This article was generated by artificial intelligence and is automatically updated as news breaks. All credit belongs to the original reporters and their publications.

Dave Roberts used a blunt assessment of the Dodgers’ recent offensive woes: the team is getting “bullied” by fastballs, per Dodger Blue staff. The comment comes as Los Angeles tries to climb out of its worst stretch of the 2026 season, a skid that included a seven-game losing streak and three consecutive series losses. The offense has been maddeningly inconsistent over the past few weeks, and Roberts pointed to the club’s inability to handle hard stuff as a core issue — along with an uptick in grounding into double plays.

This is a telling admission from the manager. When a lineup as talented as ours is getting pushed around by fastballs, it usually signals one of two things: hitters are either late on timing or selling out for breaking balls and getting caught in between. Either way, it’s a mechanical and approach problem, and those tend to snowball. Pitchers around the league notice when a lineup can be attacked with heaters up in the zone, and they’ll keep doing it until the Dodgers make them pay.

The double-play issue compounds everything. Grounding into twin killings kills rallies and magnifies the sting of already-quiet at-bats. When you’re not squaring up fastballs and you’re also putting the ball on the ground into the teeth of defenses, you’re essentially doing the opposing pitcher’s job for him. That’s a brutal combination, and it explains a lot of the frustration we’ve all been feeling watching this team over the past couple of weeks.

I do think there’s reason for some cautious optimism here. Roberts wouldn’t be this specific about the problem if the coaching staff hadn’t already identified it and started working on adjustments. The Dodgers have the hitting infrastructure — the data, the technology, the coaching — to correct approach issues faster than most clubs. And frankly, the talent in this lineup is too deep for a fastball vulnerability to persist indefinitely. Freddie Freeman has already been moved to the two-hole to create more urgency at the top of the order, which suggests Roberts and the staff are actively tinkering rather than just riding things out.

Still, this is a stretch where the margin for error is thin. The Dodgers need their core hitters — Mookie Betts, Freeman, Shohei Ohtani — to set the tone and force pitchers to expand the zone rather than challenge them. If opposing staffs keep pounding the zone with fastballs and getting away with it, the losing stretches will keep coming. The good news is that Roberts is being direct about the problem rather than dancing around it. Now we need to see adjustments translate to results in actual games. This is a lineup that should be punishing heaters, not getting bullied by them.

Source(s): Staff (Dodger Blue) | First reported: August 12, 2026 8:28 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers