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The first several innings of the Dodgers' first regular season game were kind of, to put it lightly, a snooze. The score was 2-1 Padres until the top of the eighth, when the Dodgers powered to a 5-2 lead thanks, in part, to some good hitting from Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani and thanks, in larger part, to a ripped glove that stuck Jake Cronenworth with his first error of the season and scored a run for LA.
A win is a win, sure, but in the run-deficient first seven innings of today's game, the Dodgers put at least one hitter on base per inning (partially thanks to a whopping nine walks given up by the Padres' pitching staff) and their only run during that time came from a Jason Heyward sac fly. They even loaded the bases against Yu Darvish in the third but failed to bring any of their baserunners home.
By the end of the seventh, Dodgers batters were 0-13 with runners on base and 0-7 with runners in scoring position, harkening back to postseasons of years past. It definitely gave Dodgers fans some rough flashbacks and reason to be concerned about how well the Dodgers will be able to hit with pressure on this season.
The Dodgers are 0-for-13 with runners on base today.
— Noah Camras (@noahcamras) March 20, 2024
They're 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
Despite win over Padres on Opening Day, Dodgers failed to capitalize on multiple opportunities to score
During the regular season last year, the Dodgers were one of the best offensive teams with runners in scoring position. They had a team line of .276/.370/.449 — the third best batting average in the league and the best on-base percentage with men on — but they haven't been able to carry that over into the postseason. Postseason visits in 2021, 2022, and 2023 all featured incredibly frustrating hitting, even when you take RISP out of the equation. 2021-2023 featured .225, .227, and .177 overall team batting averages in the postseason.
Maybe the Dodgers are just shaking off some of bad vibes from last year's NLDS, but fans have been badly burned in the past and aren't wrong for being a bit concerned about the team's performance today, despite the win. After the absolute success of this offseason, watching the team immediately flame out in the postseason (again), with the same exact problems as they've always had, is almost impossible to fathom. We don't need grand slams every time the bases are loaded, but let's at least score one in those scenarios. Please?