The Los Angeles Dodgers have struggled on offense since the start of July, and it’s a trend that may have some relation to their inability to consistently put the ball in play.
Over the last 27 games, the Dodgers have struck out 25.2% of the time as a team, which is the worst mark in MLB. They are one of just two clubs with their hitters striking out more than a quarter of the time in that stretch.
Prior to July, the Dodgers were only striking out 21.1% of the time, which ranked as the 10th-best mark among all teams.
“It’s spiked,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged. “I don’t know a timeline, but it’s certainly the last two, three, four weeks, it seems like the strikeouts have spiked from the entire group.
“Obviously with that, there’s more chase than in-zone miss. I think it’s more of just trying to shorten your swing and put the ball in play, have a two-strike approach. Because I do see a lot of the same two-strike swings are the same big swings we would take in a hitter’s count.
“You’ve got to find a way to put the ball in play and force something to happen. Because yeah, I think if you look at the strikeout rate the last few weeks, it’s certainly up there. We’ve got to get better.”
In addition, the Dodgers have also seen their walk rate drop by roughly 1% over that same stretch. It’s not a major concern for the group, but still something that can be added into their struggles.
“If you look at certain hitters in counts, I think when we get in good counts, right now we’re a little too anxious,” Roberts said. “Where you get into a hitter’s count, then you chase secondary to get the pitcher back into the count to then get to 3-2 and chase out of the zone.
“I think it’s a little bit victim of trying to do too much as a group. We’ve got to find a way to kind of reset and just overall take better at-bats and have a two-strike approach.”
Between the increase in strikeouts and decrease in walks, the Dodgers’ walk to strikeout ratio since July is just 0.34, which ranks among the bottom third of teams. Prior to July, the Dodgers ranked second with a 0.46 rate of walks per strikeout.
With that, pitchers are throwing outside the strike zone more, getting Dodgers’ hitters to chase and giving them fewer pitches to hit.
“I think so. I think there’s something to that,” Roberts said. “Not giving in, knowing we’re going to swing, and clearly our strikeout to walk ratio isn’t where it needs to be right now. Certainly, I see when we get into hitter’s counts, there’s a lot of secondary pitches that we’re chasing. I do see that.”
With these struggles, the Dodgers have the fourth-worst on-base plus slugging in baseball at just .669. They’ve only hit .227/.300/.369 in the last month, and they’ve yet to score 100 runs in that timeframe.
Dodgers offense took step forward
On Saturday, the Dodgers did not take a walk against the Tampa Bay Rays in a shutout loss while they struck out 11 times. The following day, the Dodgers took the series finale with a 3-0 win, this time drawing five walks with just three strikeouts.
“It was stark as far as the at-bat quality, putting the ball in play, winning pitches and giving ourselves a chance at the bat,” Roberts said. “Obviously, Freddie had a great series and I thought Shohei took some really good at-bats today. The baserunning, we finally built some innings and situational hitting was good. We got some key hits.”
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