ATLANTA — The Los Angeles Dodgers haven’t operated with any breathing room for months, which meant that as Tanner Scott delivered his eighth consecutive fastball to a pinch hitter who hadn’t recorded a hit since June 3, he still couldn’t afford to leave it out over the plate.No batter in baseball with at least 85 plate appearances this season had hit worse than Ha-Seong Kim when he entered in the ninth inning for the Atlanta Braves Wednesday with a .066 batting average. But he was ready for the fastball. Scott fell behind 3-0 on heaters, yet kept firing them to get back into the count without ever going to his slider. Then Scott left one over the plate.“I just thought the fastball was good and just yanked one down,” Scott said after coughing up the winning run for the second consecutive night.Kim laced a single into left field, and Atlanta handed the Dodgers a 6-5 walk-off loss to sink the reigning back-to-back champions back into the reality they’ve grown used to over the last few months.“The base hit by Kim ended the game,” manager Dave Roberts said, “but it’s not what cost us the game.”The Dodgers’ offense has not been good enough to give them a margin for error, spoiling multiple golden opportunities to break open the game early or climb ahead late. Their glove work has been lacking, with Teoscar Hernández’s latest flub in the outfield giving Atlanta an opening. Their bullpen has felt the brunt of it, and Scott, their interim closer, has had to be perfect. And their sterling starting staff has taken another hit, with Roki Sasaki exiting after just 66 pitches. He will go on the injured list with a blister on his right middle finger.Each of these phases has mattered because the games have been close. The Dodgers have won just three games by five or more runs since the start of July, a stretch in which their offense has been one of the least productive in the sport, ranking 21st with a 94 wRC+.These two months have seen the Dodgers play 21 one-run games and win 11. Overall, they’re just 24-23 in that time.They’d won six in a row heading into Atlanta, beating the likes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies, but the Dodgers have now lost five consecutive series against teams currently in or within a game of postseason position.The little things have mattered. Shohei Ohtani stepped up with two on in the second inning and got ahead in the count before getting the fastball he was looking for from AJ Smith-Shawver. Yet he sent it a mile into the sky for an inning-ending flyout, the first of four times the Dodgers left multiple runners on base.“We had a lot of opportunities throughout the whole game, so it’s hard to pinpoint just one,” Max Muncy said. “If we do our job on any of those opportunities, it’s a different outcome.”Twice in their last three trips to the plate, the Dodgers left the bases loaded. They tied the score at 5-5 in the seventh on Tommy Edman’s bases-loaded walk with no outs, but could do no more when Kyle Tucker’s fly ball did not get deep enough into the outfield to score Mookie Betts from third base, and Alek Thomas hit a fastball into the dirt for an inning-ending double play.They reloaded the bases in the eighth, with Atlanta right-hander Didier Fuentes on the ropes and firing fastball after fastball to Muncy. Fuentes threw seven in a row before unleashing a full-count changeup that Muncy could not time up. He swung through it as the pitch dove toward the dirt, ending another chance.“You don’t think he’s going to go to a pitch that he can’t throw for a strike — and he didn’t throw it for a strike,” Muncy said. “I just chased it. He made a good pitch.”It was a gutsy decision by Fuentes, the type of moment that can spark a Braves team pushing the Dodgers for a first-round bye in the National League playoffs and has now claimed a pivotal tiebreaker by winning the season series. Those stakes have made this series feel more important than just three midweek games in late August. Two nights have once again shined a light on the cracks that have formed within baseball’s resident juggernaut.That goes beyond the ninth inning, where Scott has been one of the better relief arms in baseball but has not executed in the biggest spots of late: first a slider he left up for Ozzie Albies’ go-ahead single Tuesday, then the fastball Kim was ready for on Wednesday. The Dodgers’ regular closer, Edwin Díaz, is on the IL with an 11.85 ERA.The arms leading up to Scott are gassed, too, and Wednesday did not help. Sasaki looked down at his right middle finger after walking Albies to lead off the fourth inning and saw a gash.“My skin just ripped off, and after that it kinda [got] worse,” Sasaki said through interpreter Kensuke Okubo.Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki exited in the fourth inning and is expected to go on the injured list with a blister on his right middle finger. (Colin Hubbard / Imagn Images)Edgardo Henriquez entered and sought to limit the damage when Hernández’s difficult season got worse. Little has gone right for Hernández, who so often has swung his way out of mistakes made with his glove, but hasn’t been able to do so in 2026.That context hung in the air as Hernández drifted toward the foul line trying to track down a fly ball to left by Drake Baldwin that kept on carrying until it didn’t. Hernández kept running toward the wall until he realized it was too late, stretching his glove behind his head as the ball bounced behind him, just in fair territory, for what was ruled a two-run double that gave Atlanta a 4-3 lead.