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What does Yoshinobu Yamamoto have up his sleeve for an encore to his encore?
It may not actually matter unless his offense wakes up.
With their season on the line in Game 6 of the World Series on Friday night at Rogers Centre, the Dodgers will send Yamamoto to the mound on the heels of back-to-back, complete-game gems, which should provide a comforting feeling.
But only to an extent because the Dodgers’ bigger concern as they flew back to Canada was whether their bats would show up again before it was too late.
“It doesn’t feel great,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You clearly see [the Blue Jays] finding ways to get hits, move the baseball forward, and we’re not doing a good job of it. … You still have to use the whole field and take what they give you, and if they’re not going to allow for slug, then you’ve got to be able to kind of redirect and club down to take competitive at-bats.
“We have that ability. We’ve got to make some adjustments. We have seen [Kevin] Gausman a ton, a lot of our guys have seen him, so we just got to come in fresh. We’ve been in elimination games, a core group of these guys, and we got to find a way to win a game. That’s it.”
Through five games, the Dodgers are batting just .201 with a .651 OPS. After taking a 2-1 lead in the series with an 18-inning thriller in Game 3, they have hit just 10-for-61 (.164) with eight singles and a .465 OPS.
Of course, it is not entirely a World Series problem for the Dodgers, who Roberts admitted after Game 4 have yet to find their rhythm this postseason. After mauling the Reds in the NL wild-card series, they have hit just .214 across the NLDS, NLCS and World Series, averaging just 3.5 runs per game while leaning largely on the strength of their starting pitching.
“We got a lot of confidence [in Yamamoto], but we got to hit,” Mookie Betts said. “We got to hit. Yoshi can go do his thing, which we need him to, obviously, but we got to hit. There’s no other way around it.”
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Betts has been among the Dodgers’ biggest culprits, hitting just .234 with a .648 OPS over the full postseason, including 3-for-23 in the World Series, which led to him being dropped to the three-spot in the Game 5 lineup.
Max Muncy has hit just .188 with a .693 OPS, including 3-for-20 in the World Series.
And Tommy Edman is hitting .232 with a .646 OPS, including 3-for-21 in the World Series.
“I think [Betts] is pressing,” Roberts said. “Hopefully, the off day, find a way to get away from it, and then go out there and just kind of focus on one game and be good for one game, go out there and compete. But I think you can see, you know, there’s a little anxiousness in there. But it’s not the first time he’s struggled. It’s not the first time he’s faced elimination. And it’s not just Mookie. It’s everyone that’s got to do their part too.”
