​

• Home runs— Andrew Vaughn (6), Christian Yelich (18)
• WP— Freddy Peralta (10-4): 6 IP, 5 hits, 0 runs, 1 walk, 7 strikeouts
• LP— Yoshinobu Yamamoto (8-7): 2⁄3 IP, 4 hits, 5 runs (3 earned), 2 walks, 0 strikeouts

Up next​

The Dodgers will look to snap their four-game losing streak and even the series against the Brewers on Tuesday (4:40 p.m. PT, SportsNet LA). Clayton Kershaw takes the mound for the 10th time this season against rookie flamethrower Jacob Misiorowski.

Source: https://www.truebluela.com/2025/7/7/24463420/dodgers-brewers-game-recap

 

[Los Angeles Dodgers]

Dodgers position player depth getting tested during skid

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Several Dodgers haven’t hit well for over a month, and some of them are hurt. They need both internal improvement and help from the trade deadline

Every team, no matter how good they are, at some point during the season will go through a stretch where they look totally flummoxed, as if baseball was foreign to them. The Dodgers are experiencing that now, having lost four straight games, with the bulk of them uncompetitive.

In the moment, everything feels so extreme, but that’s mostly because human memories are unreliable. For instance, the Dodgers ran through a similar stretch last year during the same time of the season, right before the All-Star break. First came a four-game losing streak, outscored 28-7 (this year’s four-game losing streak is more lopsided at 38-7, mostly due to Friday’s outlier vs. Houston).

If the Dodgers follow that path this week, they will literally run out of pitching this weekend, which last year included a nightmare trip to Detroit for everyday Yohan Ramírez. But it also gained a Brent Honeywell along the way.

Pitching problems have been obvious for the Dodgers since April, with a staff running at a shortage for over two months at this point, cycling through arms at a rapid rate, only some of them good. Tyler Glasnow’s return on Wednesday provides a semblance of hope in this regard.

But perhaps more pressing, at least this week, is the Dodgers sudden shortage on the position-player side. Max Muncy suffered a knee injury that looked so bad that his diagnosis of around six weeks out felt like a victory. In the last few days both Teoscar Hernández and Tommy Edman have been unavailable, and Kiké Hernández landed on the injured list Monday.

Injuries are to be expected from a position-player group that is all in their 30s except for Hyeseong Kim, Dalton Rushing, and the just-called up James Outman. The only other position player on the 40-man roster who isn’t active or on the injured list is catcher Hunter Feduccia. We’ve talked about the Dodgers’ lack of position-player depth since the offseason, and again in spring training. Now it’s providing a test.

On the season, the Dodgers offense has been strong, second in the sport averaging 5.45 runs per game and second with a 120 wRC+. Having the big three of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman helps sweep a lot of problems under the rug.

But since June 1, the Dodgers have been merely ordinary on offense, ninth in runs per game (4.74) and 13th in wRC+ (105). The big three has instead been the pretty good one, and a good chunk of regulars have been actively bad.

Since June 1, ranked by most plate appearances:

• Shohei Ohtani: 152 PA, .250/.358/.508, 137 wRC+
• Andy Pages: 135 PA, .310/.333/.548, 141 wRC+
• Mookie Betts: 134 PA, .242/.291/.371, 81 wRC+
• Freddie Freeman: 133 PA, 213/.278/.287, 59 wRC+
• Teoscar Hernández: 117 PA, .193/.239/.330, 57 wRC+
• Tommy Edman: 109 PA, .229/.312/.344, 87 wRC+
• Max Muncy (now out): 104 PA, .313/.442/.614, 193 wRC+
• Will Smith: 101 PA, .314/.396/.628, 180 wRC+
• Michael Conforto: 93 PA, .188/.258/.365, 74 wRC+
• Kiké Herneandez (now out): 59 PA, .109/.169/.200, 2 wRC+
• Hyeseong Kim: 57 PA, .264/.316/.358, 91 wRC+
• Dalton Rushing: 46 PA, .200/.304/.250, 64 wRC+
• Miguel Rojas: 41 PA, .270/.341/.568, 152 wRC+

The Dodgers problems on offense are threefold. They need their great players to be great, and not have Betts and Freeman hit like Cavan Biggio and Nick Ahmed. They also need Edman and Teoscar Hernández to be healthy and productive. But they also need more depth than currently available.

More help could come in the form of Alex Freeland, a switch-hitting shortstop and a top-100 prospect who has been playing third base in Triple-A since Muncy was hurt, and also alternated at the position earlier in the year when Kim would play shortstop.

But it’s also clear the Dodgers need to add to the position-player group at the trade deadline, which brings us to today’s question. What position players would you like to see the Dodgers acquire by this year’s trade deadline?

It’s reasonable to assume the Dodgers good and great players will play better than they are now. But it would be nice if they had a little help, too. But for the immediate future, this week is mostly about getting to the All-Star break, and hope that the doldrums don’t last for the rest of this week.

Source: https://www.truebluela.com/2025/7/8/24463851/dodgers-position-player-depth-losing-streak