Dodgers’ growing offensive struggles have a familiar feel in loss to Cubs

It was around this time last year that the Dodgers offense started cooling off.

After a sluggish performance at the plate this week, they can only hope it isn’t happening again.

Before the Dodgers crashed out of the 2023 playoffs in a National League Division Series sweep against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team’s bats began to quiet in September, when declining production from big stars and role players alike foreshadowed the offensive no-show that doomed the team in October.

Lately, the Dodgers have experienced something similar, following up a rollicking showcase in Arizona with a muted week offensively since.

The latest example came in a 10-4 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Monday night at Dodger Stadium, in which ex-Dodgers Cody Bellinger and Michael Busch almost outscored the entirety of their former team.

In the first four innings alone, Bellinger and Busch had three hits, a home run apiece and four total RBIs off Walker Buehler.

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The Dodgers, meanwhile, didn’t score their first run until the fifth and squandered multiple opportunities to get back in the game — despite facing Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks and his 6.60 ERA, worst among MLB starters with 100 innings.

“We had the opportunities,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “I think we could go through the course of the year and, unfortunately, this is what happens in baseball when you play 162 games. You can have the opportunities, you just don’t get the hits.”

Since tallying 32 runs and 52 hits in a victorious four-game series against the Diamondbacks to start the month, the Dodgers have managed just 23 runs and 45 hits in six games since.

During that stretch, they’ve struck out 56 times. They’ve scored five or more runs just twice. And, after appearing to turn a corner at the plate with a healthy lineup for the first time in months, signs of their mid-summer malaise have returned.

“I think offensively certainly the first few innings were forgettable,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought [after] calibrating … we took better at-bats and we took the walks when we needed, got [Hendricks] out of the game, stressed their pen. We just couldn’t get that hit to really put up multiple crooked numbers.”

Alarm bells aren’t ringing yet. But reasons for concern are starting to sprout.

The Dodgers’ biggest problems Monday resided at the bottom of the batting order.

While Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman combined for five hits and five walks — Ohtani also stole his 47th base of the season in his continued pursuit of MLB’s first 50 homer-50 steal season — the rest of the lineup offered little support.

Max Muncy went hitless and managed only one RBI (a fifth-inning sacrifice fly) from two bases-loaded at-bats, leaving him two for 18 since the start of September.

Will Smith failed to build off a three-hit performance Sunday, continuing his second-half slide with an 0-for-five line that included a strikeout with two runners aboard in the fifth.

Tommy Edman had two hits, while Gavin Lux, Chris Taylor and Miguel Rojas each singled. But as a team, the Dodgers (86-58) were just two for seven with runners in scoring position and left 10 runners on base — not nearly enough on a night they trailed 3-0 after the first inning and 7-2 at the end of the sixth.

“I think the production from the bottom half, I certainly know it’s not as dire as it was early in the season,” Roberts said, maintaining confidence in an offense that still ranks third in the majors in scoring this season. “I still think we’re in a good spot.”

But on Monday, at least, the Cubs (74-70) were simply better.

Bellinger, the Dodgers’ former rookie of the year and most valuable player award winner, opened the scoring with a first-pitch, two-run homer in the first, launching his second long ball as a visiting player at Chavez Ravine deep into the right-field pavilion.

Busch, the former Dodgers prospect who was traded to Chicago last offseason, tallied the next two runs for the Cubs. He lined an RBI single in the first, then cleared the short wall in left on an opposite-field solo homer in the fourth.

It all amounted to a “pretty big step back” for Buehler, as he put it, after a pair of encouraging outings in his previous two starts. The right-hander finished the night with five earned runs in five-plus innings, and struck out just four batters while allowing nine hits.

“I screwed us from the jump,” said Buehler, who now has a 5.95 ERA on the season and 9.69 ERA in first innings. “Obviously three runs in the first kind of sucked the energy out of the building … That’s a lot to ask of the rest of our guys to dig me out of a hole every game.”

Despite that, the Dodgers had chances to rally.

They loaded the bases in the third inning, but came away with nothing.

They scored twice in the fifth and seventh innings — Betts homered in the latter, his seventh in 26 games since returning from a broken hand — but missed opportunities in each to chip away further.

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“Chalk it up to one of those days,” Freeman said. “Come back and get them tomorrow.”

The good news for the Dodgers: Their biggest stars are still hitting.

In addition to his seven homers, Betts also has a .316 batting average and 26 RBIs since coming off the injured list.

Freeman, who is still playing through a fractured right middle finger, is 11 for 33 with seven walks since getting a three-game break in late August.

Ohtani is also continuing to mash, batting an even .300 since Aug. 21 in search of his third MVP award.

But if the Dodgers thought their top-heavy lineup problems were a thing of the past, Monday’s loss — in which they were without Teoscar Hernández for a third straight game because of his foot contusion — offered a familiar reminder of how quickly things can turn.

“Every single day we come in with a game plan to win that game and do our best,” Freeman said. “Just didn’t happen today.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.