The Dodgers are leading the majors in on-base-plus-slugging percentage as an offense this year. They are second in the National League in scoring, and third in team batting average.

They have the league’s top players in hitting (Will Smith batting .324 and Freddie Freeman batting .306) and OPS (Shohei Ohtani at .982 and Smith at .963).

They figure to have several players who will get MVP votes at the end of the season, including the odds-on favorite for the award in Ohtani.

And yet, as the club enters the stretch run of the season, their lineup might be the biggest question mark in their bid to defend last year’s World Series championship. Since the start of July, they have scored the third-fewest runs in the majors, have the second-lowest team batting average and the fourth-lowest OPS.

Read more:Dodgers manufacture enough offense to slip past Tampa Bay Rays

They stayed relatively quiet at the trade deadline, hopeful a number of struggling superstars would get things going over the campaign’s final two months. But to this point, only Freeman (who endured a two-month slump before heating up again on their recent nine-game trip) has shown tangible signs of a late-season revival.

“If you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” manager Dave Roberts said this past weekend, after utility outfielder Alex Call became the team’s only deadline addition to the lineup. “That’s something that we’re all counting on … Now it’s up to all of us to go out there and do our jobs.”

While that’s true of most hitters in the lineup, all the way down to Andy Pages and (even before his most recent ankle injury flare-up) Tommy Edman, there are three star-level players in particular the Dodgers have been waiting to round back into form.

Here’s a look at the problems plaguing each of them:

Mookie Betts

First 15 games: .304 average, .554 slugging percentage, .954 OPS

Last 87 games: .222 average, .327 slugging percentage, .616 OPS

When asked on Sunday for the umpteenth time this season if he knew what was wrong with Mookie Betts' swing, Roberts failed to come up with an answer.

"Honestly, no,” Roberts said. “I know that he and the hitting coaches have been working diligently, consistently, intentionally. I think that the first thing, the easiest thing, to say is it's a mechanical thing. So I guess kind of that's where he's at. But also, I do believe that there's a mental part of it, too, which is sort of beating him down a little bit.”

When Betts was presented with the same question later Sunday afternoon, after running a season-long hitless streak to 17 at-bats and watching his batting average dip to .233, he was left searching for divine intervention.

“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” he said. “It’s up to God at this point.”

Read more:Blake Snell is sharp in Dodgers return, but Rays get the win

Betts’ struggles are not for a lack of effort. He spends hours in the batting cage before (and sometimes after) almost every game. He has tried mechanical tweaks and mental cues and fundamental drills that in the past would get him back on track.

His approach has largely remained sound, as he ranks in the top 20% of big-leaguers in chase rate, whiff rate and strikeouts percentage, per Baseball Savant’s Statcast data.

And while his bat speed is in the 11th percentile of MLB hitters (and down almost two mph from his 39-homer season in 2023), it’s also about the same as he had last year, when he was still a .289 hitter with 19 home runs (in just 116 games) and a .863 OPS (which only trailed Shohei Ohtani for the best on the team).

“I really don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I don’t have any answers.”

Perhaps the most confounding metric: Betts is in the 99th percentile in “squared-up” rate, a metric that effectively determines when a ball is hit off the sweet spot of the bat.

But, even when Betts does make solid contact, he simply isn’t generating as much power as he usually does — ranking among the bottom third of big-league hitters in average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage; and watching fly balls that used to leave the yard die at the warning track, if they even make it that far.

While he has been a victim of some bad luck (his expected .252 batting average is almost 20 points higher than his actual mark), he has had no choice but to “go back to the drawing board” time and time again this year — gradually grating on his confidence as answers continually fail to appear.

“I don’t know anybody in the world that would have confidence in the stretch that’s going on [for me],” he said. “It sucks when you don’t get stuff done.”

Betts can be a streaky hitter. And the Dodgers’ hope is that, at some point over these final two months, he’ll find something that unlocks more pop in his bat, and go on the kind of heater that can make him an effective producer at the top of the lineup again.

Until that happens, however, questions will persist. About whether his shortstop play is to blame for his offensive decline (a theory multiple rival evaluators have increasingly pointed to of late as a reason for his struggles). About whether age is simply catching up to the soon-to-be 33-year-old veteran. And about whether he will ever be the same hitter he was once, amid a season-long slump almost no one saw coming.

