Saturday, April 5, 2025
Copyrighted by Sarah Morris, 2025
Last night, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost their first game of the 2025 season. Their offense was nonexistent, and this led to baserunning mistakes. The Dodgers wasted a great outing by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is on a mission to win his first National League Cy Young Award. Yes, Kirby Yates allowed two runs in the seventh, but it happens. The Dodgers should have won the game, but they struggled with their offense.
With Freddie Freeman on the IL, the Dodgers must figure out how to score runs. They have the second-most home runs in the major leagues, but they have the fifteenth-highest batting average. This isn’t going to make the Dodgers world champions again until they solve the batting average problem.
Shohei Ohtani is their best hitter that the Dodgers have. While he is off to a slow beginning to the 2025 season, he has a .324 batting average with 3 home runs and 3 RBI. Ohtani should have more RBI than he has, but the bottom of the Dodger lineup is performing terribly.
Dave Roberts can’t put Tommy Edman, whose batting average is .286 with 5 home runs and 9 RBI. With Freeman out, the Dodgers should have Edman in the third position in the lineup. Teoscar Hernández is the perfect cleanup hitter.
Will Smith is off to a great start, and Michael Conforto woke up on Wednesday. Conforto will be a good fifth or sixth place hitter in the Dodger lineup.
Max Muncy and Andy Pages are the problem. Muncy will be okay. Wednesday, he had a crucial double. During his Dodger career, Muncy has had three typical outcomes to his at-bats, a strikeout, a walk, and a home run. The Dodgers know this, and they know Muncy is a notorious slow starter. He will be okay when May comes.
The Dodgers have a center field problem. Right now, they have Andy Pages playing in center field. First, he isn’t a good defensive center fielder. He should be playing right field, but the Dodgers have Teoscar Hernández there. Teoscar Hernández isn’t a center fielder at this stage of his career.
If Pages was producing offensively, the Dodgers could overlook his defensive shortcomings. He is not. Pages has a .111 batting average with nothing. He is hitting in front of Ohtani, who needs runners to hit in. This is the Dodgers’ offensive production problem.
How do they solve this?
They don’t unless they trade for a bona fide center fielder. During the offseason, they planned to play Edman in center field. They can’t. Edman is a fantastic second baseman who is stabilizing the infield. The Dodgers signed Hyeseong Kim from South Korea. He has shown during spring training that he wasn’t ready to hit major league pitching yet. They are playing Kim in center field in Triple-A.
Every team has problems. The Dodgers aren’t the exception.
