The Los Angeles Dodgers trail 1-0 against the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, and David Ortiz is worried about them.
“I think the Dodgers are in serious trouble," David Ortiz said before Game 2 on the FOX Sports pregame show. "This is the first time during the playoffs that I feel that way about the Dodgers. It's because they're all struggling at the same time. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before. The Dodgers have a lineup where you don't know where the punch is going to come from. At this moment, you feel like nobody is executing properly and consistently. Everybody is focusing on (Shohei) Ohtani, but they have nine guys. They have three MVPs in the lineup. They have guys who have put up good numbers throughout the season. Everybody's pretty cold. With the pitching the Brewers have, great pitching with a great bullpen, is able to stop them. I think they're in some deep trouble right now."
The Dodgers have eight home runs this postseason, leading all teams, but they have been too reliant on the long ball. They rank sixth in runs scored, eighth in batting average and sixth in OPS in the postseason. They've also struggled with runners in scoring position.
Kyle Tucker, Teoscar Hernández, Freddie Freeman and Andy Pages have all had solid postseason performances so far, but Ohtani's struggles are the biggest headline. He does so much for the Dodgers offense, and his bat going cold is holding the entire offense back. It's not that Freeman, Mookie Betts and others cannot carry the offense, but the timing of Ohtani's issues is unfortunate.
It's harder to hit in October, and Freeman and Betts have not necessarily been themselves as of late. Freeman finished the regular season with a knee injury bothering him, and Betts struggled for a majority of the year.
Luckily for the Dodgers, their starting rotation does a good job keeping runs off the board, limiting how much work the offense actually has to do. However, Ortiz is right to be worried. The Brewers are no strangers to playing close games and have an elite pitching staff. For a struggling offense, that's a nightmare.