Ohtani’s home run on Tuesday night set a personal best streak, and one shy of the Dodgers record. LA also lost for the third time when scoring exactly 7 runs over the last 8 games.
One more game remains on the homestand for the Dodgers, who will try to win a series against the Twins on Wednesday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.
A bright spot during this dismal stretch that saw the Dodgers lose 11 of their last 14 games has been Shohei Ohtani, who has homered in each of the last four games, the longest streak of his career. Ohtani has 10 other career streaks of three consecutive games with a homer, including twice this year and twice last year for the Dodgers.
But as an indicator of how poorly things are going in Los Angeles, the Dodgers have still lost three of those last four games. Even Ohtani, who held the lead in National League home runs before this streak started, has somehow decreased his standing despite homering in four straight games. That’s because Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suárez has been red hot as well with five home runs in the last four days, and both are tied atop the circuit with 36 home runs apiece.
The Dodgers record is five consecutive games with a home run, done five times — Roy Campanella (June 11-17, 1950), Shawn Green (July 21-25, 2001), Matt Kemp (September 28-October 3, 2010), Joc Pederson (May 31-June 3, 2015), and Max Muncy (August 15-21, 2019). If we extend this to multiple seasons, Adrián González homered in his final two regular season games of 2014, then opened 2015 with three straight games to get to five as well.
Unlucky seven
Two of those losses over the last four games involved the Dodgers scoring seven runs, but because things are so out of sync at the moment, those were the games that involved the worst of the pitching and defense, losing 8-7 on Saturday and 10-7 on Tuesday night.
Through the end of June, the Dodgers were 27-3 (.900) when scoring at least seven runs, right in .882 winning percentage throughout the majors in such games on the season. But in July, the Dodgers have scored at least seven runs three times in their 17 games and managed to lose all three. The other game was an 8-7 loss on July 11 in San Francisco.
MLB teams this season when scoring exactly seven runs are 150-44 (.773), while the Dodgers are 6-4 in those games after the three straight losses.
Wednesday game info
- Teams: Dodgers vs. Twins
- Ballpark: Dodger Stadium
- Start time: 1:10 p.m.
- TV: SportsNet LA, MLB Network (out of market)
- Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)