Same Inning, Same Trouble: Dodgers Keep Waiting for Things to Turn

On Saturday night the Atlanta Braves loaded the bases in the second inning against the Dodgers and scored four runs. Sunday afternoon, they did it again.

Same inning. Same avalanche. Different day.

By the time Mauricio Dubón’s bases-clearing double split the outfield gap in the second inning Sunday, Dodger Stadium had the unmistakable feeling of a team watching the same movie on repeat and somehow disliking the ending even more the second time around.

Groundhog Day. Déjà vu all over again. Same old song and dance. Pick your cliché. The Dodgers are currently living inside all of them.

And after another frustrating 7-2 loss to Atlanta, they looked every bit like a club exhausted by its own mistakes.

The inning that effectively buried the Dodgers began with what should have been an escape hatch.

Justin Wrobleski, who entered the afternoon carrying one of the National League’s best ERAs, got Sean Murphy to bounce a routine comebacker toward the mound with an inning-ending double play practically gift-wrapped in baseball leather.

Instead, it became the moment everything unraveled.

Wrobleski’s throw to second sailed high, forcing Alex Freeland into a leaping catch just to keep the ball from skipping into center field. The runner was retired at second, but the inning stayed alive. Wrobleski then walked Jorge Mateo to load the bases before Dubón turned on an 85 mph slider and lined a three-run double into left-center.

Four runs. Again.

At this point, the Dodgers could probably diagram the inning from memory.

“Just didn’t turn a double play,” Wrobleski said afterward. “If I turn a double play … wouldn’t have been a bad outing.”

Oddly enough, that was the maddening part for Los Angeles: Wrobleski actually pitched far better than the final line suggested.

Yes, he was charged with seven runs. Yes, the ERA that had quietly become one of baseball’s best took a sizeable hit. But buried beneath the chaos was one of the strangest effective outings Dodger Stadium has seen in years.

The young left-hander threw 100 pitches across 8⅔ innings, struck out seven and walked only one batter. After the disastrous second inning, he retired 16 consecutive Braves hitters and nearly became the first pitcher in Dodgers Los Angeles history to throw a complete game while allowing seven runs.

Only baseball could produce a sentence like that and somehow make it true.

Coming into the game, Wrobleski had allowed only six total earned runs in his first six outings. Sunday nearly doubled that number in a single afternoon, largely because one routine play never became routine.

And yet, even with the ugly inning, the Dodgers still had chances.

They just continue finding increasingly creative ways not to cash them in.

Their best opportunity came in the sixth inning when Braves reliever Robert Suarez suddenly lost the strike zone and issued three consecutive two-out walks to load the bases for Max Muncy.

For the briefest moment, Dodger Stadium finally stirred awake.

Muncy worked the count full, got a fastball he liked and unloaded on a 107 mph rocket toward deep right field that looked destined to clear the bases and completely flip the afternoon.

Then Eli White happened.

The Braves outfielder sprinted to the wall, leaped and crashed face-first into the padding while somehow hanging onto the ball for an inning-ending catch that felt less like defense and more like armed robbery.

Muncy could only stop halfway up the line and stare.

“Who do I gotta pay off at this point?” Muncy said later. “A lot of really good swings, just nothing to really show for it.”

That feeling currently applies to the Dodgers offense as a whole.

Los Angeles managed only two hits Sunday, yet still stranded seven runners and went 0-for-4 with runners in scoring position. Shohei Ohtani continued his recent struggles with an 0-for-4 afternoon, while the lineup once again failed to produce a timely hit when the game demanded one.

“We really haven’t been able to put together innings,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We did in that one inning, and then the right fielder makes a great play.”

The larger issue for Roberts is that this offensive funk no longer feels temporary.

After appearing to regain momentum during a series win in Houston earlier in the week, the Dodgers scored just seven total runs across three games against Atlanta and have now failed to score more than three runs in eight of their last 11 games.

“I really don’t have an answer,” Roberts admitted. “Outside of, it’s kind of the ebbs and flows of a long season.”

Maybe so. But this particular ebb is beginning to feel less like a brief slump and more like an extended stay in baseball quicksand.

“Just kind of as a unit, I don’t think that we’re one piece right now,” Roberts said. “It’s not from lack of effort. We’ve been in this funk for quite some time.”

The Braves, meanwhile, looked every bit like the best team in baseball this weekend. They played cleaner defense, capitalized on mistakes and consistently delivered situational hitting while the Dodgers continued searching for traction.

To paraphrase Tommy Lasorda, eventually it becomes time to stop trying and start doing.

Now comes a four-game series against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium. On paper, it looks like an opportunity for the Dodgers to steady themselves against another struggling club.

Then again, Dodgers-Giants games stopped caring about paper somewhere around the Grover Cleveland administration.

This rivalry has survived boroughs, generations and coastlines for more than 140 years. Records rarely matter. Momentum rarely survives.

Right now, the Dodgers would probably settle for simply looking like themselves again.