CHICAGO — The Los Angeles Dodgers have had to learn to anticipate every opponent’s best punch. That’s the nature of being reigning back-to-back World Series champions. There’s just a lot more behind each blow the Chicago White Sox can deliver these days.Baseball is fun on the South Side of Chicago again, fueled in part by a young and energetic offense that can leave you staggering. It’s one of baseball’s best stories. The Dodgers’ bullpen, on the other hand, which closed May fresh off a franchise-record 38 consecutive scoreless innings, just can’t seem to stop the bleeding.Through May, a bullpen that had thrown the fewest innings in the majors also ranked fourth with a 3.12 ERA. Since the calendar flipped to June, that group has allowed 32 runs in 38 1/3 innings (a 7.51 ERA), including three of the six runs in a sixth-inning implosion in a 6-4 loss.“I think maybe some strike-throwing, a few more walks that we’re not used to over the last six weeks or so, because they’ve been really, really good,” said bench coach Danny Lehmann (who filled in for manager Dave Roberts, who was attending his daughter’s college graduation).This bullpen has already allowed 10 home runs in 13 games this month. Sunday’s sixth inning marked the fifth time in the last seven games that the Dodgers have allowed four or more runs in a single inning.What started with three consecutive hits off starter Emmet Sheehan became a three-homer inning as Colson Montgomery and Chase Meidroth added home runs off of Jack Dreyer (who has now allowed five home runs in seven appearances since returning from the injured list). The first six batters of the inning strung together hits and came across to score before the Dodgers could even record an out.The Dodgers dropped two of three in Chicago, the first series they’ve lost in more than a month. Hardly enough to push the panic button over. Here are more things I think about the club as they head back home from a 3-3 trip:1. Miguel Vargas’ rise to prominence with the White Sox is a testament to his talent — and how hard it is to break through as an everyday position player with the Dodgers. If or when Andy Pages is named an All-Star, he will be the first homegrown position player to do so for the Dodgers since Will Smith (who debuted in 2019).Vargas has a case to join him in Philadelphia while representing the American League: his 16 home runs, .865 OPS and 141 wRC+ entering Sunday all led AL third basemen. He looks every bit the type of player who was so intriguing in the Dodgers’ system, demonstrating a clear feel to hit and the ability to spray baseballs to all parts of the ballpark, all without striking out much. He showed signs of this in his first full season on the South Side, but this is a full-on breakout this season.“He’s thriving,” Dave Roberts said this weekend. “And with young players it takes time.”He didn’t have the luxury of time with the Dodgers, who gave him the everyday job out of position at second base to start 2023, but by the time they traded him a year later, they didn’t really have a spot for him. Like we’ve seen with Hyeseong Kim and Alex Freeland this season, the Dodgers need a high floor with their current roster construction. Vargas wasn’t supplying that, which made him somewhat expendable for the right move.It’s hard to argue the deal has been a win-win for the Dodgers and the White Sox (and a loss for the St. Louis Cardinals, who acquired Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham in a failed attempt to compete). Vargas has turned into a potential franchise cornerstone as Chicago has turned things around. Tommy Edman was the 2024 NLCS MVP and Michael Kopech served as a fireman as the Dodgers won the first of consecutive World Series titles. Edman will return to the Dodgers lineup as soon as Tuesday after offseason ankle surgery. Flags fly forever, as the saying goes.2. This level of production out of Mookie Betts is not sustainable, but this was a solid series for him offensively. The shape of his struggles is at least a little perplexing. Betts has admitted that the usual troubleshooting methods he uses for his swing no longer work. His 2-for-4 day on Sunday raised his batting average to .204, above .200 for the first time since March 27.But the underlying data isn’t awful? Baseball Savant’s newest metric, which gauges how well hitters time up certain pitches and square them up, loves him. Betts’ “perfect contact” rate this season is 40 percent, the best in baseball. That metric is not a perfect indicator of success — among the names immediately behind him are Ke’Bryan Hayes (.420 OPS) and Juan Soto (.937 OPS entering Sunday) — but it tells you timing is not an issue.Betts’ bat-to-ball skills are intact. His whiff rates (96th percentile) and