The Dodgers stopped hitting, and the World Series suddenly flipped

LOS ANGELES — Trey Yesavage will not fully get his due in this story. Let us acknowledge that from the start.

This story will suggest, as the members of the Los Angeles Dodgers did, that if Dodgers hitters had taken a better approach or stayed more patient or something, they might have fared better against the 22-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander in their 6-1 loss Wednesday night in Game 5 of the World Series. Naturally, there is no control group. Yesavage allowed just one run over seven dominant innings in which he struck out 12. At times, he looked as if no one could have touched him.

But perhaps the Dodgers are right about their agency: This is the most talented baseball team money can buy, a machine that spends 11 disciplined months optimizing every moving part so it is ready for the 12th. This team does not find itself one loss from elimination merely because the other guy had a good night.

“Pretty bad performance by us,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “But at the same time, pretty incredible performance for the guy on the mound for the other team.”

For a second straight evening, the Dodgers looked flat and uninspiring against the livelier, peskier Blue Jays, who take a 3-2 series lead back to Toronto ahead of Game 6 on Friday night. But for the first time in this final round, the Dodgers also looked sloppy.

Shortstop Mookie Betts threw wide on a would-be double play ball in the top of the third inning. Right fielder Teoscar Hernández played a should-be Daulton Varsho single into a triple in the fourth. A run scored in the seventh on a wild pitch one of four that Dodgers pitchers threw.

“You look at giving up bases, it changes kind of the lineup as far as who comes up, and it affects the game going forward,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Things certainly get magnified in games like this, especially when you’re not swinging the bats.”

With all due respect to Roberts, the Dodgers actually did swing the bats — 52 times against Yesavage on Wednesday night. The trouble was, they missed the ball on 23 of them. In Game 1 the Dodgers walked three times against Yesavage and forced him from the game by scoring two runs in four innings. Many of them agreed the biggest reason they struggled this time was that Yesavage’s command was better.

“It was a complete 180 from Game 1,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who went 0 for 3 with three strikeouts and a hit-by-pitch. “His command was pinpoint tonight. … That was the difference from Game 1. He had a lot of noncompetitive pitches in Game 1. And today he didn’t have that.”

But the trouble with explaining the Dodgers’ slow offensive night by tipping caps to Yesavage is that they have not been hitting for several nights now. The Dodgers have scored four runs in their past 29 innings, dating to the eighth inning of the 18-inning epic in Game 3. Since Freeman’s walk-off home run ended that game, the Dodgers have scored three runs on 10 hits and accumulated 22 strikeouts.

“Sometimes we’re too aggressive. Sometimes we’re too patient,” Hernández said. “Just finding the balance and putting together consistent at-bats.”

Perhaps Game 3 was a Pyrrhic victory. After all, these same Dodgers won an 18-inning game in the 2018 World Series against the Boston Red Sox, then never won again. And this team largely centers on veterans who are hardly immune to wear and tear.

But fatigue doesn’t explain everything: The Dodgers are hitting .201 with a .651 OPS since the World Series began. Betts is 3 for 23 with a .361 OPS in five games.

“I’ve just been terrible,” he said Wednesday night.

Freeman is hitting .250 with some uncharacteristically hapless swings. Shohei Ohtani continues to be boom-or-bust with 12 total bases in Game 3 and five in the other four games combined. Muncy went 1 for 13 with five strikeouts in the three games played at Dodger Stadium this week.

The Dodgers’ offense has struggled so much, in fact, that Roberts — who had been defiant in his support of struggling No. 9 hitter Andy Pages and steady with his lineup for weeks — made drastic changes before Game 5. He sat Pages in favor of a different right-handed outfielder, Alex Call. He moved catcher Will Smith to second in his batting order and dropped the struggling Betts to third, where he had not hit since 2021. None of it helped. Outside of Kiké Hernández obliterating a home run in the third, his lineup sputtered to a halt.

“It doesn’t feel great. You clearly see (the Blue Jays) finding ways to get hits, move the baseball forward, and we’re not doing a good job of it,” Roberts said. “You still have to use the whole field and take what they give you. And if they’re not going to allow for slug, then you’ve got to be able to kind of redirect and club down to take competitive at-bats.”

“You see whether it’s (Addison) Barger or (Bo) Bichette,” Roberts added. “You know, those guys are doing it.”

Barger and Bichette are both powerful Toronto hitters who contributed less ambitious opposite-field singles at key moments to help build the Blue Jays’ lead in Game 5. The visitors’ first runs of the night, meanwhile, provided a different kind of contrast to the Dodgers’ recent method.

Davis Schneider, leading off the game in place of the injured George Springer, swung at the first pitch Dodgers ace Blake Snell threw and drove it over the wall in left. Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. jumped on a Snell fastball and hit it out the same way. Snell did not throw another fastball for 21 pitches.

“I just think they’re ambushing the fastball,” said Snell, who allowed five runs in 6⅔ innings. “As they should, as I thought they would.”

But whatever Snell expected, the outcome was that the Blue Jays made him react to them — not the other way around. The Dodgers did not make Toronto react to much of anything during three games at Chavez Ravine.

“We got to hit the ball. You look at what they’re doing: They put the ball in play a lot, and it’s finding spots,” Muncy said. “We’re not putting the ball in play a lot and when we do, it seems to be finding their gloves. We have to find a way to put the ball in play a lot more, and luck will turn.”

The Dodgers need to find that much sooner than later. Nine more slumpy innings, and their chance to become the first team to repeat as champions in 25 years will die on the vine, well within their reach.

“I don’t have an answer right now,” Kiké Hernández said when asked how the Dodgers can somehow fix their at-bats just in time. “But we’ll find out.”