With yet another loss on Friday night, the 2020 World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers have now lost seven of their last 10 games and find themselves in second place in the National League West a half-game behind the San Francisco Giants.

It’s not that the Dodgers’ pitching has been bad, quite the contrary, in fact. They have kept their team in a position to win nearly all of those last 10 games with a collective – and respectable – 3.26 ERA. It’s their anemic offense that cost them those seven losses.

With few exceptions, the once-unstoppable Dodgers offense – from top to bottom – is mired in a slump of biblical proportions, having gone a combined 63-for-326 over those last 10 games for a pathetic – and unacceptable – .193 batting average. Additionally, the team that led all of baseball with 118 home runs during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season has hit only 31 home runs through their first 27 games this season and only eight in those last 10 games.

“We just have to get back to taking quality at-bats,” Dodgers outfielder AJ Pollock told reporters after his team’s 3-1 loss, their second straight, to the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field on Friday night. “It’s tough, it’s frustrating, and it seems awful. But in baseball, we play 162 games. Sometimes you go through little things like this. We know how potent our offense is, and it’s not going to take much to get this thing clicking again. But it is a little frustrating. We just have to keep at it.”

For Saturday’s third game of the four-game set against the Brewers, the Dodgers turn to 23-year-old right-hander Dustin May to stop the bleeding and once again keep them in a position to win.

Through his first four starts of the 2021 season, May is 1-1 with a team third-best 2.53 ERA, behind future Hall of Fame left-hander Clayton Kershaw (2.09) and 2020 National League Cy Young Award-winning right-hander Trevor Bauer (2.48). He is also third on the team in strikeouts with 32, behind Bauer’s 51 and Kershaw’s 39.

Play Ball!

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