After Slow Start For The Top Stars, Dodgers’ Offense Finds Some Life On The Road

Edwin Díaz hasn’t been a starter since he was in Double-A a decade ago, so the three-time All-Star closer doesn’t know exactly how exhausting it must be for a starting pitcher to have to navigate the Dodgers’ daunting lineup multiple times on a single night. He can commiserate with opposing starters, though, as they attempt to deal with a Dodgers’ offense that is starting to look like the inexorable machine their fans envisioned and their foes feared. “You don’t have any place to breathe,” Diaz told me last week. “Good luck to the opposing team.” The way the Dodgers’ offense is now firing, crossing fingers and hoping for the best might be an opponent’s only hope. After a slow start to the year for the Dodgers’ top sluggers, they’ve found their form away from home. The Dodgers were averaging more than nine runs per game in a 5-0 start to their road trip before dropping Wednesday’s series finale to Toronto in which two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani gave up just one run in six innings. When the Dodgers’ offense is clicking the way it can at full strength, it can wear an opponent down with patience and strike with power. Even if a pitcher emerges unscathed against Ohtani and four-time All-Star Kyle Tucker atop the star-studded lineup, eight-time All-Star Mookie Betts, nine-time All-Star Freddie Freeman, three-time All-Star Will Smith, two-time All-Stars Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernández and reigning National League Player of the Week Andy Pages are then waiting to pounce. “It certainly has to be taxing when you’re facing our guys, and when you feel like you have to be perfect,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “Just to continue to keep executing and executing, it’s tough mentally, physically.” It looked that way Friday for Miles Mikolas, who became the first pitcher in Nationals history to surrender 11 earned runs in a game. Betts went deep in that 13-6 win before hurting his oblique the following day, but the injury hasn’t stopped the Dodgers’ unrelenting attack. After pulverizing Mikolas, the Dodgers proceeded to pummel Nationals starter Jake Irvin for six runs in four innings on Saturday before tagging Washington’s bullpen for seven runs in the final four innings Sunday to finish off a sweep. They then traveled north of the border for a highly-anticipated World Series rematch that figured to present more of a challenge. Instead, the first two games were a one-sided onslaught in favor of the back-to-back champs, who won the series and outscored the Blue Jays by 14 runs over the three games. The last time Miguel Rojas was in Toronto, the veteran infielder’s ninth-inning heroics at the plate made him a Game 7 World Series hero. Five months later, his next game against the Blue Jays ended with him on the mound in the ninth inning Monday night finishing off a 14-2 drubbing that included five Dodgers home runs. “We’re feeding off each other,” Freddie Freeman told reporters after Monday’s rout in Toronto. “Everyone’s just doing their part.” A week into the season, it didn’t look that way. Ohtani, Betts, Tucker and Smith were all hitting .200 or worse to start the season. Freeman wasn’t much better at .208, and Hernandez had yet to record an extra-base hit. The slow starts were clearly the result of a small sample. And, perhaps the scariest part for the rest of the league: when the Dodgers weren’t hitting to their capabilities, they were still winning, a testament to the complete juggernaut they’ve built. Even with Blake Snell sidelined to start the year, Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow give the Dodgers as fearsome a top starting pitching trio as any in baseball. Diaz has helped transform the Dodgers’ shoddy 2025 bullpen into a strength, and 25-year-old outfielder Andy Pages has demonstrated after a forgettable October at the plate that he’s capable of lifting the Dodgers’ offense through rough spells when he’s going right. The Dodgers began the year 4-2 despite hitting below league average as a group at the time. The most obvious tell that Ohtani was searching for his form, beyond his 3-for-15 start, was his presence on the field at Dodger Stadium before the series finale against the Guardians. Ohtani rarely takes batting practice on the field, but he made an exception on April 1. It seems to have worked. Now, Pages is still rolling — he leads MLB in hits (19) and batting average (.452) — while the rest of the lineup is pulling its weight. Ohtani has reached base multiple times in every game on the Dodgers’ road trip and has three homers in his last six games. Freeman’s on a seven-game hitting streak with three home runs and three doubles over that stretch. Tucker has yet to consistently showcase his power, but his average is up to .268. Hernández has seven hits, including three extra-base hits, over his last four games. On Tuesday, Hyeseong Kim and Alex Freeland, who will get extra playing time in the middle infield while Betts is down, provided the team’s extra-base hits in the fifth straight win. Suddenly, a Dodgers offense that ranked 14th in OPS six games into the season now ranks first. They’re up three games up in the division, they look indomitable, and they should only get better as more reinforcements arrive (Betts, Snell, Tommy Edman, Kike Hernandez, Evan Phillips, Brock Stewart, Brusdar Graterol among them) over the coming weeks and months. The Two-way Ohtani Plan When Ohtani took the mound Wednesday afternoon in Toronto, it was on seven days of rest (as a pitcher) and with the longest active regular-season scoreless inning streak in MLB before the Blue Jays’ third-inning run. This season, Ohtani plans on going wire-to-wire as a starting pitcher for the first time since undergoing his second career elbow procedure in September 2023, but the Dodgers are going to still be mindful about his rest between starts, considering his two-way duties. That will make it tough for Ohtani to win his first Cy Young Award this year — a goal many of his coaches and teammates believe he is striving for — but he could still find a way. If he continues to blank most of his opponents, it may be easier to overlook his lack of volume. “I think if anyone can manage the designated hitter role and be as productive as he’s been and still chase that elusive Cy Young for a Japanese pitcher,” Roberts said, “I think he can do it.” The two-way sensation didn’t pitch during the World Baseball Classic, but he returned to spring training still ready to handle a full workload from the jump. He threw 4.1 scoreless innings against the Giants in Glendale, Arizona, in his first official spring start on March 18, struck out 11 batters in his final spring tune-up against his former team on March 24, then fired six scoreless innings of one-hit ball against the Guardians in his first start of the regular season. “Last year I felt good,” Ohtani said after his 2026 debut, “but this year I do feel a lot more loose and easy pitching overall.” Ohtani featured more of his curveball than usual in his start against Cleveland, and Roberts said he believes Ohtani’s feel for his breaking ball this year is much better. Multiple members of the Dodgers’ staff have expressed a belief that Ohtani will only continue to get more comfortable using his full arsenal — and tweaking it depending on opponent — the more he settles into his full two-way duties again. He entered his start Wednesday with both the longest active scoreless innings streak as a pitcher (22.2) and the longest active on-base streak as a hitter (42 games). He failed to hit in Tuesday’s game, but reached on base via walk to keep his on-base streak to 43 games. For now, the Dodgers plan to keep him in the leadoff spot on days that he starts, though that could be subject to change at some point, depending on how he performs. So far, so good. “I think he’s already proven that he’s the best player, you can argue, that’s ever played the game — best baseball player in totality,” Roberts said. “I do think that he sees himself as a baseball player, yes, but when he’s pitching he sees himself solely as a pitcher, and he wants to be the best pitcher.” Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.