PHOENIX – The team accused of ruining baseball extended its futility on Friday when the reigning back-to-back World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers dropped their seventh straight game.
They trudged off the field after their struggling $69 million closer blew a save and gave up a walk-off two-run blast to sink their fortunes further. A 4-3 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks matched Los Angeles’ longest losing streak in nine seasons.
This time they were done in by Edwin Díaz, who hung a slider that Diamondbacks rookie Ryan Waldschmidt did not miss. Andy Pages — whose eighth-inning home run gave the Dodgers a short-lived 3-2 lead — gave Waldschmidt’s ball a halfhearted effort before watching it fly into the Chase Field seats.
“We did enough to put ourselves in a position to win a game, and unfortunately, we couldn’t finish it,” manager Dave Roberts said.
So the Dodgers’ foul stretch sunk to new depths. They now lead the National League West by 7 1/2 games, one month after holding a 14-game cushion in the division. This is not a death knell; the Dodgers lost seven games last July — their longest streak since September 2017 — and still beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series. But each loss heightens concern.
The years-long outcry over the Dodgers’ aggressive acquisitions only escalated this week when they swung a deal to acquire two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. Skubal has yet to see his new team win a game. Los Angeles’ spending this winter preceded the rage.
Díaz’s acquisition further cemented the Dodgers as checkbook bullies, addressing their hole at closer by signing the best one available. But after Friday, he now boasts an ERA of 11.00 in his first 11 Dodgers appearances, as his 2026 season was interrupted by midseason elbow surgery to remove loose bodies. He has appeared in four games since returning and allowed a run in three of them. His fastball velocity, down to start the season, has started to tick up, but his slider is not right.
It’s a pitch Díaz needs to survive. With a runner on second and one out, Díaz threw three two-strike sliders to get a whiff from Waldschmidt. Díaz left the last one down the middle, and Waldschmidt crushed it.
“I think I was trying to be perfect with the pitch,” Díaz said. “I gotta be better with that. I’m a big league pitcher, so I gotta make pitches.”
Díaz went three months without pitching in a big league game. He still needs the feel back in his signature offering.
“I gotta find it tonight,” Díaz said. “(Or) tomorrow when I come to the field, because that’s my pitch. I got a good fastball, but my slider is the strikeout pitch. And today, I missed with two strikes. That pitch right in the middle.”
Díaz is a Dodger in part because of the struggles of the $72 million reliever signed before him in Tanner Scott. Their pairing in the back end of Los Angeles’ bullpen was supposed to solve several of the questions the Dodgers survived in their title run a year ago.
Scott delivered a scoreless eighth after Pages’ homer, but had to work for it. He surrendered a two-out double that Teoscar Hernández got a poor read on in left field, and issued a four-pitch walk that loaded the bases. It took him 12 pitches to survive a battle against Nolan Arenado and preserve the advantage.
Notably, Scott only threw six fastballs in 24 pitches, averaging 95.2 mph on the pitch, down 1.5 mph from his season average.
Both Scott and Díaz will continue to pitch in leverage; it’s not as if there are compelling options besides them now in the game’s tightest spots.
“The way some of these guys are throwing, they’re not throwing great either,” Roberts said. “So we got to keep kind of keeping guys in their roles that they’ve earned, and trying to lane guys up and try to get them kind of getting on a run back the way we were a few weeks ago. So I just don’t think right now there’s a clear-cut alternative.”
The Dodgers’ struggles have made every issue feel magnified. They arrived in Phoenix fresh off sweeps at the hands of the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, and did not have a hit through their first five innings against Arizona starter Merrill Kelly, who entered with a 5.04 ERA.
When Tommy Edman finally broke the ice with an infield single to lead off the sixth, he was promptly picked off at first. Edman knotted things up with another single an inning later, and the Dodgers loaded the bases for Shohei Ohtani, who promptly grounded into an inning-ending double play.
Pages’ home run off Brandyn García signaled what could have been a breakthrough. That feeling was short-lived. In blowing a ninth-inning lead, the Dodgers squandered yet another strong start from Roki Sasaki, who allowed just two runs over six innings despite lacking feel for his splitter.
This is a spell that has not had a clear culprit, but they are not playing clean baseball.
Some nights, it’s their starting pitching. Others, it’s an implosion from their bullpen. Friday was yet another silent night from a lineup of stars that have looked less and less like the players they are billed to be. They have made outs on the bases, including two on Friday. They are not reading balls well, like Hernández getting a late jump on Moreno’s ball in the eighth inning.
They are baseball’s oldest position player group, and have played longer than any team in baseball over the past two seasons. They entered August looking like a bunch of guys leaking oil.
They are also probably fine, as Roberts stressed Friday afternoon before another loss was added to their ledger.
“I’ve seen how our guys have responded to adversities and losing streaks, and so it’s not a panic situation,” Roberts said. “It’s kind of just regroup today and try to win a baseball game, and we’re gonna do the same thing tomorrow. It’s a pretty simple formula, and I’ve just kind of seen our guys do it.”
