Max Muncy has started 2026 with the same disciplined, power-and-walk approach that has defined his Dodgers run, even as Los Angeles’ offense has stalled. After a blazing April, the Dodgers slipped to scoring 3.8 runs per game and a 10–12 record, while their pi
When Max Muncy makes his move, it’s usually the kind you can feel from the batter’s box. Last weekend, he made a slick play at third base and then launched a two-run home run—cutting the Dodgers’ deficit from five to three.
It was the kind of spark that keeps a season from slipping too quickly.. But the night didn’t end with a turnaround.. 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 Giants came to town and split a four-game set.
The headline tension around the Dodgers right now isn’t whether Muncy can still produce. It’s what happens when the rest of the lineup doesn’t.
Muncy is starting 2026 the way he always has—show up. look for pitches he can drive. and do it with the kind of batting eye that drags pitchers into deep counts.. The “trying to leave the park” approach shows up in the balance of his game: plenty of walks. plenty of whiffs. and plenty of scorched baseballs.. It’s an easy strategy to describe and a hard one to execute consistently.
In his ninth season of finding that balance, Muncy’s numbers have stayed stubbornly familiar.. Over that span he has posted a double-digit walk rate. a strikeout rate between 20% and 27%. and a batting line hovering around a 130 wRC+.. His wRC+ ranks 21st among qualified hitters over that period—right between Jose Altuve and Paul Goldschmidt—and this year he’s on pace for his best season since 2018.
And while Muncy’s offensive approach hasn’t needed a reinvention. his path to staying in the Dodgers’ plans has taken a different turn.. Early in his career. he was defensively limited and played first base most often. with occasional time at second base in a shift-enabled role that involved standing in shallow right field with a shortstop and third baseman covering the dirt.. When the Dodgers signed Freddie Freeman, Muncy couldn’t play first anymore.
Instead of moving him to DH in the first year of the universal DH or sending him back to second base as overshifting was coming. the Dodgers moved him to third.. That change, the article notes, was a revelation.. It was a position shift that kept him from becoming a “position-less slugger” on a team that needed both lineup flexibility and defensive reliability.
The defensive picture is where the numbers split depending on the measurement.. Since the move, Muncy is 20 runs above average by DRS, ranking as the fifth-best defensive third baseman in that span.. Statcast’s FRV is more measured—having him at -5 in that span. with him described as a “scratch defender from 2024 onwards.” But both metrics point to the same general takeaway: he’s average or a bit above. and that matters for a roster that isn’t particularly flexible.
At 35, Muncy is now the oldest primary third baseman in the league. The next oldest players—Nolan Arenado, Manny Machado, José Ramírez, Matt Chapman, and Alex Bregman—are mostly known defensive wizards. It’s not normal, and it’s part of why the Dodgers can keep squeezing value into an aging roster.
So when the Dodgers’ offense cools, it’s not Muncy that looks most like the problem.
Over this stretch, his wRC+ is 123, compared to the 130 he has sustained over his long Dodgers career. The article also credits him with keeping the bases juiced alongside Kyle Tucker (122 wRC+). Andy Pages is mentioned as helping clear those bases with a 108 wRC+ and four home runs.
The rest of the lineup, though, has been running into trouble all at once.
Los Angeles surged out of the gates. scoring six runs per game and reaching the best record in baseball on April 20. highlighted by a 12-3 win over the Rockies in Denver.. After that, the offense went quiet.. Since then, the Dodgers are scoring 3.8 runs per game, the sixth-worst mark in the majors.. Their pitching remains excellent—3.5 runs allowed per game. the fifth best—yet the Dodgers sit at a 10-12 record during the downturn.. The article emphasizes that they’re no longer cruising; they’re locked in a tight NL West race with the Padres.
It also starts with Shohei Ohtani’s slump.. Over a 20-game stretch. he’s hitting .203/.329/.333 for a 92 wRC+. described as one of the worst 20-game hitting stretches of his Dodgers career.. It’s not just his bat that’s different during the period; the Dodgers have also been giving him more days off around his starts.. He didn’t hit either of the last two days mentioned—he pitched on Wednesday. striking out 10 over seven shutout innings. then got a full rest day.
The article doesn’t treat Ohtani’s skid as unprecedented.. It points to similar lulls in 2024. while also noting that he wasn’t pitching then—raising a workload question that may be nearly impossible to untangle cleanly at a mathematical level.. Ohtani’s own words are included: “Both my hot streaks and slumps are part of who I am as a player.. What’s important is being able to maintain good form for a long period of time.”
