Dodgers takeaways: On Shohei Ohtani's August, Freddie Freeman's injury and more (2024)

ST. LOUIS — The Los Angeles Dodgers found themselves in a familiar position Sunday afternoon, relying heavily again on the left arm of Clayton Kershaw as the season turns toward the stretch run.

That surgically repaired left shoulder appears to have rounded back into form, as Kershaw delivered six scoreless innings on a tidy 70 pitches and the Dodgers capped a winning trip with a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.

Some things don’t change, after all.

“We needed him to be Clayton Kershaw,” Miguel Rojas said. “It seems like he’s going to be the horse of our rotation once again.”

The stakes are high in a division race that’s become far closer than expected. And, as the rotation around him gets shakier by the day, Kershaw — months removed from the first major arm surgery of his career — looks as stable as ever.

“He’s always been the stopper of this team,” Austin Barnes said.

“It’s been fun to watch, to be on this ride with Clayton,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Shohei Ohtani’s puzzling month

Shohei Ohtani’s month of August has been a lesson in extremes. The NL MVP front-runner has turned in his worst stretch of the season, recording just 12 hits. It just so happens that seven of those hits have cleared the fence, with only Miami’s Jake Burger hitting more (nine) this month. Ohtani has punished some mistakes but struggled to maintain the rest of his offensive profile.

His strikeouts are up slightly (22.6 percent, from 22.5 percent before August). His walks are down (6.7 percent, from 12.8 percent).

“I think the plate discipline is just not what it is when he’s right,” Roberts said. “I think the swing decisions aren’t as good as they have been.”

It has put his Triple Crown quest on pause. He’s hitting .290, behind the likes of Luis Arraez (.308 entering play Sunday), Marcell Ozuna (.307), Ketel Marte (.298), Alec Bohm (.296) and more among the NL leaders.

Ohtani’s August OPS of .749 would be his lowest for a full month since he started the 2022 season with a .722 OPS in the first month. Going back to July 28, he’s hit .147/.226/.427 over his past 18 games.

Ohtani acknowledged some issues with his approach but noted through interpreter Will Ireton that his struggles stem from something “mechanically, that’s not quite where it’s supposed to be.”

The slugger pointed to his posture in the box, and where that leaves him in being able to pick up the baseball and make consistent hard contact.

“When I’m not really squaring up, then it’s kind of telling me that I’m not quite on it,” Ohtani said.

“He’s losing his foundation, his base, his connection to the ground,” Roberts said. “That’s never a good sign for a hitter.”

Roberts took Saturday as a positive day. Ohtani went 1-for-5 with a 111.9 mph home run and a pair of stolen bases. Then Ohtani went and went 1-for-5 again — with a 113.5 mph home run — on Sunday.

Yet another injury concern

When Freddie Freeman emerged from the X-ray machine at Busch Stadium and saw that the results were negative, he and the Dodgers felt a collective sigh of relief. Freeman jammed the middle finger on his right hand in the sixth inning on Saturday night when Nolan Gorman’s groundball took a funky late hop; the swelling alone was enough for Freeman to consent to being pulled from the game early.

That concern returned some on Sunday morning when the discomfort in Freeman’s middle finger worsened. The former MVP couldn’t pick up a bat, much less play in Sunday’s series finale against the Cardinals, and he’s going in for a CT scan on Monday when the Dodgers return to Los Angeles. Even when Freeman returns to the lineup, Roberts said, he likely will be playing through pain.

Contingencies are already being worked out. Max Muncy, on a rehab assignment, took grounders at first base on Sunday with Triple-A Oklahoma City. He joined Tommy Edman on a flight to Los Angeles on Sunday night, and will likely be activated with Edman as soon as Monday — a day earlier than expected. Muncy has played five innings at first base since Freeman signed with the Dodgers as a free agent ahead of the 2022 season.

“If we need him to play first, he can do that, too,” Roberts said. “Just to cover us if Freddie’s thing is a little bit longer than we think.”

Sunday marked the first time since then that Freeman has missed a game due to injury.

That latest blow to their lineup comes less than a week after Mookie Betts returned from a broken hand, and on the same weekend their rotation took another hit with Tyler Glasnow landing on the injured list with right elbow tendonitis.

“There are some injuries that happen that we just can’t really control,” Ohtani said. “And obviously, having guys like Freddie or Mookie is really important, it adds a lot of … it’s really important for us.”

A lost year for a starter

Bobby Miller’s brief time of reinvention down in Oklahoma City came and went and resulted in him returning to the majors on Saturday looking very much like the same Bobby Miller who left it.

His velocity was better, until it wasn’t. He touched 99.7 mph with his third pitch of the night and sat around 99 mph throughout the first inning, only to see it tail off in the subsequent frames, including a 95.7 mph sinker inside that Alec Burleson turned on for a two-run home run that gave the Cardinals the lead for good. The pitch wasn’t in a bad spot despite a 2-0 count; the lack of velocity left it vulnerable.

It didn’t help that the fastball was all Miller could rely upon most of the night. It took until the middle innings for Miller to land his curveball for a strike. It took until nearly the end of his outing to find a feel for the changeup. Despite issuing just one walk, he didn’t have much resembling command. Miller threw four wild pitches.

“He was really fighting with one arm behind his back,” Roberts said after Miller allowed four runs on eight hits in 4 2/3 innings. His ERA through eight big-league starts this year is 8.02.

The Dodgers had sent Miller to their complex in Arizona before starting games with Oklahoma City, hoping to re-center a delivery that has been out of whack all year, especially since going down with a shoulder injury in April. Some of the crux of his command issues with his breaking ball, he said, were because his delivery was taking him toward the first-base side, falling off toward his glove side and leading to uncompetitive pitches.

Miller considered Saturday to be progress, even as the same issues keep cropping up.

The Dodgers brought Miller back to the majors more out of circ*mstance than anything else. Glasnow’s injury has thrust another pitcher (along with Walker Buehler) into a situation where they must get things right before pitching in games that matter. With such a slim lead in the division, it’s hardly ideal. The expectation is that Miller will make another start until Glasnow can return.

“That’s the thought right now, yeah,” Roberts said. “But he has to continue to show some improvement, too.”

(Top photo of Shohei Ohtani fouling a pitch off his foot: Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)

Fabian Ardaya is a staff writer covering the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Athletic. He previously spent three seasons covering the crosstown Los Angeles Angels for The Athletic. He graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May 2017 after growing up in a Phoenix-area suburb. Follow Fabian on Twitter @FabianArdaya