Things to overreact to in the first 40 games of the season

**This team could go 116-46 and romp to 11-0 in the postseason as the top seed.** But that outcome would require both everything going right and the naysayers being right about the competitive balance of the sport. **When this team coasted last year, it was rough to watch – until October**. Assuming good health, I expect more of the same. The Dodgers will romp in October beating the Seattle Mariners in five largely uncompetitive games to the enraged howls of the league. (Emphasis added.) Therefore, I figured there would be a correction in the overall record at some point. At the conclusion of play on May 10, the Dodgers are now 24-16 and are now on a 97.2-win pace. Ouch. After all, losing two of three to the lowly San Francisco Giants, who are now slinking back to town for the last games until September 18th, was as giant (ha!) a red flag as one would wave this season. The Rockies and Cardinals have pluck. The Giants are turning into a soap opera, which would be funny under different circumstances. In 2025, I thought there was virtually no reason apart from being lost on a three-hour tour oreveryone ending up in a hospital after an ill-fated caper that the Dodgers would win fewer than 100 games in the regular season. And lo and behold, they did with aplomb. It ultimately worked out in the end, by the skin of everyone’s teeth, a bunch of overmanaging by the Blue Jays (Game 3), and a bunch of baserunning blunders by the Blue Jays (Games 3, 6, 7), but a win is a win. But fool me twice? Never.

Pigs to slaughter?

In my view, the Dodgers needed to get younger, hungrier…and they signed the most expensive reliever and hitter available. Never mind that said reliever is now on the 60-day injured list. As for said hitter…well, here is what the Dodgers were saying around the time of the signing:

“Anytime you can add a guy to your lineup that is arguably better against same-side pitching — there’s really no holes in what he does offensively. Really balanced splits, versus right, versus left, incredible decision making, really good bat-to-ball skills,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Wednesday. “Just the way that will kind of complement and help further round out our offense, something we thought that would be significant in terms of the odds increasing on our championship quest.” I keep waiting for the person described to show up, because I am getting the oddest and most ironic sense of deja vu so far in 2026. Eric Stephen added that “[s]ince the start of 2021, Tucker is one of only four major league hitters with an isolated power — slugging percentage minus batting average — .200 or above combined with a strikeout rate of 16 percent or lower, along with fellow star players Mookie Betts, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and José Ramírez.“ Tucker has not come close to his statistical pedigree in his first 40 games with the team. In fact, Tucker was essentially signed to replace Michael Conforto, who has since signed as a fourth outfielder with the Chicago Cubs. Those with weak constitutions should look away from the following comparison:

• Tucker (39 games) .6 WAR, 36 for 145, 4 HR, 20 RBI, 3 SB, .248/.343/.393
• Michael Conforto (23 games) .6 WAR, 16 for 55, 2 HR, 8 RBI, .364/.473/.659 Yes, the Dodgers were pigs, but the team seemed to forget that pigs are usually the first things slaughtered when winter comes. Ask the Phillies and the Mets about what happens when one does not plan for winter. But it’s not time to panic yet. We don’t have a time machine (and if we did, unlimited rice pudding, among other things, would be the order of the day), so one can just look over the archives for the source of the Dodgers’ current woes.

“Play like the back of your baseball card.”

At times, the current Dodgers look less like a team and more like a collection of geriatric mercenaries, riding high on their own success. I remember the dark days of September 2025, and I am seeing some awful similarities. I am unsure how a team can look this gassed in May, but age catches up with everyone, and this topic will likely be revisited in the coming months. Perhaps I’m being too subtle. So let’s rip the bandage off using one of my favorite films of the past fifteen years: 2013’s *Rush* with Daniel Brühl as the late racing legend Niki Lauda. Replace the word “Ferrari” with “Dodgers offense,” and I think you get 99% of the way there. The Dodgers’ 2026 offense was sold as an offensive juggernaut. The rotation has been dynamite so far in 2026, but like the 2024 NLDS San Diego Padres, if you don’t score, you cannot win. Unlike the Mets, who seem hellbent on proving that money does not buy victory, and the Phillies, who somehow ran it back after trying not to, failing to the point their most recent manager was fired, only for Don Mattingly to somehow be put in charge, and time is a flat circle, I can understand why everyone was hyping the Dodgers to romp in 2026 based on the names assembled. Admittedly, some days, yes, the offense lives up to the hype. However, lately, the offense has been more fickle than an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifogli — spends more time in the shop than on the road. But the time for roster construction is long past. To paraphrase Dodgers’ color man Orel Hershiser, a majority of the Dodgers are not hitting like the back of their baseball cards either due to injury or ineffectiveness, using stats as current as of the start of play on May 10th to demonstrate the point:

