What started as a breakout season is starting to break down in ominous fashion.
Both for rookie pitcher Gavin Stone, and the rest of his slumping, shorthanded Dodgers team.
In a 6-5 defeat to the lowly Oakland A’s on Friday, Stone gave up five runs in four-plus innings, while the lineup went silent between a first-inning two-run homer from Teoscar Hernández and three-run ninth-inning homer from Shohei Ohtani.
The result: The Dodgers’ sixth loss in their last eight games, and 14th in 24 games going back to July 3.
“The guys we’re running out there are doing the best they can,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But I still feel we need to get better. We got to find a way to turn the page.”
Stone, especially.
Five weeks ago, Stone’s season peaked with a shutout against the Chicago White Sox, one that lowered his ERA to 2.73 and had him rocketing up leaderboards for National League Rookie of the Year.
Since then, however, some of the problems that plagued Stone’s short-lived debut in 2023 (when he had a 9.00 ERA in eight outings) have started to resurface.
“I’m just not executing in certain counts, certain situations,” Stone said, repeatedly, following his outing. “I feel good with all my pitches. I’m just not executing in certain situations.”
In his last five outings, the pitch-to-contact right-hander has failed to minimize damage, yielding 39 hits and seven home runs. His ability to induce swing-and-miss has disappeared, with just 17 strikeouts in his last 22 ⅔ innings. Most importantly, he has been charged with four or more runs in four of those last five starts, giving him a 7.15 ERA in that span and a 3.63 ERA overall this year.
Read more: Dodgers need Gavin Stone to rebound from swoon that helped seal loss to Astros
Friday’s troubles began in the fourth inning, when Stone served up a pair of solo home runs to Shea Langeliers (on a changeup over the plate) and Seth Brown (on an elevated full-count fastball).
Then, in the fifth, Stone failed to record an out, issuing a leadoff walk before yielding run-scoring extra-base hits down the first base line to Miguel Andujar and JJ Bleday that ended his night.
The runner he left behind scored, as well, after reliever Joe Kelly surrendered a two-run homer to his first batter, Brent Rooker.
“He’s been our most consistent starter as far as taking the baseball, giving us length,” Roberts said of Stone, who is now 9-5 this season. “But I think if you look back at, since that [Chicago] start, it hasn’t been what he was doing the first few months of the season.”
The reasons for Stone’s slump have proven confounding.
There hasn’t been an obvious decline in the right-hander’s stuff (on Friday, his fastball was actually up a tick at 95.6 mph). There were no mechanical issues he could point to either.
Yet, the 25-year-old simply isn’t getting outs as efficiently as he did earlier this season.
The Dodgers can only hope it doesn’t mean their Cinderella story is becoming a late-season pumpkin.
“I don’t know if it’s fatigue, but it very well could be,” Roberts said of Stone, whose 111 innings this year are only 10 shy of his previous career high (when he was a minor-leaguer in 2022).
“I mean, that’s not an excuse,” Stone countered when asked about his ever-increasing workload. “It’s just literally executing.”
Stone’s struggles are among many issues currently plaguing the Dodgers, who hold just a four-game lead in the NL West over the Arizona Diamondbacks (and a 4 ½ game lead over the third-place San Diego Padres) after being nine games clear as recently as late June.
Read more: Clayton Kershaw struggles, Padres sweep Dodgers to close gap in NL West
The lineup still has Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Miguel Rojas, Chris Taylor and the newly acquired Tommy Edman on the injured list — though everyone but Taylor is scheduled to play in a simulated game next week.
Freddie Freeman also remains away from the team on the family emergency list. Roberts said Friday he does not expect Freeman to rejoin the club this weekend, but noted that the first baseman has been staying active and swinging a bat since leaving the team last week.
“When you have a good team, the only question is if everybody can stay healthy,” Hernández said. “Obviously we’ve had a lot of injuries lately. But like I say, we just have to keep trying to make it happen.”
Even the Dodgers’ healthy players, however, have too often gone missing.
Will Smith is two for his last 30, and is batting just .175 with 39 strikeouts since June 13.
“He’s just missing pitches in the hitting zone,” Roberts said pregame. “When you get pitches to hit and you don’t end the at-bat, here comes some strikeouts. That’s just the way it goes.”
Ohtani had a 15 at-bat hitless streak that culminated with a bases-loaded, inning-ending ground out in the seventh inning Friday, before his ninth-inning home run that proved too little, too late.
“To be honest, the last several games I haven’t been feeling too great at the plate,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “The previous at-bat before that home run, if I could have contributed a little bit more, I think we wouldn’t have been in that spot the next inning.”
And while deadline acquisitions Kevin Kiermaier and Amed Rosario were activated Friday, the bottom of the lineup remains woefully thin. In their loss to the A’s, each of the Dodgers’ Nos. 4-8 hitters entered the game batting .206 or worse this season.
“I think certain guys that are playing right now, essentially playing every day, are maybe being a little exposed,” Roberts said. “You’re not being able to protect certain guys, because our depth is certainly tapped thin.”
Still, the offense’s current slump — which should be somewhat rectified once Betts and Freeman are back with the team — pales in comparison to the bigger-picture uncertainties facing the Dodgers on the mound.
Read more: L.A. native Jack Flaherty excited by ‘special’ Dodgers opportunity, downplays back concerns
Tyler Glasnow hasn’t looked quite like himself since returning from a back injury. Clayton Kershaw was roughed up for seven runs on Wednesday night in San Diego. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is still out with a shoulder injury (he is scheduled to throw his first bullpen session since getting hurt on Saturday).
The Dodgers are optimistic that deadline centerpiece Jack Flaherty will provide a boost, starting with his team debut Saturday.
But Stone’s drop-off has undercut any further stability from the starting rotation — one that has the second-worst ERA (5.88) and fewest total innings (127) in the majors since Stone’s shutout on June 26.
“Sometimes you get into a slump, and we’re going through one right now,” Hernández said. “Just have to keep forcing everything [and] take it a positive way.”
Injury updates
Of all the players scheduled to participate in next week’s simulated game, which will take place Thursday, Muncy’s inclusion was the biggest surprise.
After missing the last 2½ months with a strained oblique, the slugger finally turned a corner in his recovery last week. The fact he will soon face live pitching again represents another “big step” in his rehab, Roberts said, though his timeline to rejoin the team remains unclear.
Read more: Hernández: Mookie Betts returns soon from injury, but where do the Dodgers play him?
Roberts also said that Edman — the trade deadline addition who has yet to play in the majors this year because of his ankle sprain and an offseason wrist surgery — will go out on a minor-league rehab assignment after the simulated game. He will begin playing the field again for the first time this year.
On the mound, Walker Buehler (who gave up four runs in less than four innings Thursday night with triple-A Oklahoma City) is expected to make one more rehab outing next week, then rejoin the Dodgers rotation after that.
Miller scratched in AAA
Pitcher Bobby Miller was scratched from his scheduled start on Friday with triple-A Oklahoma City after experiencing adductor tightness in a bullpen session this week.
The team made the decision to be “overly cautious,” according one person with knowledge of the situation who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. Roberts was unsure when Miller, who missed two months earlier this year with a shoulder injury before being demoted to triple-A before the All-Star break, would pitch again.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.