PHOENIX — The two-time defending World Series champions are in a rare funk.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> lost their season-high seventh game in a row in a stunning collapse Friday night after the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a> rallied for a 4-3 win<\/a> when rookie Ryan Waldschmidt<\/a> hit a two-run, walk-off homer against closer Edwin Diaz<\/a>.<\/p>\n “A loss is a loss but to get walked off never feels good,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We didn’t play a clean game, a great game, on either side of the baseball, but we did enough to put ourselves in position to win a game.<\/p>\n “Unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it.”<\/p>\n It was another rough outing for Diaz, who has an 11.00 ERA over 11 outings this season. The 32-year-old is a three-time All-Star, but hasn’t helped the Dodgers much after signing a three-year, $69 million deal during the offseason.<\/p>\n Waldschmidt connected on Diaz’s hanging slider, hitting it into the left-center field seats for his second career homer and first big league walk-off.<\/p>\n “It’s the slider,” Diaz said. “The fastball was great today, but I missed the slider right in the middle. I think I was trying to be perfect with the pitch, and I’m missing right in the middle — I’ve got to be better. I’m a big league pitcher so I’ve got to make pitches.”<\/p>\n The Dodgers were swept by the Boston Red Sox<\/a> and Chicago Cubs<\/a> coming into Friday night’s game. They still have a comfortable lead in the National League West — 7 games in front of the Diamondbacks — despite a 10-16 record since July 5.<\/p>\n Roberts acknowledged that Diaz has been struggling since his return from the injured list on July 29, but the manager wasn’t necessarily ready to try a new closer. His reasoning was simple: There’s no clear-cut alternative.<\/p>\n “Honestly, you’ve got to look at the options,” Roberts said. “The way some of these guys are throwing, they’re not throwing great, either.”<\/p>\n The Dodgers still look like a formidable team, particularly after adding ace left-hander Tarik Skubal<\/a> in a trade-deadline deal<\/a> with the Detroit Tigers<\/a> last week. Two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell<\/a> is also slated to return Tuesday<\/a> after missing most of the season because of injuries.<\/p>\n And the lineup still has plenty of star power with Shohei Ohtani<\/a>, Freddie Freeman<\/a>, Mookie Betts<\/a> and Kyle Tucker<\/a>.<\/p>\n Roberts said before Friday’s game that the remedy for the recent troubles was simple.<\/p>\n “We’ve just got to play better,” Roberts said. “I don’t think the standings — I mean they’re important, they matter — but I just feel like with the talent we have, we’ve just got to play good baseball and it’ll take care of itself. It always does.”<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX — The two-time defending World Series champions are in a rare funk. The Los Angeles Dodgers lost…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":988516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[396412,1279,35249,5723,2502,1266,50,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-988515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-396412","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-diaz-edwin","tag-espn","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/988516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}