Shohei Ohtani

First 70 games (before resuming pitching): .297 average, 1.034 OPS, 24% strikeout rate

Last 40 games (since resuming pitching): .230 average, .886 OPS, 31% strikeout rate

The easy demarcation line for Ohtani this year has been before and after he returned to pitching in mid-June, with offensive production dropping even as his stuff has ticked up on the mound.

Ohtani has still been a relatively productive hitter since then, continuing to hit home runs at a league-leading pace (he is tied with Kyle Schwarber for the NL lead with 38 on the year).

But he has become a much easier out the last couple months, as well, epitomized first and foremost by his climbing strikeout rate.

An over-aggressive approach would figure to be the easy explanation here. And there have been times, Roberts noted, the slugger appears to get into a “swing mode” that prevents him from laying off bad pitches.

Read more:With a little help from a Coldplay meme, Freddie Freeman stays hot in Dodgers’ win

But on the whole this season, Ohtani is actually swinging less often than he did last year, chasing pitches at an almost identical rate and continuing to draw more walks than almost anyone in the majors (his 71 free passes are seventh-most this season).

Ohtani’s problem has been an increase in swing-and-miss, with the reigning MVP coming up empty on more than one-third of his hacks.

It might simply be a byproduct of the added physical workload he has taken on since resuming two-way duties. But he has insisted such problems remain fixable, citing a lack of balance and consistency in his swing mechanics.

Like Betts, Ohtani can also be prone to more extreme highs and lows over the course of a year. Last season, for example, he hit just .235 with an .886 OPS in August, before turning around in September and batting .393 with a 1.225 OPS.

The Dodgers could use another late-season tear like that again this term. Whether he can do it while also ramping up as a pitcher looms as one of the biggest questions facing the Dodgers down the stretch this year.

Teoscar Hernández

First 33 games (pre-groin strain): .315 average, nine home runs, .933 OPS, 18% strikeout rate

Last 57 games (post-groin strain): .211 average, seven home runs, .619 OPS, 28% strikeout rate

Hernández's midseason drop-off is perhaps the easiest to explain of any recently scuffling Dodgers hitter.

Before suffering a groin/adductor strain in early May, he was on an All-Star (and potentially even MVP-caliber) pace after re-signing with the Dodgers in the offseason.

Since then, however, the 32-year-old simply hasn’t looked the same — both at the plate, where he hasn’t been able to drive the ball as he usually does, and in the field, where his range has been clearly limited.

To that end, a foul ball he took off his foot last month hasn’t helped matters either.

There have been some recent signs that Hernández is getting healthy again. His slugging percentage has started to tick back up since getting a week off for the All-Star break. He has had more hard contact, especially to center and the opposite field.

“At the beginning [after my injury] it was a little hard,” Hernández said after hitting home runs in consecutive games at Fenway Park last week. “First I got my groin, then I got the foul off my foot. Couldn’t put a lot of weight [on it] for like two weeks. Thank God there was the break in there. I got those four days off, going through that and getting some treatment, getting some rest. And finally feel like myself again.”

Read more:Dodgers welcome deadline additions, hopeful arrival ‘raises the floor for our ballclub’

But, it still hasn’t resulted in a total reversal of fortunes, with Hernández finishing the road trip going just five-for-25 with nine strikeouts and only one extra-base hit.

Last year, Hernández’s ability to be a run-producer behind the Dodgers’ star trio of hitters was crucial to both their regular-season and postseason offensive success. Lately, though, he has been more strikeout-prone and less opportunistic at the plate, contributing to a string of frustrating recent defeats marked by squandered chances in leverage opportunities.

“He's bearing down, and he's not trying to give at-bats away,” Roberts said. “He's grinding.”

Much like the Dodgers’ other scuffling stars, the team will need him to fully snap out of it, and live up once again to the expectations the club had for him and the lineup at large.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

What we learned as Randy Rodriguez, Giants are sunk by Pirates' walk-off rally originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

• BOX SCORE

SAN FRANCISCO — The Pittsburgh Pirates shocked the Giants at Oracle Park last week and led them to sell at the MLB trade deadline. They stunned them again in the ninth inning Monday at PNC Park. 

The Pirates scored two runs off new closer Randy Rodriguez, getting a 5-4 walk-off win. The tying run came on an RBI single by former Giants top prospect Joey Bart, and the winning run came a batter later on a slow roller to first. Jack Suwinski, the runner at first, slid home safely just ahead of the throw.

