Wrobleski holds Arizona to nothing for six, Ohtani goes six scoreless the night before, and the Dodgers still lose the series on a Ketel Marte solo shot in the ninth. You're listening to Dodgers Daily, and today we're trying to explain how two straight shutdown starts still somehow turn into an Arizona series loss. And now add this: Ohtani's out of Thursday's lineup by design, while Muncy and Vargas are both on the injury report. So the roster math gets ugly right when you need depth the most. I said the bullpen formula wasn't airtight. I did not think Ketel Marte would be the guy who kicked the door in. True Blue LA, with Estevão Maximo:
Not a pitch was thrown with the Dodgers trailing, and yet they found themselves on the losing end of a 3-2 matchup, all thanks to a walk-off solo shot from Ketel Marte off Tanner Scott. Justin Wrobleski did his part by delivering six scoreless innings, but the offense was underwhelming without Shohei Ohtani, and a couple of hiccups from the Dodgers bullpen were all that Arizona needed to complete the comeback and split this four-game set.
Wrobleski throws six scoreless, Ohtani went six scoreless the night before, and they still lose 3-2 on a Ketel Marte walk-off off Tanner Scott. The rotation did its job. The result still stunk. That's a formula with a hole in it. The part that actually matters structurally is Muncy and Vargas colliding on the bases in the fifth and both leaving the game. You're already down Ohtani in the lineup, and now you're losing bodies mid-inning. By the ninth, Scott's working with a thin margin and Marte cashes it in. I kept saying the bullpen formula wasn't airtight. I hedged it, I qualified it, and yeah — I probably should've just said it plain. Tanner Scott, the ninth, a one-run game, Ketel Marte. We've seen that script before 2020, and it never ends well. Joey, it's one loss in a 15-of-19 stretch. But the Muncy-Vargas collision is the detail to watch. If either guy is out for the finale, that Alek Thomas conversation in OKC suddenly gets a lot more urgent. From JOHN MARSHALL Thu, June 4, 2026 at 4:51 AM UTC · 2 min read:
PHOENIX (AP) — Shohei Ohtani threw six scoreless innings, Kyle Tucker hit a two-run homer into the Chase Field pool and the Los Angeles Dodgers routed the Arizona Diamondbacks 7-0 on Wednesday night. Ohtani (6-2) allowed two hits and struck out six while lowering his major league-best ERA to 0.74.
That's Ohtani's fifth straight six-inning start, a 0.74 ERA, and one earned run in 24 innings during this four-game win streak. So the consistency question we had two weeks ago? Answered. The new question is what Roberts does with it — and he already answered that too: Ohtani is out of Thursday's lineup by design. He goes six scoreless, reaches base five times, and the Dodgers still lose the series to Arizona. Ohtani did everything — literally everything — and one Ketel Marte solo shot in the ninth is what we get out of Phoenix. Tucker's pool shot off Gallen, Freeman's two-run single, Muncy with an RBI — sixteen hits, seven runs, dominant pitching. Then the bullpen hands it right back in game three. That's the series, not a footnote. I said two days ago the bullpen formula wasn't airtight. Didn't think I'd be cashing that ticket against Ketel Marte in the ninth of a series finale, but here we are. Ohtani just put together his fifth straight six-inning start, so now that the Dodgers know he can do it every time, does Dave Roberts actually get more flexibility? Or is the workload plan basically locked in either way? The honest answer is that the plan is locked in by design, and that start probably changes less than you'd hope. Roberts said right after Wednesday's outing that Ohtani would be out of Thursday's lineup against the Diamondbacks — per Sporting News, that was set ahead of time, not a game-time decision. It's the second time in about two weeks the Dodgers have given Ohtani what amounts to a half day, sitting him as a DH on his pitching days. Roberts put it pretty plainly back in late April: 'His goal is to make every start, and so with that, there has to be some compromise.' And on the six-man rotation side, Roberts told Yahoo Sports the extra arm is there to give starters more recovery time. Ohtani's workload is part of it, but not all of it. This rotation is deep enough that six guys is a real option, not just a workaround. So is Roberts basically saying the DH day off is permanent for the rest of the season, or is there a point where Ohtani earns that lineup spot back on his start days? Roberts hasn't drawn a hard line either way. Per Fox Sports, Ohtani said he always wants to compete in every way possible, but he's also been willing to read and react as the season goes. Roberts keeps using phrases like 'what's best for him' and 'there's a long way to go,' which tells you the organization is thinking about September health, not June box scores. The thing to watch is whether the DH-off pattern still holds when the Dodgers are in a real pennant race. That's when we'll see how much flex this policy actually has. From Stan Son at DraftKings:
In the top of the fifth inning of Thursday’s game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks, Max Muncy and Ildemaro Vargas were replaced by Santiago Espinal and Pavin Smith. Muncy hit a ground ball to first base, which Vargas fielded. Unfortunately, the two players arrived at first base simultaneously and slammed into each other.
So on the same night Ketel Marte ends it with a walk-off, Max Muncy and Ildemaro Vargas both leave early after a collision at first base. Fifth inning, Muncy grounds to first, the two arrive at the bag at the same time, and that's it for both of them. Santiago Espinal and Pavin Smith finish the game. Ohtani goes six scoreless, and somehow we end the night with Muncy hobbling off and Vargas — an opposing player — hobbling off too, and then Marte wins it anyway. The baseball gods are doing something mean right now. The timing matters here. Alek Thomas is in Triple-A OKC and still hasn't gotten real reps with this club, and we already flagged the roster depth question Wednesday. If Muncy's unavailable for the finale, you're looking at Espinal at third and hoping the depth chart holds. That's the worst-case version of the question we were already asking. I said the bullpen formula wasn't airtight two days ago and got talked off the ledge. I said the injury board was quietly getting longer. Both of those things showed up on the same night. I do not want to be right about this. Field Level Media writes:
After Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings and reached base five times in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 7-0 victory against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday, manager Dave Roberts said he plans to give his superstar a day off in the finale of the four-game series on Thursday in Phoenix. Ohtani has played every game since a break on May 14.
Roberts confirmed it Thursday night — six scoreless, five times on base, and Ohtani still doesn't play the finale. That's the workload plan doing exactly what it was built to do, not serving as some reward system. He's 6-2 with a 0.74 ERA and they're sitting him the day after the Dodgers just dropped a walk-off to Arizona. The superstar did everything right, and they still lost the series. That's the part that's eating at me right now. I'd separate those two things. Ohtani's rest day makes sense structurally, and the walk-off loss is a bullpen problem. If you mash them together, it sounds like management blew it, when really the rotation isn't the issue here. Kirk, I said two days ago the bullpen formula wasn't airtight. Ketel Marte just handed me the receipt. One solo shot, series over. If you want to keep up with California beyond the ballpark, check out California Governor's Race — daily 2026 coverage of candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We've got links to every story from today's show in the notes, so if one of them stuck with you, you can dig in there. Thanks for spending part of your Friday with us. That's Dodgers Daily Podcast for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.