After humbling set vs. O's, Dodgers believe their best baseball lies ahead

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers own the best run differential in the Majors (+133) and have a higher winning percentage (.628) than every club except the Braves. And yet, manager Dave Roberts feels that his team still has yet to play its best baseball.

The areas where the Dodgers need to be better were on full display in this weekend's three-game set against the Orioles, which concluded with a 12-1 defeat that sealed a series loss on Sunday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.

In the first two games of the weekend series, the Dodgers were able to remain competitive down to their final outs. But in Sunday's finale, the Dodgers put themselves in a hole too large to dig their way out of early in the game.

Here are three takeaways from the series loss:

Sheehan's struggles in focus

Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan was not sharp from the beginning, allowing five of the first six batters he faced to reach base. He was able to limit the first-inning damage to two runs, but the Orioles continued to tack on with solo homers in the second and third innings.

After Sheehan walked a pair of batters with one out in the fourth inning, he had already thrown 82 pitches. Roberts lifted him in favor of Jack Dreyer, who allowed both inherited runners to score. The six runs charged to Sheehan were a season high.

"I think just execution was really bad," Sheehan said. "At this point, my coaches, teammates, fans all deserve better than what I'm putting out there right now."

Sheehan has gone 3-5 with a 5.32 ERA in 14 starts, and while the quality of his stuff has generally been good, it has not translated to the results that he and the Dodgers need to see at this point in the season.

"I think right now, he's probably searching a little bit," Roberts said. "But he'll get a start this next one, and we'll see where it takes us."

Keeping a six-man rotation is a priority for the Dodgers, and they have only one other healthy starter on the 40-man roster, No. 6 prospect River Ryan, whom they are building up slowly in consideration of his recent injury history and career workload. But if Sheehan continues to trend in the wrong direction, perhaps L.A. could have him work out his issues in the Minors and see what Ryan has to offer at the big league level.

Disjointedness at the plate

The Dodgers' offense got to Orioles starter Brandon Young early on Sunday, with Max Muncy striking for an RBI single in the first inning. But that ended up being L.A.'s only hit with runners in scoring position for the remainder of the contest.

That continued a trend from before the weekend series. This homestand began with the Dodgers winning four straight games by one run, but Roberts felt that his team had missed chances to break open games. He saw the at-bat quality drop off further in the two losses to Baltimore.

Roberts believes that his team's approach has been too passive at times over the past week, allowing opposing pitchers to settle into a rhythm. He has seen his hitters taking hittable pitches, then over-correcting by chasing out of the zone, whereas he would like to see his lineup be dangerous in a way that forces pitchers out of the zone.

"It's just not who we are, who we need to be," Roberts said. "I think that you got to give credit to the Orioles, and how they pitched us. But we just didn't do a good job ourselves."

Overreliance on run prevention

The Dodgers' 3.46 ERA as a team is the fourth-lowest in the Majors, and as such, they've been able to lean on their pitching staff. From Roberts' perspective, perhaps a little too much.

The six runs Sheehan allowed were difficult to overcome on Sunday, but the Dodgers were also unable to come back from being down three runs after Yoshinobu Yamamoto was done on the mound on Saturday. They recovered from Roki Sasaki giving up three runs on Friday, but they had to go down to their final out to do it.

The back-to-back champions have not been at full strength all season, but even so, they have the talent to play to the level that their placement in the standings would indicate.

"It just wasn't a great start for our team, and offensively, we just weren't very good," Roberts said. "Feel fortunate that we won a game this series."