LOS ANGELES -- After Sunday’s loss to the Cubs, Freddie Freeman perfectly summed up the Dodgers’ struggles to start the 2023 season.
“When we pitch, we don’t hit,” Freeman said Sunday. “When we hit, we don’t pitch.”
That’s exactly what happened in the Dodgers’ latest loss as they fell, 8-6, to the Mets on Monday at Dodger Stadium. Led by two home runs from Freeman -- his first multi-homer game as a Dodger -- and a Max Muncy solo blast, the Dodgers’ offense came back to life on Monday and matched what they produced over three games against the Cubs.
But as has been the case most of the time this season, the Dodgers failed to put together a complete game. This time, it was the Dodgers’ pitching staff -- which was solid over the weekend -- which took the step backwards, allowing eight runs on 14 hits against a tough Mets lineup.
Last season, the Dodgers went 64-3 when scoring six or more runs. They are already 5-3 in such games in 2023.
“I think they just put together better AB’s than we did,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “I think that, if you look at the whole body of work, all the bats, one through nine, they took better at-bats. … Give those guys credit for winning pitches and winning at-bats. I think that just kind of sums up tonight.”
Most of the Mets’ damage came against Dustin May, who had gotten off to a hot start this season. In his previous three outings, May had given up just three earned runs over 18 1/3 innings. On Monday, the hard-throwing right-hander allowed five runs over 5 2/3 innings.
A problem for May on Monday was his lack of swing-and-miss stuff. May has all the tools to have one of the highest whiff rates in the league, but he has not yet been able to put that together this season, striking out just one on Monday and 13 over his first four starts.
“Execution was OK. Quality of execution was not that great,” May said. “I was throwing balls in the strike zone and they were just hitting little shots over the infield and getting on base. … I was getting them late in counts, I just wasn’t finishing them off. I need to work on doing that.”
May wasn’t the only Dodgers pitcher to struggle. Alex Vesia, who was L.A.’s best left-handed reliever each of the last two seasons, continued his forgettable start to the season, allowing three consecutive hits to open the seventh inning, a frame after the Dodgers regained the lead on Muncy’s homer.
After Vesia loaded the bases, Phil Bickford took over, but the right-hander balked before throwing his first pitch, allowing the Mets to tie the game at 6. All three runs in the inning were charged to Vesia, who has allowed at least one run in four of his seven outings this season. His season ERA now stands at 12.60, a concern for the Dodgers moving forward.
“He’s just not getting the sharp breaking ball, the changeup, the breaking ball in the zone to have them honor it,” Roberts said. “So, when you can go to one zone and time up the fastball, it gives them a better shot.”
The lack of pitching spoiled what was a better effort by the Dodgers’ offense. Still, Los Angeles has to find a way to get the bottom of the order back on track. On Monday, the five-through-nine hitters in the order went 4-for-20, with two of those hits coming from Muncy.
“It’s baseball. It’s gonna happen,” Muncy said. “It is frustrating, but you’ve just got to go out there every single day and play that game and not worry about what’s been happening, what’s going to happen. Just got to worry about today, and as long as we do that, I feel confident about our team.”
With an 8-9 record through 17 games, it marks the deepest into a season the Dodgers have dropped below .500 since 2018. That season, Los Angeles bottomed out at 10 games under but rallied to make the World Series.
“We’d love to be 17-0,” Freeman said. “We haven’t gotten off to the start we wanted. But what does talking about it do? We’ve got to go out there and start playing better and win games. That’s really all we can do. We can talk all we want. But we’ve got to come out here tomorrow and get a split going.”