Rodriguez’s rough outing — and the poor night for the bullpen overall — cost Justin Verlander his 264th win. Verlander looked like a 35-year-old Verlander, but the Giants gave up four runs after he departed. 

Coming off a series win in New York, the Giants initially found a soft landing in Pittsburgh. They were up against right-hander Johan Oviedo, who was making his season debut after missing two years with injuries, including Tommy John surgery. 

Oviedo lasted just one inning, and the Giants left him off the hook. He needed 43 pitches in the first and walked three, but the lineup pushed just two runs across. That was it until the sixth, when Jung Hoo Lee made it a 4-1 game with a two-run triple, but the lead wouldn’t last. 

Turn Back The Clock

The Pirates had Verlander on the ropes in the fourth, with an error putting runners on second and third with one out. A groundout erased the runner on third, and J.P. Martinez came out for a meeting to let Verlander catch his breath. He responded with his most impressive sequence of the season. 

Old friend Joey Bart fell behind in the count and then took a 98.3 mph fastball. On 2-2, Verlander went back to the heater, freezing Bart with a perfect 97.8 mph fastball on the outside corner.

The pitches were the two fastest of the season for Verlander, and the 98.3 mph bolt was his first at 98-plus since Aug. 16, 2022. Not too bad for a 42-year-old. 

Climbing The Charts

With his five innings, Verlander reached 3,510 for his big league career. That moved him past a Giants legend on the all-time leaderboard. 

Verlander passed Juan Marichal (3,507) and moved into 71st in MLB history. Next up is Adonis Terry, who last pitched in 1897 and is four innings ahead of Verlander. (Terry once pitched 476 innings in a season; it truly was an entirely different era.)

Verlander only has thrown 94 1/3 innings this year, but in his prime he was as durable as anyone in the game. He reached 200 innings 12 times and led the majors in innings four times. 

A New Look

Without Tyler Rogers (Mets) and Camilo Doval (New York Yankees), the Giants have to experiment in the late innings. That led to some new faces as they were trying to hold on for Verlander on Monday night. 

Rookie Carson Seymour had a quick sixth, striking out a pair, but manager Bob Melvin sent him out for the seventh and paid for it. Seymour gave up a two-run blast to Suwinski, giving him five homers allowed in 11 innings this year. 

Spencer Bivens got the eighth, which belonged to Rogers for four months. 

Bivens retired a pair and gave up a single to Nick Gonzales. When Rodriguez entered for a four-out save attempt, Gonzales was thrown out trying to steal second on Patrick Bailey. 

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With the Yankees in need of adding some pitching depth, the club has signed right-hander Kenta Maeda to a minor league contract.

Maeda, 37, was designated for assignment and later released by the Detroit Tigers in early May and had been pitching in the Chicago Cubs organization before being released on Saturday.

In seven games this season with the Tigers, the right-hander pitched to a 7.88 ERA over 8.0 innings.

Maeda has had mixed success during his major league career, finishing third in NL Rookie of the Year voting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016 and then finishing as the AL runner-up for Cy Young in the shortened 2020 season, when he pitched to a 2.70 ERA.

If Maeda were to sign and make the big-league roster, it’s unclear if the Yankees would use him as a starter or a reliever. He hasn’t started a game this season, but does have 172 career big-league starts.

The Yankees saw Luis Gil make his season debut on Sunday in Miami, but the right-hander looked rusty in his first start following a lat injury. The Yankees also recently released Marcus Stroman, leaving them with a current five-man rotation of Carlos Rodon, Max Fried, Will Warren, Cam Schlittler, and Gil.

The Yanks' interest in the free agent was reported earlier Monday by Jon Heyman of the New York Post.

A day after Austin Warren pitched 4.0 scoreless innings in relief during the Mets' blowout loss to the Giants, New York is calling up a fresh arm.

Right-hander Dom Hamel is getting promoted from Triple-A Syracuse, with Warren getting optioned.

Hamel, 26, will be making his major league debut if/when he appears in a game with manager Carlos Mendoza confirming he'll be used out of the bullpen where the one-time starting pitcher has been pitching from lately in the minors.

"Obviously proud of him," Mendoza said. "It’s not easy. This was a guy that as a prospect came up as a starter and then when you get the news that you’re not gonna start, we’re gonna put you in the bullpen – he understood and kept working and put himself in a position when there was a need at the big league level, his name came up and here he is. (He can) provide length, he’s got pitches, (can go) multiple innings so I’m excited to have him."

