Missed opportunities, wild double play too much for Dodgers to overcome

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers' offense struggled to find a spark on Wednesday afternoon, falling 3-2 to the Marlins in the series finale at Dodger Stadium.

The loss highlighted a trend of missed opportunities for a lineup that has struggled to provide consistent run support for its rotation over the past week. Despite an outing in which Tyler Glasnow produced nine strikeouts and surrendered only three hits, the Dodgers were unable to capitalize on a bases-loaded chance in the bottom of the ninth, leaving nine men on base throughout the afternoon.

Glasnow took the mound coming off a dominant eight scoreless innings against the Giants last Thursday. While he struck out the side in both the third and fourth innings, his afternoon was hampered by a sudden loss of command. Although he allowed just two earned runs over 5 2/3 innings, Glasnow issued a season-high six walks and surrendered solo home runs to Liam Hicks and Esteury Ruiz.

“It was definitely a challenge today,” Glasnow said. “The third and fourth innings felt great. And then, the fifth and sixth, it was just super weird. I just lost timing, flying open. It was just one of those days where it was hard to throw strikes.”

The Dodgers managed to tie the contest twice. Max Muncy provided an early spark in the second with a leadoff double, eventually scoring on an Alex Call RBI single. In the sixth, Dalton Rushing drove in Kyle Tucker with a sharp single to right field to pull the Dodgers even at 2-2. However, the club finished the day 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position.

The decisive blow came in the eighth inning when Javier Sanoja dropped a popup single into shallow center field, scoring Xavier Edwards to give the Marlins a 3-2 lead.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers appeared poised for a comeback after Hyeseong Kim and Call drew back-to-back walks. Following an Alex Freeland sacrifice bunt and an intentional walk to Shohei Ohtani to load the bases, Freddie Freeman grounded into a wild unassisted double play by Edwards -- Miami's second baseman -- to end the game.

“We’ve kind of been going through it as a group,” Freeman said of the offense. “Luckily, we have really, really good pitching, and that’s kind of where we’re at right now. Our pitching has been amazing -- they’re the reason why we have a chance to win every single game. But as an offense, the last few games haven’t been where we wanted to be.”

Manager Dave Roberts noted that the lineup's recent struggles are a departure from the high-scoring output seen earlier in April.

“I don’t think we’re collectively swinging the bats the way we were early,” Roberts said. "The last 10 days, it just hasn’t been synced up. We just haven’t got those hits when we needed them. It’s a long season. You’d like everyone to get off to a good start, but a lot of guys are not performing to the back of their baseball cards. So you just hope that the work and the consistency of work will show benefits, and it will balance out at some point.”

The result marked a frustrating finish to the series for the Dodgers heading into Thursday's off-day before a six-game road trip to St. Louis and Houston. For a team navigating several injuries to its pitching staff and key position players such as Mookie Betts and Tommy Edman, all while coming off a stretch of playing 13 games in 13 days, finding the sync that Roberts described remains the primary focus as the first full month of the season concludes.