Dodgers’ defensive woes doom them to their third loss in four games
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WASHINGTON — Defensive miscues cost the Dodgers two runs Monday. Stellar defense from the Washington Nationals prevented two, if not more.
In the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss at Nationals Park to open a three-game series, that proved to be the biggest difference. And with the team having lost three of four games entering Tuesday, it reinforced what is fast becoming a disconcerting early season theme.
As was the story in last weekend’s series defeat to the Philadelphia Phillies, when defensive breakdowns and baserunning blunders ended the team’s 8-0 start, the Dodgers continued to struggle with the fundamentals Monday, digging an early hole from which they never fully recovered — even on a night Shohei Ohtani came up a double short of the cycle.
The Dodgers visited the White House on Monday as players, coaches, staff and ownership were hosted by President Trump in a ceremony in the East Room honoring their World Series title.
With two on and one out in the second, Mookie Betts let a hard-hit one-hopper blaze by him at shortstop, misjudging a low bounce on an error that enabled an unearned run to score.
“I missed it,” Betts said. “Whether it hopped up or stayed down, doesn’t matter.”
With two outs Miguel Rojas booted a more routine grounder at second base, resulting in yet another error and unearned run.
“Defensively today we gave them a lot of chances for them to score some runs,” Rojas said. “So we gotta clean that up.”
The Nationals’ defense, on the other hand, twice took away hits that doused potentially dangerous Dodgers rallies.
In the third, Max Muncy was robbed of extra bases on a diving catch in right field by Alex Call — just three batters before Ohtani whacked a two-run homer that otherwise would have scored three.
In the fifth, Rojas was denied a hit when shortstop Paul DeJong made a diving stop deep in the hole — just two batters before Ohtani laced a triple that would have brought him home, but instead was wasted in a scoreless inning.
Then as the Dodgers tried to rally from a 6-4 deficit in the ninth, a leadoff double from Muncy was followed by a diving stop on a Hunter Feduccia ground ball by Nationals second baseman Luis García Jr., likely saving yet another run as the Nationals sewed up a series-opening win.
“It just seems like each night there’s some things fundamentally that we’re just not playing clean baseball,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Giving teams extra outs or giving up outs on the bases, or whatever it might be.”
Other teams’ defense is out of the Dodgers’ control. But their own repeated mistakes have emerged as a growing source of frustration in the opening weeks.
The Dodgers had committed seven errors entering Tuesday, all within a six-game span. They had yielded 10 unearned runs, most in the majors. They even had struggled to slow the running game, giving up steals on opponents’ first 12 attempts, including three to the Nationals on Monday.
“We need to clean some things up on all sides of the ball,” Muncy said. “We know we’re better than what we’ve been playing.”
“We expect the best out of us every single day, and it’s supposed to be good every single day,” Rojas added. “But I mean, it happens. We have to keep working on it … We gotta pay attention to details a little bit more.”
Some of this was to be expected. Betts still is reacclimating to shortstop after his three-month cameo there last year. A primary outfield alignment of Michael Conforto, Teoscar Hernández and Andy Pages (who got a day off Monday amid his season-opening slump, even with left-handed MacKenzie Gore on the mound) is not exactly a foolproof defensive unit.
And this Dodgers lineup was built with offense as the primary consideration, helping them rank top-five in scoring and second in home runs entering Tuesday, even though they’ve been without Freddie Freeman (who remains on the injured list with an ankle injury) for all but three games.
But on Monday, their bats couldn’t bail them out.
The Dodgers managed just two runs over six innings against Gore, who racked up seven strikeouts while yielding five hits. They scored twice in the eighth but stranded the potential tying runs when Kiké Hernández struck out to end the inning. Then in the ninth, they couldn’t do anything with Muncy’s leadoff double, even with Nationals closer Kyle Finnegan going for a five-out save on his third straight day of pitching.
To make matters worse, their best moment of defensive excellence — when center fielder Tommy Edman threw out a runner at home in the seventh — came in an inning the Nationals (4-6) scored three times off relievers Anthony Banda and Matt Sauer.
“If you lose a couple games and you don’t play clean baseball, you look back at a game and you say, ‘We could have done this, or that might have changed the outcome,’” Roberts said. “There’s still some good things that happened tonight. ... But yeah, I just think in totality, the bar, the standard, is pretty high for our club. And I know they feel the same.”
It all overshadowed Ohtani’s monstrous night at the plate, which included an infield single in the first, his two-run blast to the right-field bullpen in the third, the fifth-inning triple that hit off the top of the wall in center, plus a walk in the ninth one at-bat before Betts grounded out to end the game.
The Dodgers started their series with the Phillies with a perfect record, but pitching Tyler Glasnow and Blake Treinen run into problems in an 8-7 loss.
It also left Dustin May with a tough-luck loss, the starting pitcher having given up just one earned run in a six-inning outing in which, after early command issues led to three walks that compounded the defensive miscues, he retired the last 11 batters he faced.
“We just gotta continue to come every single day and clean those things up,” Rojas said. “Hopefully we can start getting better overall, and not just waiting for the miracle to happen in the last couple innings. I think we’re gonna clean it up a little bit more defensively and on the bases, and we all know that.”
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