The Dodgers thought they had regained momentum after winning the series against the New York Yankees last weekend.
After all, after a month of mostly mediocre play from the top-ranked franchise, they may have actually lit a fierce and relentless summer flame.
As an encore to their win in the Bronx, the Dodgers returned home and crushed the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, 15-2, on Tuesday night for their most lopsided win of the season.
“It’s been awesome,” outfielder Teoscar Hernandez said. “We’ve been playing really good baseball, we’ve been getting some good at-bats, and that’s why we’ve been doing well lately.”
This is a stark contrast to just a week ago, when the Dodgers were struggling in the mid-season.
From May 10 to June 5, they were 12-12. They’d struggled with inconsistent hitting and pitching during that stretch, and they were looking for a “jolt of energy” going into last weekend’s showdown with the Yankees, Roberts said before the series.
Five games later, the shock was felt.
The team’s star-studded lineup came back to life, blasting four home runs in a season-high seven-run sixth inning on Tuesday, the team’s first four-home run inning since September 2021.
Despite the injuries, the pitching staff has continued to perform solidly, including a strong outing from previously struggling left-hander James Paxton on Tuesday, allowing just one run over six innings.
And now, a month after the Dodgers went 14-2 and took a big lead in the National League West standings, the team appears on the brink of another hot streak in the schedule, winning four of its last five games thanks to contributions from the entire lineup and all facets of the pitching staff.
“We got the lead and then we started scoring,” Roberts said. “I just thought we won a lot of at-bats.”
In fact, Tuesday’s big win began with a bang, as Will Smith hit a deep fly ball for a three-run homer in the bottom of the first inning.
read more: ‘Uncharted territory’: Is Mookie Betts a sustainable solution for the Dodgers?
Then, Mookie Betts hit a three-run double to left field with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the fourth to give the Dodgers a 6-1 lead.
“That was probably the biggest hit of the night,” Roberts said.
However, it wasn’t until the sixth inning that the team’s batting form peaked.
Against Rangers relief pitcher Grant Anderson, the Dodgers faced seven batters and were scoreless through four innings.
Shohei Ohtani hit a two-run homer to right field. In his next at-bat, Freddie Freeman soloed. Hernandez, who was named the NL Player of the Week in a strong series against the Yankees, hit a two-run homer for his 17th home run of the year, second-most in the NL. Then with two outs in the inning, Jason Heyward hit another long hit to right field.
Did the Dodgers, who have celebrated home runs this season by showering each other with sunflower seeds in the dugout, have enough sunflower seeds to last the entire inning?
“Thankfully, we have a lot of people in the dugout,” declared Hernandez, who introduced the ritual to his team this season. “It makes it fun.”
When asked what has changed in the lineup over the past week after the Dodgers averaged just 3.7 runs per game over their past 24 games, Roberts pointed to a few factors following Tuesday’s win.
The lineup’s leadoff hitters are hitting hard again, with Betts, Ohtani, Freeman, Smith and Hernandez combining for nine hits and 11 RBI on Tuesday.
The lower batting order has also been putting pressure on opposing pitchers thanks to the recent resurgence of role players such as Gavin Lux and Andy Page (who had two hits on Tuesday).
But Roberts said his hitters have been more “competitive” overall recently, and he proudly highlighted Lux’s two-strike single in the top of the fourth inning — which ultimately led to Betts’ three-run double — as the latest example of improved confidence and quality at the plate.
“You’re not going to have your best swing every night,” Roberts said, “but you’ve got to compete. And I saw that tonight. I’ve seen that the last four or five games.”
The question now is whether the Dodgers can keep this up for the foreseeable future and turn one hot week into another hot streak this season.
“I hope so,” Freeman said, trailing off, “but I wish baseball was more of a guarantee, I could say that.”
“I think so,” Roberts chimed in more definitively. “I think from what we’ve seen the second half of the trip, we’ve got a lot of good things going on offensively. Everything certainly went well tonight, and I think we can keep it going for a while.”
For more Dodgers news from the Dodgers Dugout, sign up to receive it at the start of each series.
This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
