LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers won the first game of their seven-game homestand on Monday, but thoughts still turned to not only their recent eight losses in nine games but also their general malaise as a team for the past six weeks.
Earlier Monday, Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic wrote about how inept the Dodgers have been at hitting fastballs of late. These figures were through Sunday:
Opposing pitching staffs have appeared to find a hole. Since July 1, no team in baseball has seen a higher percentage of fastballs than the Dodgers have (58.7 percent). The Dodgers have produced a .693 OPS against those pitches in that span, including the fourth-worst on-base percentage (.310) and fifth-worst slugging percentage (.383) in those spots.
“It never feels good to be bullied,” manager Dave Roberts said Monday at Dodger Stadium. “And to think teams go after us more than any other team with the fastball, that’s bothersome. That would bother me. How do you do it? You’ve got to look in your zone and get the bat head to it.
“We’ve scored runs — a lot of runs, fourth in baseball — but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The story is being the best version of ourselves, and that’s hitting the fastball, it’s making adjustments in at-bats, situationally, all of it. It’s something I hope our guys take personally. We shouldn’t get bullied.”
Including starting pitcher Noah Cameron, Royals pitchers only threw the Dodgers 23 four-seam fastballs on Monday. Max Muncy’s three-run double in the sixth inning was off a fastball, as was Shohei Ohtani’s single in the seventh inning to set up the winning run.
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Dodgers minor league outfielder Charles Davalan, rising in various prospect lists, has thrived this season. Emily Waldon for Just Baseball wrote about Davalan’s development, from growing up in Canada, playing college ball at Arkansas and now the Dodgers. “We talk about wanting our hitters to have an identity, and to understand themselves as hitters by the time they reach LA,” Dodgers director of player development Will Rhymes told Waldon. “He already has that understanding.”
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