Freddie Freeman has been cold too. Over the same stretch, the article says Freeman has an 88 wRC+, batting .244/.326/.329 with only one home run and four doubles across 92 plate appearances.
Mookie Betts, meanwhile, is described as barely on the field—missing almost all of the span with an oblique strain before returning Monday.
But not every cold spell is lasting, and Freeman’s rough patch is already said to be over.. Since the start of May. he’s been hot with a 137 wRC+. and the five extra-base hits referenced earlier have all come in that span.. The piece also flags how misleading it can be to slice performance into arbitrary windows; Freeman has been one very cold stretch and one hot one. which is different from how his year can usually look.. During the downturn described. the three big bats—Ohtani. Freeman. and Betts when considered in the article’s framing—have combined to be two runs below average offensively. compared to being 96 runs above average last year.
Even that only tells part of the story. The article estimates that those three contributions are worth about 0.6 runs per game. The Dodgers’ slumping is described as harder than that.
Will Smith and Teoscar Hernández are both down, and the details show why Los Angeles has struggled to generate consistent run-scoring.
Smith is in the 80th percentile for barrel rate and xwOBA and the 77th for strikeout rate during the downturn. while also walking more than average.. The article says his timing looks slightly off but adds that the exact “what’s wrong” can’t be pinned down—because catching is hard. because slumps happen. and because Smith had a slump this bad last year en route to a 153 wRC+ and an even deeper one in 2024.
Hernández’s slump is framed as scarier.. The article says he declined significantly from his first season in Dodger blue and adjusted his approach: fewer swings. slower swings. better contact rate. worse power.. But those changes haven’t produced strong overall numbers.. It notes he’s never hit for less extra-base power. barreled the ball up less frequently. or made so little hard contact.. His strikeout rate is still 28%.. The article also points to what that kind of swing-and-miss profile usually demands: the adjustments would be expected to work only if he cut the strikeout rate dramatically.
If there’s a counterpoint, it comes in the form of timing. The article notes that between the start and finish of writing, the Dodgers played one game and Smith and Hernández combined for three extra-base hits in a 5-2 victory.
The supporting cast has struggled as well.
Dalton Rushing is cited as having burst onto the scene with a jaw-dropping 189 wRC+ this year. including a 388 wRC+ over his first 28 plate appearances.. Since April 20, the article says he’s hitting .179/.304/.179 in 46 times up.. Hyeseong Kim—described as playing nearly every day in Betts’ absence—followed a similar pattern: 155 wRC+ in his first 10 games. then 72 wRC+ since.
The piece ties those early-season highs and quick downturns to “stupid regression toward the mean,” arguing that the timing of both peaks and slumps has contributed to the Dodgers’ whiplash at the plate.
Opponents aren’t blamed entirely, either. The article says the Dodgers have faced pitchers with an aggregate 2026 ERA of 3.90 over the stretch—3.95 if you exclude games against the Dodgers—“a hair better than league average” but hardly an obstacle that explains everything.
So is this the start of something broken?
The article resists that conclusion.. It points to the Dodgers finishing second in baseball in runs scored last year. and to two non-overlapping 20-game stretches last year of scoring four or fewer runs per game.. It also references a lengthy stretch below four runs a game in 2024.. The Dodgers are still sixth in runs scored this year, and pitching is still among the best, too.
In the end, the Dodgers’ current problem is described as not feeling structural. The article emphasizes that some of the biggest hitters are struggling, but in different ways. That makes it less likely the offense has been permanently damaged, and more likely it’s a messy cluster of cold stretches.
For now, that’s where Muncy stands apart.. Nothing about the Dodgers’ run-scoring freeze is said to look like it’s flowing from his bat.. The picture remains familiar: Muncy walking and slugging through it like he always does. keeping the lineup from falling off a cliff while the team figures out how to manage Ohtani’s unique workload and whether the rest of the batting order can climb out of its slump.
Baseball, the article reminds readers, doesn’t always translate yesterday’s signs into tomorrow’s outcomes.. But for the Dodgers. the immediate question is simple: if the cold stretches pass—as they often do—can the offense get back to the baseline it has sustained all along. with Muncy still doing what he does?
Max Muncy Los Angeles Dodgers MLB 2026 season Shohei Ohtani Freddie Freeman Mookie Betts Will Smith Teoscar Hernández NL West offensive slump defensive third base