Alarm bells grow louder as Dodgers get shut out by Chris Sale, swept by Braves

ATLANTA — Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he was “not too concerned” on Thursday afternoon.That even amid his team’s latest stumble, he still knows “we’ve got a good ballclub.”Lately, however, one opponent after another has shown there might be plenty of others that are better.Because, after getting shut out by Chris Sale in a 1-0 defeat to the Braves on Thursday night, the Dodgers have developed a trend that is impossible to ignore.Since July 31, the two-time defending champions have played 15 games against teams with winning records. Following Thursday’s sweep-clinching loss to the Braves, they have won just twice in that span.This is a bit of a selective statistic, of course.

In the nine other games the Dodgers have played against lesser teams in that stretch, they’ve gone 9-0.However, these Dodgers, with their $400 million payroll and star-studded rotation and grandiose aspirations of completing the National League’s first World Series three-peat, will always be held to a different standard.Beating bad teams, especially at this time of the year, will only inspire so much confidence.As long as they struggle against the best, their title hopes will feel tenuous.“I’d still take us against any of those winning teams,” Roberts argued Thursday afternoon, writing off the club’s recent struggles as a temporary blip.“It just comes down to us having to play good baseball.”As of Thursday night, it still hadn’t happened.Instead, in a pitchers’ duel between Sale and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers turned in the kind of performance that could easily doom them come October.Yamamoto was good in his outing, going 6 ⅓ innings with eight strikeouts, but allowed a home run on his first pitch — a hanging splitter to Drake Baldwin — that put the Dodgers in a quick hole.But Sale, on the other hand, showcased complete domination, helping the Braves pull within one game of the Dodgers for a top-two NL playoff seed.The veteran left-hander re...