strikeout rate (91st percentile) continue to be among the league’s best, and he is regularly hitting the ball on a line. He is keeping the ball off the ground just as he did in his last truly elite offensive season in 2023.It just hasn’t always been the right type of contact in the air. His percentage of pulled fly balls (21 percent, entering Sunday) is the lowest he’s had in a season since 2019. Most of that contact is going up the middle, like this ball he squared up in the first inning against Bryan Hudson on Sunday:In theory, that isn’t the worst thing. For a guy like Betts, who has made a living on power production by pulling the ball a couple of rows deep into the seats, it can make a huge difference.“Most hitters have success pulling the ball in the air, right?” Lehmann said. “So you could kind of say that about everyone. But Mookie specifically, I think he’s just working on stuff to get more consistency with his swing, which in turn, he’ll pull more balls in the air.”Betts already doesn’t have much margin for error.The gap demonstrated itself in the eighth inning. Betts got a hanging slider from reliever Grant Taylor and pulled it in the air. The 105.7 mph shot barely cleared the fence and into the White Sox bullpen for Betts’ seventh home run of the season.The Dodgers do not need Betts to hit like an MVP again. His defense at a premium position helped make him worth 4.9 Baseball Reference WAR last season, even with a 104 OPS+. They really need him to at least get back to that kind of offensive production.3. Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s name will be part of the NL Cy Young conversation, even as Jacob Misiorowski, Cristopher Sánchez and even Yamamoto’s teammate Shohei Ohtani continue to make their cases heard. (This is your obligatory reminder not to forget about Paul Skenes, either). Yamamoto’s run of 45 consecutive batters retired in a week was another reminder why he can’t be counted out.He did not complete his no-hitter (or his perfect game) Saturday for the second time in as many seasons. But the fact that he keeps getting so close is another reminder of why he’s got a case as one of the best in the sport.“He can attack the plate on both sides from ball-to-strike better than anybody I’ve ever seen,” pitching coach Mark Prior said Saturday. “He has that ability to do that when he’s on. And that makes it tough on hitters. You don’t know if the ball is coming at them from the right side or the left side, and going in. He did a lot of really good things to keep guys off balance. … That’s what makes him special. It’s not just the amount of pitches. It’s the ability to throw them in four different quadrants and have pretty good execution and efficiency with it.”4. Max Muncy should be the starting third baseman for the NL All-Star team next month, barring injury, which is deserved based on his production and the lack of a true alternative. If that comes to pass, he would be the first Dodger to start the All-Star Game at third base since Ron Cey in 1977. It would also be Muncy’s first start since he was the team’s designated hitter in 2021. He’s all the way back offensively with a .903 OPS (including two home runs on Saturday) and has managed to stay healthy even in his age-35 season.5. Remember when the Dodgers floated the idea of a Ryan Ward and Alex Call platoon to address left field this season? They wound up signing Kyle Tucker, moving Teoscar Hernández to left field and improving their outfield corner production anyway, but it’s worth considering how those scenarios might have played out.Entering Sunday, when Ward went 1-for-3 with a double and a walk and Tucker went 1-for-4 …PLAYER(S)PAsOPSwRC+fWARAlex Call, Ryan Ward1390.7291090.5Kyle Tucker2890.7121030.6Tucker’s prolonged mediocrity has largely been a subplot to a strong start to the Dodgers’ season. They can absorb waiting for Tucker to figure things out, and likely are better off having him than not, even at a record average annual value. But it’s certainly concerning that it’s taking as long as it has for Tucker to get things going.6. It’s encouraging (though maybe not surprising) to see how seamlessly Ward’s bat has transitioned to the big league level. Facing almost exclusively right-handed pitching, he has an .846 OPS in 41 plate appearances. A small sample, but he looks comfortable.It’ll still be hard for him to stick with the Dodgers long-term, but that at least makes him intriguing to rival clubs and only adds to what the organization could move at the deadline to reconfigure their roster. They got Brock Stewart for James Outman a year ago, and I wonder if they will try to do something similar next month. Especially with Teoscar Hernández slated to return by then from his strained hamstring.