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This one\u2019s going to be a little bit of a mashup. Last weekend, I was watching a Dodgers game when Max Muncy<\/a> made a slick play over at third base. Then he mashed a two-run home run to put the Dodgers on the scoreboard. That got me to thinking about how impressive Muncy\u2019s career has been \u2013 never the prime attraction on a Los Angeles team that has employed many of baseball\u2019s best during its reign atop the league, but always a key cog. <\/p>\n But a Muncy article wasn\u2019t the only idea I left that game with. His two-run homer? It only served to narrow the Dodgers\u2019 deficit from five to three. The Braves tacked on more runs late and won 7-2 for a second straight day, taking two out of three from the two-time defending champs. Then the lowly Giants came to town and split a four-game set. The Los Angeles offense, in particular, has been moribund of late. That sounded like an article topic all on its own. But if two articles are good, one article slamming together points from both is better (he said hopefully).<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything sneaky or overlooked about Muncy\u2019s excellent start to the 2026 season. When he comes to the plate, he does the same thing every night: He tries to leave the park. That means he\u2019s looking for pitches to clobber, and also trying to clobber those pitches. The looking part, combined with his great batting eye, means plenty of walks and plenty of deep counts. The \u201ctrying to clobber\u201d part means plenty of whiffs and plenty of scorched baseballs. It\u2019s an approach that\u2019s easy to describe, but it\u2019s devilishly difficult in practice to strike the right balance between selection and aggression.<\/p>\n Muncy is now in his ninth season of finding that balance. His consistency is remarkable \u2013 year in and year out he\u2019s posted a double-digit walk rate, a strikeout rate between 20-27%, and a batting line in the neighborhood of a 130 wRC+. His wRC+ is 21st among qualified hitters over that span, wedged between Hall of Fame hopefuls Jose Altuve<\/a> and Paul Goldschmidt<\/a>. His batting line is a dead ringer for Kyle Schwarber<\/a>\u2019s. This year, Muncy is off to an excellent start, on pace for his best year since 2018. It\u2019s not so much that he\u2019s found a new gear; you\u2019d have a hard time differentiating between his 2025 and 2026 component statistics. That\u2019s basically my point, though. What he\u2019s doing isn\u2019t surprising, because he\u2019s made it commonplace. He\u2019s hit more or less like this for a decade.<\/p>\n That\u2019s impressive enough on its own, but it\u2019s not the most impressive feat Muncy has pulled off in his tenure on the Dodgers. When he joined the team, he was defensively limited. He played his natural position, first base, the majority of the time. He also played second base when the Dodgers were trying to get more offense on the field, but it was the shift-enabled second base role that doesn\u2019t really exist anymore. It involved plenty of standing in shallow right field with a rangy shortstop and a slid-over third baseman to cover the dirt.<\/p>\n When the Dodgers signed Freddie Freeman<\/a>, though, Muncy couldn\u2019t play first anymore. But instead of shifting him to DH (it was the first year of the universal DH) or back to second, where the overshift was only a year away from being banned, he moved to third base. That was partially out of necessity \u2013 an aging and injured Justin Turner<\/a> played only 66 games at the hot corner, his lowest total since 2014 (excluding 2020, for the pedants out there). But the change was a revelation. Somehow Muncy, who had looked like a position-less slugger for most of his professional tenure, was up to the task.<\/p>\n
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If you\u2019re a DRS aficionado, Muncy is 20 runs above average since he moved over to third, the fifth-best defensive third baseman in that span. Statcast\u2019s FRV is far more measured; it has Muncy as a -5 defender in that span, though a scratch defender from 2024 onwards. I\u2019ve previously found<\/a> that FRV works a little better in the infield, but both metrics have predictive value; in other words, you won\u2019t go too wrong thinking Muncy is average or a bit above.<\/p>\n That would be a remarkable feat in and of itself. From age 24, his big league debut, through age 30, Muncy played only about 700 innings at third, and was indifferent at it. Then at age 31, when most players move down<\/em> the defensive spectrum, he shifted to a tougher position and held his own. He\u2019s 35 now, the oldest primary third baseman in the league. The other guys above 30 are mostly defensive wizards: Nolan Arenado<\/a>, Manny Machado<\/a>, Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez<\/a>, Matt Chapman<\/a>, and Alex Bregman<\/a> are the next five oldest. This is not normal.