• Shohei Ohtani: .8 WAR, 37 games, 34 for 141, 25 R, 7 2B, 6 HR, 16 RBI, 5 SB, 27 BB, 41 K, .241/.374/.418, 127 OPS+
• Freddie Freeman: .5 WAR, 38 games, 40 for 150, 14 R, 10 2B, 3B, 4 HR, 20 RBI, 14 BB, 21 K, .267/.333/.427, 116 OPS+
• Will Smith: .3 WAR, 33 games, 29 for 111, 12 R, 3 2B, 3 HR, 3 2B, 16 RBI, 12 BB, 21 K, .261/.331/.369, 100 OPS+
• Teoscar Hernandez: 0.0 WAR, 35 games, 30 for 126, 18 R, 4 2B, 4 HR, 17 RBI, SB, 14 BB, 42 K, .238/.317/.365, 95 OPS+
• Kyle Tucker: .6 WAR, 39 games, 36 for 145, 27 R, 9 2B, 4 HR, 20 RBI, 3 SB, 22 BB, 34 K, .248/.343/.393, 110 OPS+
• Andy Pages: 2.8 WAR, 40 games, 49 for 147, 23 R, 8 2B, 9 HR, 35 RBI, 6 SB, 10 BB, 33 K, .333/.375/.571, 167 OPS+
• Max Muncy: 2.1 WAR, 38 games, 35 for 128, 26 R, 5 2B, 10 HR, 15 RBI, 20 BB, 36 K, .273/.372/.547, 159 OPS+
• Alex Freeland: .6 WAR, 33 games, 23 for 98, 11 R, 4 2B, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 5 SB, 11 BB, 32 K, .235/.309/.337, 85 OPS+
• Hyeseong Kim: .7 WAR, 29 games, 22 for 76, 10 R, 3 2B, 3B, HR, 8 RBI, 5 SB, 8 BB, 18 K, .289/.353/.395, 114 OPS+
• Dalton Rushing: 1.1 WAR, 21 games, 19 for 63, 14 R, 2 2B, 7 HR, 17 RBI, 4 BB, 18 K, .302/.371/.667, 190 OPS+
• Miguel Rojas: .2 WAR, 24 games, 15 for 58, 5 R, 3 2B, HR, 5 RBI, 4 BB, 8 K, .259/.302/.362, 89 OPS+
• Alex Call: .7 WAR, 18 games, 12 for 39, 8 R, 4 2B, 4 RBI, 8 BB, 6 K, .308/.438/.410, 145 OPS+
• Santiago Espinal: -.3 WAR, 20 games, 3 R, 6 for 32, 2 2B, 2 RBI, 5 K, .188/.188/.250, 24 OPS+ So far, Ohtani (181 OPS+ in 2025), Freeman (143 OPS+), Smith (153 OPS+), Tucker (144 OPS+), Rojas (101 OPS+), and T. Hernandez (104 OPS+) have not matched their production from last year. Expecting the superhuman from Ohtani and Freeman may be unfair, but remember that 100 OPS+ is average, and the 2026 Dodgers were not built to be average. To play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, Mookie Betts has only played in eight games so far in 2026. Also, Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández have yet to play in 2026. Maybe the time has come to find more at-bats for Alex Call and Dalton Rushing and maybe give Ohtani more rest, which is a subject for another day. Now that Freeland has been optioned, Kim will need to continue to produce. When your offensive attack is being led by Andy Pages and a soon-to-be-36-year-old Max Muncy, either the pair is playing out of their minds (admittedly, Pages ***is***), some of the usual suspects need to step it up, or maybe the orthodoxy of the lineup needs to be tossed aside in lieu of the available personnel.

Twin killings

Eric Stephen pointed out around the time of the Tucker signing that the Dodgers in 2025 had a 21.9 percent strikeout rate as a team, the 12th-lowest in the majors. So far, in 2026, the team’s strikeout rate has improved, currently sitting at 20.9% on May 11, which is good enough for eighth-best in baseball. If the team is not striking out as much, why is the offense misfiring as much as it is? In part, too many double plays. Watching the Dodgers in St. Louis gave me a sobering thought: how is a team that is trying to hit the ball into the air hitting so many weak ground balls? In the two games I was present for, the Dodgers hit into eight mind-numbing double plays over 18 innings. While it might not be time to call for the culling of the hitting coaches, it does beg the question of what is going on. The Dodgers hit into only 108 double plays in 2025 (slightly worse than the league average of 104), slightly up from the 99 double plays they hit into in 2024 (slightly better than the league average of 108). So far, the Dodgers’ offense in 2026 might as well be sponsored by Doublemint Gum, because they are hitting into twin killings at an alarming rate. Only the Anaheim Angels, Texas Rangers, and Pittsburgh Pirates have hit into more double plays than the Dodgers in 2026. In 40 games so far, the Dodgers have hit into 34 double plays, in 40 games with Freeman (6) and Teoscar (5) leading the way. If trends hold, the 2026 Dodgers are on pace to hit into 138 double plays (rounded up from 137.7), which would easily be the worst mark of the championship run. The Dodgers now face a floundering opponent, without their best starter, at home, while in another stretch of consecutive games without a day off until a week from Thursday. In theory, the Dodgers should romp, but theory only gets you so far.