We all have our favorite Dodgers broadcasters, and it’s hard to argue that SportsNet LA’s (and now Fox Sports’) Joe Davis is not high on everyone’s list. So, when Joe Davis speaks, people listen, and he is usually spot-on.

Joe Davis spoke and was spot-on.

“Not nearly the offense everybody expected over the first few days,” Davis said after Sunday’s ugly 9-4 Dodgers loss to the Colorado Rockies at a very windy Coors Field. It was their second loss in as many days to Bud Black‘s Rockies and has the Dodgers sitting in fourth place in the three-day-old National League West standings.

That offense is a combined 25-for-105 for a less-than-stellar .238/.283/.295/578 slash line thus far this season, with only one home run, no triples, and three doubles; this from the team that most baseball experts expect to run away from the rest of the division, National League, and all of baseball, with their MLB-leading/star-laden $284,808,333 team payroll.

Included in that payroll is 25-year-old Dodgers left-hander Julio Urías, who led all of baseball with his 20 wins in 2021.

“I just didn’t think that he got settled in,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Urías’ un-Urías-like season debut. “Regardless of the conditions, we expect him to give us more length.

“Certainly expect him to get on track as we continue the season, but today I just don’t think that there was anything he could really go to and count on,” Roberts added.

Urías lasted only two innings, having allowed six runs on six hits with no strikeouts and two walks on 57 total pitches, of which only 33 were strikes (57.89%).

“It’s about executing pitches. I don’t feel like I executed enough,” Urías told reporters postgame through an interpreter. “I could throw a hundred miles an hour, and the results would have been the same because the execution was poor.”

But Sunday’s game wasn’t a complete disaster. Struggling Dodgers center fielder Cody Bellinger finally got his first hit of the new season – two, in fact. The first was basically a swinging bunt single in the top of the second inning, but the second was a legitimate line drive single to right field in the top of the fourth.

“I think you look at the last six at-bats, they’ve been all quality at-bats for me, and so that’s just something that he’s got to continue to do that,” Roberts said of Bellinger, who is now 2-for-11 (.182) with one walk and three strikeouts in his thus far 12 plate appearances.

The Dodgers also got a wind-assisted (and extremely rare) bases-clearing error by Rockies left fielder Kris Bryant off the bat of expected Dodgers slugger Freddie Freeman in the top of the fourth inning to make it a (then) 6-4 ballgame.

The Dodgers have a much-needed off-day on Monday, as they travel to Target Field in Minneapolis to open a brief two-game interleague series with the Twins before returning to Dodger Stadium for their Home Opener against the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday evening.

…where they are expected to do well.

Play Ball!

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