<\/p>\n If the Dodgers listed their players like a movie poster, I\u2019m not even sure Muncy would be famous enough to make the cut. They boast three MVPs, a two-time Cy Young winner, the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history, and the player with the highest ever annual (non-deferred) salary. Muncy would be on the \u201calso featuring\u201d line at best, and even that might be a stretch considering how decorated his compatriots are. But his contributions to their success are massive. The Dodgers are old, and their roster isn\u2019t particularly flexible. But if your 35-year-old slugger can handle third base, both of those limitations ease significantly. How do they keep squeezing more juice into their lineup? It\u2019s at least partially because Muncy lets them.<\/p>\n That brings us back to that lineup and its aforementioned run of poor form. The Dodgers surged out of the gates, scoring six runs per game en route to the best record in baseball on April 20. That day featured a 12-3 victory over the Rockies in Denver \u2013 the best offense in the best place for offense. But since then, the Dodgers have been moribund. They\u2019re scoring only 3.8 runs per game, the sixth-worst mark in the majors. While their run prevention has still been superb (3.5 runs allowed per game, fifth best), they\u2019ve scuffled to a 10-12 record. Forget the best record in baseball; they\u2019re locked in a tight race with the Padres for the NL West lead.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll start my evaluation of their slump by telling you one person not to blame: Max Muncy. You know how he\u2019s produced a metronomic 130 wRC+ in his long Dodgers career? His wRC+ over this stretch has been 123. He and Kyle Tucker<\/a> (122 wRC+) have kept the bases juiced. Andy Pages<\/a> (108 wRC+, four homers) has helped clear those bases. The rest of the squad, however, has hit one massive slump all at once.<\/p>\n Those three MVPs who form the backbone of the offense? Shohei Ohtani<\/a> is hitting .203\/.329\/.333 in this downswing, for a 92 wRC+. It\u2019s one of the worst 20-game hitting stretches of his Dodgers career \u2013 he had two similar spans in 2024. Whether it\u2019s a coincidence or not, Ohtani has been dominant on the mound over that stretch<\/a>, and the Dodgers have started to give him more days off around his starts as a result. He didn\u2019t hit either of the last two days \u2013 he pitched on Wednesday and struck out 10 over seven shutout innings, then got a full rest day.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not so much that Ohtani has never slumped like this before \u2013 as I mentioned, he had some lulls in 2024. But he wasn\u2019t pitching in 2024, and it wouldn\u2019t exactly be unfathomable if the workload associated with being one of the best starters in baseball acts as a drag on his offensive numbers. Whether that\u2019s true or not is going to be incredibly difficult to untangle mathematically, even when viewed from a 40,000-foot, career-long level. As Ohtani himself put it<\/a>, \u201cBoth my hot streaks and slumps are part of who I am as a player. What\u2019s important is being able to maintain good form for a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a very self-aware statement, not always a given in professional sports, where success generally goes hand in hand with an irrational belief in yourself. But it\u2019s just true! Ohtani has had skids like this before, and he surely will again. Great players aren\u2019t immune from bad stretches \u2013 they just have them less frequently, and even their lows aren\u2019t quite so low as your average hitter. That\u2019s why they\u2019re great.<\/p>\n The Dodgers are built to withstand a cold stretch from Ohtani, but Freeman has been just as cold. He\u2019s posted an 88 wRC+ over the same stretch, batting .244\/.326\/.329, with only one home run and four doubles in 92 plate appearances. Meanwhile, Mookie Betts<\/a> basically hasn\u2019t even been on the field \u2013 he missed almost all of this span recovering from an oblique strain before returning Monday.<\/p>\n The good news is Freeman\u2019s rough patch is already over. He\u2019s been hot since the start of May, in fact, with a 137 wRC+. Those five extra-base hits I mentioned? They\u2019ve all come in that span. Trying to slice hitter performance into arbitrary windows will lead to funny results like that. But in the aggregate, Freeman has been roughly neutral for the Dodgers in their recent malaise \u2013 one very cold stretch and one hot one. That\u2019s a big change from his usual form. Last year, those three were a collective 96 runs above average offensively (mostly Ohtani and Freeman, to be fair). During this downstretch, they\u2019ve been two runs below average. That\u2019s a lot of runs to make up!