For a fleeting moment Tuesday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers dugout was alive with smiles and laughter. That moment came courtesy of Shohei Ohtani, who finally broke out of a prolonged slump with a solo home run in the bottom of the third inning. It was his first homer in 13 games—a drought that had weighed heavily on both the superstar and his struggling team.
As Ohtani trotted back to the dugout, his teammates greeted him with an exaggerated celebration, and he responded with a sheepish grin. Starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto even joked about retrieving the ball, prompting Ohtani to mimic the hand motion typically reserved for a player's first career hit. For a brief moment, the pressure seemed to lift.
But joy is a fragile thing in baseball, and Tuesday night proved it. The Dodgers' offense went quiet after Ohtani's blast, and the pitching staff delivered a second consecutive shaky performance, leading to a 6-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants. The defeat extended Los Angeles' losing streak to four games and dropped their record to 9-14 since April 18.
Ohtani finished 2-for-4 on the night, also notching a first-inning single that led to the game's opening run. That hit snapped a brutal 4-for-38 stretch, offering hope that baseball's most electrifying talent might be rediscovering his rhythm. But even his resurgence couldn't mask the Dodgers' deeper issues.
Yamamoto, making his seventh start of the season, allowed a career-high three home runs over 6 ⅓ innings, surrendering five runs in a clunker that put the Dodgers in an early hole. The rest of the lineup managed just two additional hits and stranded eight runners on base—a recipe for disaster against a division rival.
The game's turning point came in the top of the fifth inning, when Yamamoto served up back-to-back home runs to San Francisco's Nos. 8 and 9 hitters, Harrison Bader and Eric Haase (who homered twice on the night). That sequence flipped a 2-1 Dodgers lead into a 3-2 deficit.
The Giants broke the game open in the seventh, scoring three times after Blake Treinen inherited a two-on, one-out jam from Yamamoto. A squeeze bunt that first baseman Freddie Freeman couldn't bare-hand while crashing in from first base plated one run, and Jung Hoo Lee followed with a two-run double to seal the Dodgers' fate.
Just like that, the smiles were gone. For a team built on star power and high expectations, the Dodgers are searching for answers—and hoping Ohtani's rediscovered swing is the spark they need to turn things around.