In 22 games (eight starts) this season for Syracuse, Hamel has a 4.73 ERA and 1.26 WHIP with 59 strikeouts in 53.1 innings.

In five minor league seasons, he has a 4.63 ERA and 1.37 WHIP.

With the Mets' bullpen recently bolstered by trades that brought in late-inning arms Ryan Helsley, Tyler Rogers, and Gregory Soto -- joining Edwin Diaz, Reed Garrett, Brooks Raley, and Ryne Stanek -- the eighth spot in the 'pen has been a revolving door of sorts lately.

Rico Garcia held the spot last week before being DFA'd before Warren was called up.

Liam Hendriks clarifies apparent cross-up with Red Sox about injury originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

What we’ve got here, is failure to communicate.

Red Sox pitcher Liam Hendricks told reporters today that Alex Cora had a “slip of the tongue” on Sunday when the Sox manager said that the veteran reliever’s season is likely over due to a hip injury.

Hendriks said he’s discussed the matter with Cora and added that he fully expects to pitch again this season.

In the interest of making matters entirely clear, the loquacious Australian issued a rather memorable update of his own on the second opinion he received.

“I saw a different guy and he was like, ‘You’ve got the body of a gorilla but you’ve got the hips of a cheerleader.’ I didn’t like that euphemism as much. I like, ‘Your body is a brick s—house and your door is made out of a sheet,'” Hendriks said, via MassLive’s Chris Cotillo.

The 36-year-old righty has missed more than two months with a hip injury, which is the latest in a long run of bad injury luck for the three-time All-Star.

The Red Sox signed Hendriks to a two-year, $10 million contract before the 2024 season while he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, with the hope that he could return to the mound late in the season. But he never saw the field in 2024, and was placed on the injured list with right elbow inflammation just hours before Opening Day back in March.

After he was activated from the IL in April, Hendriks struggled in 14 appearances, posting a 6.59 ERA. He’s been sidelined since late May with the hip injury and was transferred to the 60-day injured list in early July.

Just months after submitting an All-Star season for the White Sox in 2022, Hendriks underwent treatment for stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He returned to the big leagues in May of 2023 and pitched in just five games before suffering the elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery.

Phillies' bullpen features triple digits (and more coming) originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Following the Phillies’ win over the Detroit Tigers Sunday, catcher J.T. Realmuto was asked if he’d ever caught a pitch as hard as new closer Jhoan Duran. After all, Duran had just finished off the Tigers with consecutive fastballs that were clocked at 103 mph.

“I don’t know,” Realmuto said. “If Alvy has thrown it maybe he’s the hardest thrower I’ve caught. I don’t know if Alvy’s touched that or not, if not then no.”

Realmuto was talking about suspended reliever Jose Alvarado, who will be joining the team in the next couple of weeks after serving his 80-game suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. It must be quite intriguing when manager Rob Thomson can think about closing out a game with two guys throwing that hard in the last couple of innings.

“It’s been a long 80 days without him,” Thomson said. “Not only is he talented but he brings so much energy to the field and the clubhouse. It’s really good to have him around. He’s certainly going to bring more energy and he’s going to bring another really, really good arm.”

As for the availability of Duran, fans will be happy to hear what the gameplan is.

“He’s available tonight,” Thomson said before the Phillies faced the Baltimore Orioles. “So he hasn’t gone three days in a row, he’s gone four out of five three or four times this year. I’d be very careful with him going three in a row. It all depends on how he feels and he feels good today, so he can go back in there.”

As for using Duran four times in five games, Thomson said: “I’d feel really comfortable if he tells me he feels good. He’s done it a few times now, so he’s used to it, anyway.”

The entrance and performance of Duran in his two outings and saves have been the talk of the town since he was acquired last Thursday. It doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon.

Getting closer

Sunday and Monday seemed to be very big days in the progression of third baseman Alec Bohm as he amped up his hitting and throwing routines.

“Supposed to be a full day,” Thomson said before Monday of Bohm’s workout schedule. “Hit off the machines, will reevaluate tomorrow. Very good. I talked to him after his workout yesterday and he said it was the best day yet. Really good. In fact, he went in, got some treatment and went back down to the cage after I talked to him and did some more hitting, so that’s a good sign.”

Bohm was on the field throwing Monday and even threw an off-balance, one-footed souvenir high into the stands. That doesn’t seem like something someone with sore ribs would do. Thomson has said that his return time is a play-it-by-ear type of thing.