<\/p>\n It\u2019s not all<\/em> of the runs, though. Those offensive contributions were worth about 0.6 runs per game. The Dodgers are slumping meaningfully harder than that. Will Smith<\/a> and Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, All-Star batters both, are off to poor starts to the season, and both have been below average during this downturn. Smith appears to have angered the batted ball luck gods. He\u2019s in the 80th percentile for barrel rate and xwOBA and the 77th for strikeout rate; he\u2019s also walking more than average, albeit less than he did in his superlative 2025 season. His timing looks slightly off, but that\u2019s just my making general statements. If you made me describe exactly what<\/em> is wrong, I don\u2019t think I could. These are just the normal fluctuations for him; he had a slump this bad last year en route to a 153 wRC+, and a far deeper one in 2024. Catching is hard! Sometimes the guys who do it don\u2019t hit for a few weeks. It happens.<\/p>\n Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s cold stretch is slightly scarier. You might not have noticed it as the Dodgers romped their way to a second straight World Series last year, but he declined significantly from his first season in Dodger blue. He was basically average offensively, and played his usual blah outfield defense en route to a 0.6-WAR season. He\u2019s changed his approach significantly \u2013 fewer swings, slower swings, better contact rate, worse power output \u2013 but the change hasn\u2019t been great for his overall numbers. He\u2019s never hit for less extra-base power, barreled the ball up less frequently, or made so little hard contact. He\u2019s also still striking out 28% of the time. The adjustments he\u2019s made might work if he slashed his strikeout rate by a ton, but this version of Hern\u00e1ndez looks more like a fourth outfielder than a Home Run Derby champion. On the other hand, if you\u2019re looking for a sign that nothing is wrong, how about this? Between the time I started and finished this article, the Dodgers played one game. Smith and Hern\u00e1ndez combined for three extra-base hits in a 5-2 victory.<\/p>\n Even the supporting players for the Dodgers have struggled. Dalton Rushing<\/a> burst onto the scene this year and still sports a jaw-dropping 189 wRC+. But that\u2019s because he posted a 388 wRC+ (!!!) in his first 28 plate appearances. Since April 20, he\u2019s hitting .179\/.304\/.179 in 46 times up. Hyeseong Kim<\/a>, who played nearly every day in Betts\u2019 absence, has followed a similar path: 155 wRC+ in his first 10 games, 72 wRC+ since. If you\u2019re wondering how the Dodgers were scoring six runs per game in the early going, it surely helped that these two guys were playing out of their minds, but reality has reasserted itself. Stupid regression toward the mean. I\u2019m sure both have better days ahead \u2013 Ohtani\u2019s wise words about hot streaks and slumps apply to everyone \u2013 but the timing of their ups and downs has exacerbated the run-scoring whiplash.<\/p>\n A tiny bit of this downswing can be attributed to their opponents. This lineup has faced pitchers with an aggregate 2026 ERA of 3.90 over this stretch \u2013 3.95 if you exclude their games against the Dodgers. That\u2019s a hair better than league average, but hardly an insurmountable obstacle. It\u2019s been more about Los Angeles\u2019 lack of production than any elite opposition.<\/p>\n So am I here to bury the Dodgers? Not even a little bit. If you go looking for disaster in every slump, you\u2019re going to be disappointed. The Dodgers had two non-overlapping 20-game stretches of scoring four or fewer runs per game last year \u2013 and finished second in baseball in runs scored. They had a lengthy stretch below four runs a game in 2024 en route to another second-place finish in scoring. They\u2019re still sixth in runs scored this year! Meanwhile, their pitching staff has allowed the third-fewest runs. I\u2019m fairly certain that the Dodgers are going to be OK.<\/p>\n Baseball is just weird this way. Sometimes what happens today is a great predictor of what will happen tomorrow. Sometimes it\u2019s not even close. But nothing currently afflicting the Dodgers feels structural. While many of their best hitters are struggling at the moment, they\u2019re not doing so in the same way, or for the same reasons. And what could be more Dodgers than Max Muncy walking and slugging his way through it all at the same clip as always? Finding a way to keep Ohtani fresh seems like a very difficult problem. The rest of this will come out in the wash.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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