Following his team’s 6-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday night, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts hinted at possible lineup changes moving forward.
“I think so,” Roberts said to reporters when asked whether he was considering making adjustments to his batting order ahead of Game 5. “I’m going to think long and hard and it might look a little bit different tomorrow.”
That’s an unexpected dilemma for a team that during the regular season led the National League in OPS, runs scored, and home runs and across all of MLB ranked second to only the New York Yankees in those categories. Those trends, however, have not carried over into the World Series, which is now tied 2-2.
“We haven’t found our rhythm,” Roberts said of the team’s offensive performance against Toronto thus far. “We haven’t. It sort of draws dead at certain parts of the lineup and different parts, different innings, different games. Guys are competing. Certainly, in the postseason, you’re seeing everyone’s best.
“But, yeah, my hope is we regroup tomorrow, gather the information that we had from [Trey] Yesavage, and keep him in the hitting zone and understand what that split does, which is certainly helpful, and when we get the fastball, really get on it.”
The Dodgers through the first four games of the series have scored 17 runs, which doesn’t sound like a disastrous total until you consider that Game 3 spanned 18 innings. Overall, the Dodgers in the World Series are batting .214/.315/.377 and just .207/.294/.207 with runners in scoring position. That’s out of character, and it’s why Roberts is pondering changes.
At an individual level, Mookie Betts, Andy Pages, Tommy Edman, and Kiké Hernández — that’s almost half the lineup – have struggled badly. That quartet against the Blue Jays has combined for a slash line of just .147/.203/.162. No matter how good the rest of the lineup has been, it’s hard to score runs when you’re lugging that around. In particular, it’ll be interesting to see if Roberts adjusts Betts, who’s batted in the No. 2 spot behind leadoff man Shohei Ohtani in every game of the playoffs and almost every game of the regular season.
By the sounds of it, Roberts is going to push every button he can to wring more offense out of a lineup that’s been mostly tamed by Toronto. That’s not exactly a sign of desperation for L.A. — the series is tied, after all — but it is that things need to get better or they risk getting worse for the defending champs.
