The Los Angeles Dodgers get Mookie Betts back for all four games in this series against the San Francisco Giants, and that alone changes the frame around what happened last month. The Giants took 2 out of 3 in San Francisco without Betts in the lineup, then watched the Dodgers’ offense keep sliding.
That earlier result looked sharp at the time, but the numbers around it have only made the Dodgers look stranger. They were 16-6 before the series and averaging 6 runs per game. After it, they were 8-10 and scoring around 4 runs per game. Just before heading north, they had split four games in Coors Field, and since April 17th their team wRC+ has sat at 103. If you measure just after the Giants series, that falls to 98, good for 16th in the majors. One voice in the background put it plainly: “Hey, maybe the Giants aren’t as bad as they’ve looked.” “That’s right.”
That is the question hovering over this rematch in Los Angeles. The Giants’ win last month came without Betts on the other side, and this time the Dodgers have him for every game. That matters because Betts was coming off the worst offensive season of his career in 2025, and Shohei Ohtani has posted an 89 wRC+ over the past few weeks, so the lineup’s name value has not matched its production. The Dodgers were supposed to be rolling; instead, their offense has been ordinary for more than a month.
The Giants have their own unease. They traded a Gold Glover, then demoted former veterans they had planned all offseason long to count on throughout the year. Their manager was not clear about pitching changes, which is not the kind of detail that calms a team already being measured against expectations it has not met. On May 11th, the Giants were described as a team covered in flop sweat, and that description still fits the edge around this matchup.
So the series in Los Angeles does not just test whether San Francisco can handle a better Dodgers lineup. It tests whether last month’s result was a real warning or just a snapshot of a slumping contender in motion. If Betts, at 33, changes the math and the Dodgers’ bats wake up, the Giants’ earlier win will look less like proof and more like timing. If not, the division race gets a little less comfortable for Los Angeles, and a lot more interesting for everyone else.
