Baseball, at its core, is a game of details. The little things—a crisp relay throw, a clean turn on a double play, a smart read on the bases—often become the difference between winning and losing.
For over a decade under manager Dave Roberts, the Los Angeles Dodgers have thrived on those small details.
They were sharp, disciplined, and rarely the team guilty of giving games away.
But this season in Los Angeles has felt different, and it’s never been more apparent than their recent three-game series over the weekend at home against the Arizona Diamondbacks that closed out the month of August.
After sweeping the wild card hungry Cincinnati Reds Monday through Wednesday, the Dodgers had an off day on Thursday before hosting the horrid Diamondbacks who entered the series below .500 and seven games out of a playoff spot.
The Dodgers offense, which scored a combined 21 runs in their three-game sweep of the Reds just days prior, disappeared in the first two games against Arizona.
“These were lackluster performances,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts about his team in the first two games on Friday and Saturday. “These past two nights I didn’t see the at-bats we’ve been having over the last week.”
Despite facing three consecutive starting pitchers with an ERA over 5.00, the Dodgers offense combined to score just one run over their first 18 innings of action. And that wasn’t even half of it. They ran into outs on the basepaths, missed throws in the outfield, didn’t hustle, and committed two errors on one play on Saturday.
“There’s an uncharacteristic lack of focus. Mistakes and execution things that just can’t happen,” continued Roberts. ” We have to go out and play good baseball. We beat ourselves a lot.”
In the finale of the the three-game series on Sunday, the offense awoke from their slumber for four early runs. Starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto was dominant for seven superb innings. He handed the ball over to the bullpen in former All-Star closer Tanner Scott.
Scott, who signed a record-breaking four-year, $72 million dollar contract for a reliever in the offseason, was handed the ball in the top of the eighth. After recording two quick outs, he unravelled, back-to-back singles and a three-run home run later, the game was tied. Another blown save for Scott, a familiar feeling for the Dodgers reliever.
“It’s super frustrating,” said Scott of his outing on Sunday. “I threw a terrible pitch. I missed down the middle. You never want to see the ball leave the ballpark. Especially in that situation. I don’t know [why it’s happened so much this season]. It’s very frustrating, but I just have to go out there and fix it.”
Will Smith salvaged the series an inning later, with his fourth pinch-hit, walk-off home run of his career, but you couldn’t help but feel that the entire series against the Snakes was a microcosm of the Dodgers season up to this point.
Inconsistency. A lackluster offense. Mistakes aplenty. Blown leads by the bullpen. More losses than wins, but punctuating it with a dramatic finish to salvage a game and their lead in the division.
“The last couple nights, that urgency and fighting like it’s the last game, we’re just not seeing that,” said Roberts. “We’re in a pennant race, and you should be seeing that, but one-through-nine we’re just not seeing that.”
Despite their struggles, the Dodgers still hold a two-game lead over the San Diego Padres in the NL West division heading into the final month of the season. A fact that veteran infielder Miguel Rojas made sure to point out after the game.
“We haven’t played the best baseball this season, but we’re still in first place,” said Rojas.
He’s right of course. But despite holding onto first place in the NL West, the Dodgers have played with a looseness that isn’t flattering.
The age old adage is that you are what your record says you are. That might be true in this case. The Dodgers are a playoff team, but they are far from the best team in baseball. They currently have the sixth best record in baseball heading into September, and that feels about right considering their season so far.
Ordinarily, leading your division heading into September is a privilege any team in the Majors would die for, but the expectations for the 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers were lofty.
The Dodgers had the best record in baseball last season, and went on to win the Fall Classic. Their first full-season World Series championship since 1988.
They improved upon that team in the offseason. Adding two-time NL Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell to an already prolific starting rotation. Not two mention two former All-Star closers in the process, and some of the best international free agents on the market.
Before the season began, oddsmakers had the Dodgers as the favorites to win the World Series and winning the most games in the regular season with their over/under win total set at 106.5 wins for the 2025 campaign.
With 25 games left, the Dodgers would have to win all of them just to surpass 100 wins, an impossibility to say the least.
Yes, the Dodgers have been besieged by injuries this season, but the numbers paint a troubling picture: a 4.13 ERA, 13th worst in the majors, anchored by a bullpen that has logged more innings than any other staff.
Scott, their former All-Star closer, has already blown eight saves, second-most in baseball. The walks pile up (3.4 per game, 25th in the league). The extra-base hits allowed stack higher than they should.
On defense, the Dodgers are far from elite. They’ve turned among the fewest double plays in baseball while grounding into among the most. They commit an error nearly every other game. But the statistics don’t even capture the full scope—missed cutoff men, throws to the wrong base, sloppy routes in the outfield, booted balls that lead to extra bases for their opponents, and outs handed away on the bases have become the soundtrack of their season.
It’s an unusual tune for a Roberts-led team, especially considering what got them to the top of the mountain last October. The 2024 World Series wasn’t won just by the Dodgers’ talent. It was lost by the Yankees’ mistakes—mental miscues, sloppy defense, and untimely errors that the Dodgers exploited. In fact, their scouting report on the Yankees said they could exploit those things! This season, the roles have been reversed.
“This is an unrecognizable ball club,” Roberts said of his 2025 team as a whole compared to his previous teams. “We still have a lot of talent. We’re still in a decent spot, but we have to play better.”
On Sunday, after another pair of uninspired losses marked by more of the same issues, veteran infielder Miguel Rojas gave voice to what many in the clubhouse and fan base have been feeling.
“We need to get better at the little things,” said Rojas, voicing publicly what the entire Dodgers fan base has been feeling for the last five months. “Dodgers baseball has always been about paying attention to detail, doing the little things, throwing to the right bases, being on the right bases, and not making mistakes that give your opponent extra chances. We can be better if we focus on the little things.”
It wasn’t a rant, but it was an honest reckoning. Rojas, now in his 12th season, understands how thin the margins are when September and October roll around.
“We only have 25 games left, it’s going to take every little ounce of us to be able to do what we want to do,” Rojas said. “We should be playing much better baseball than we have.”
That call for accountability has landed at a critical time. September baseball is unforgiving, and the postseason—no matter how much talent resides in a clubhouse—has a way of exposing weaknesses.
But he also acknowledged the human side of it. After a season that stretched longer than anyone else’s in 2024 and an early start to this campaign, fatigue—particularly mental fatigue—has been a quiet shadow over this team. “Sometimes you get tired, especially mentally,” he said. “We all have a lot of things going on in our lives, in our season, and it’s not easy to be locked in every single day.”
Thankfully, Rojas says the Dodgers have drawn a line in the sand after this weekend: 25 games left, plus the postseason. That’s the commitment. “We can’t take pitches off,” Rojas said. “Whether it’s on defense, at the plate, or on the mound. You have to take it one pitch at a time. It takes a lot of sacrifice and energy.”
The path forward is simple to say, but difficult to execute. Eliminate the miscues. Lock in on the details. Play Dodgers baseball again. Do that, and Rojas says they can become the first team to repeat as World Series Champions since the Yankees in 2000.
“I think we’re going to be pretty dangerous in the playoffs,” Rojas said.
Because this October, unlike last year, the Dodgers may not be gifted extra outs from their opponent. This time, the responsibility—and the opportunity—lies entirely in their own hands.