Before the Los Angeles Dodgers can ruin baseball once and for all, they need to figure out how to win a game again
The defending champions posted their sixth straight loss on Wednesday, falling 7-6 to the Chicago Cubs. They have now been swept in back-to-back series at the hands of the Cubs and Boston Red Sox, going from the best record in MLB to the third-best win percentage in the NL
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A division lead that was once 14 games is now down to eight after the Arizona Diamondbacks’ win on Wednesday. That’s still the second-largest division lead in baseball, but … wilder things have happened
This run from L.A. runs counter to the broader narrative around the team over the past week, specifically when they called in a trade to put two-time defending American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal in Dodger blue. According to the headlines and social media commentary, this team was supposed to be inevitable, to the point of sapping joy out of the national pastime and making a salary cap the only way forward for MLB
Instead, the Dodgers are 10-15 since the Fourth of July. Let’s ponder what’s happening
The Dodgers have always been a vulnerable juggernaut
Perspective might be the way to start here. For all that’s been made about the Dodgers’ success over the past decade or so, they have never been immune to a bad month in every season. Because they play baseball, after all
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Take, for example, every recent Dodgers team that has reached the World Series in a full season. The 2017 Dodgers went 12-17 in the month of September. The 2018 Dodgers had a losing record as late as June 6. The 2024 Dodgers lost five straight in May and had a losing record in July. Last year’s Dodgers lost seven straight in July, and that wasn’t even when their bullpen was in free fall
That’s what happens in a sport in which the best regular-season win percentage since the dead-ball era is 72.1% (the 1954 Cleveland team). Losses happen, and they can come in bunches. Yes, the Dodgers have some issues. No, they have not been Space Jam’d
It might also be worth thinking about what a super-team is in baseball. The Dodgers’ going back-to-back as champions in 2024 and 2025 is frequently treated as proof positive that a salary cap is needed to save a sport in which the richest team can dominate. Yet even those title-winning teams had such glaring issues (rotation depth in 2024, bullpen in 2025) that they each needed to win back-to-back elimination games at some point
Los Angeles losing six straight games is a bad development for Los Angeles. But it’s nothing the team hasn’t experienced before. This team just happens to be losing at a time when the schadenfreude is going to be at an all-time high after the Skubal trade
The Dodgers’ winning pace was unsustainable with the talent they have on the field
The Dodgers losing every leg of what is essentially a full turn through a six-man rotation doesn’t sound right. It makes a little more sense when you consider the starting pitchers on the mound over the past week. Here’s the group:
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Now, obviously, the Dodgers should’ve won the Yamamoto and Skubal starts. They didn’t because they scored three runs total in those two games. They probably should have scored more, but, again, baseball. You could say they’re pressing amid the heat over Skubal, but this is a core that has navigated a far brighter spotlight and come out just fine
The Red Sox’s and Cubs’ pitching staffs simply did a very good job of limiting what has been the fourth-highest-scoring offense in MLB this season
As for the other games, the first loss to the Red Sox was a bullpen game in which recent call-up Cole Irvin surrendered the go-ahead run in the seventh inning and then five more in a lengthy appearance meant to cover for a gassed bullpen. He was designated for assignment the next day
The Sheehan start saw the pitcher everyone expected to lose his rotation spot to Skubal allow five runs in 2 2/3 innings. He was optioned to Triple-A Oklahoma City the next day
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Wrobleski has been the Dodgers’ most pleasant surprise this season, but the bill came due both regression-wise and maybe fatigue-wise when he allowed seven earned runs in the series opener against the Cubs. He has never thrown more than 118 1/3 innings in a season as a professional, and he just hit 117 innings in 2026
Wednesday saw Lauer, acquired basically for free after he was designated for assignment by the Toronto Blue Jays in May, appear in his first Dodgers loss in his 10th game with the team. The Cubs pounced on him for 11 hits and 6 runs in 4 innings
Shohei Ohtani didn’t start any of those games. Nor did Blake Snell or Tyler Glasnow. After Yamamoto and Skubal, those are the Dodgers’ top three choices to start games that matter. All three pitchers are expected to return to the mound at some point this season, with Snell and Glasnow currently on rehab assignments and Ohtani basically waiting until his knee stops bothering him
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The Dodgers are also currently without their top two catchers in Will Smith and Dalton Rushing, not to mention their usual list of relievers on the injured list. Obviously, every team deals with injuries, but it stands to reason that the Dodgers we’re seeing now won’t be the team we see in October
The revelation here isn’t that the Dodgers are suddenly bad. It’s more that they were playing like the best team in baseball, despite missing a half-dozen major contributors at times between May and June, and now some of the guys who excelled during that stretch are coming back to Earth
Could Wednesday’s ending be a sign of changes to come?
The first two losses of the Cubs series were one-sided, and Wednesday was shaping up to be the most joyless of them all, but then the Dodgers found a gear they’ve been seemingly missing over the past week
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Down 7-1 going into the eighth inning, Max Muncy and Ohtani hit five runs’ worth of homers to make it a one-run game. The Dodgers failed to break through against Jacob Webb in the ninth inning, but the eighth was still their most productive inning of this losing streak
If you’re looking for any sort of momentum, that’s a good sign, especially when L.A. has an off day Thursday and can regroup further
This weekend’s series against the D-backs is worth watching
All of this has been to say that the Dodgers certainly haven’t been good over the past week, but no team in baseball has less reason to panic in this situation. However, if there’s an actual consequence to this losing streak, it’s that they’ve made their upcoming weekend series matter
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The D-backs will enter a three-game home series with an eight-game deficit against the Dodgers in the NL West. Extend the Dodgers’ losing streak, and that deficit could suddenly become easily surmountable over the next month and a half
Barring a change, the Dodgers will start Roki Sasaki on Friday, with the hope that he continues the best stretch of his MLB career. They will start Yamamoto on Saturday and Wrobleski on Sunday. That’s still not their best group, but it’s certainly good enough that firmer conclusions will be available if this streak continues
