LOS ANGELES — Nineteen hours after etching his name yet again into World Series history, Freddie Freeman followed the procession of Los Angeles Dodgers who came up empty in Game 4. He struck out, slumping his shoulders as he returned to the dugout in the eighth inning. With two hits, Freeman qualified as the most successful Dodger hitter of the night.

The 18-inning marathon of the night before came with a hangover. Or a continuation of a Dodgers’ offensive outage that has carried on for most of the month.

A 6-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays shuttered the idea of a repeat celebration at Dodger Stadium, as it leveled the World Series at 2-2. The offense that saved the Dodgers so often last October whiffed at another chance to do so this year.

“We haven’t found our rhythm,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Time is running out to do so, with either two games or three games left in his team’s season.

Dave Roberts said the lineup “might look a little bit different tomorrow.”

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The Dodgers reached this point due to their strong starting pitching. Tuesday’s starting pitcher was no exception. Shohei Ohtani had dirt caked over his left pant leg by the end of the first inning. He had been cramping the night before, as Monday night threatened to become Tuesday morning and Ohtani had already smashed World Series history.

Making his World Series pitching debut on Tuesday, Ohtani’s first fastballs registered at around 96 mph. He intentionally took something off because of the load he’d have to carry.

It’s been a shared mission this October, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani have all had moments that will go into Dodgers postseason lore if their hitters could give them a little more help. It took two games’ worth of innings in Game 3 for the Dodgers to surpass five runs in a game for the first time since the Wild Card Series.

“We’re facing the best of the best, so I think it’s not that easy,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “But at the same time, we could do at least the bare minimum to be able to put up some runs.”

No one carries the onus more than Ohtani, who was left trying to help himself out in his first-ever World Series start.

He could not ignite the Dodgers as he did the night before, when he slugged the Dodgers into the game and drove in three runs before Blue Jays manager John Schneider took the bat out of his hands altogether. It took until Freeman’s blast in the 18th inning for the rest of the lineup around him to produce the eventual winning run in Game 3.

Before Game 4, one glance at the Dodgers’ weary bullpen options prompted Roberts to try to keep the baseball in Ohtani’s hands on the mound.

Ohtani made just one mistake on the night, a pitch he called a “regrettable” hanging sweeper that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. clobbered into the seats for a go-ahead two-run blast to make it 2-1. Ohtani held that score through six innings when pitching coach Mark Prior approached Ohtani and asked how much he felt he had left. Ohtani responded and said he had three more innings in him.

“Every time he steps up, I expect great things to happen, and maybe unfairly,” Roberts said.

So Ohtani came back out for the seventh inning at 90 pitches. He lasted three more, two of which Daulton Varsho and Ernie Clement bashed for hits. Roberts took the baseball, and by the inning’s end, it was a 6-1 game.

The bullpen remains a pressure point the Blue Jays can attack. That’s a culprit the Dodgers knew even before the playoffs began. The offense, which paced the National League with 825 runs this season before fading in October, presents a much greater concern.

“It sort of draws dead at certain parts of the lineup and different parts, different innings, different games,” Roberts said. “Guys are competing. Certainly, in the postseason, you’re seeing everyone’s best.”

It was Shane Bieber’s best in Game 4. The Dodgers swung and missed just five total times over Bieber’s 5 1/3 innings, but could not turn that contact into anything close to damage. Bieber used his cutter as a weapon for soft contact. The Dodgers could not adjust or capitalize, just as they couldn’t when Trey Yesavage, Kevin Gausman and Max Scherzer each presented openings over the first three games of this World Series.

“We really didn’t get a whole lot of good swings,” Roberts said.

A walk, single and a Kiké Hernández sacrifice fly in the second inning constituted the only real rhythm the Dodgers generated offensively against Bieber until they finally chased him in the sixth. A Blue Jays bullpen that required eight pitchers after Scherzer to complete the 18-inning Game 3 only had to use three relievers behind Bieber. The Dodgers didn’t generate an extra-base hit until Max Muncy’s double in the ninth.

Ohtani drew a walk to lead off the game but finished 0-for-3 with a pair of strikeouts.

The Dodgers’ offense has done just enough for much of this postseason, but the lineup is constructed to do so much more.

“Obviously, we would love to score 10 every game, but that’s not the case,” Mookie Betts said. “We want to get going, but we just have to play.”

The Dodgers will have to do better to outlast a lineup as relentless as Toronto’s. Among the regulars in the Dodgers’ postseason lineup, only Ohtani (1.182), Freeman (.810) and Teoscar Hernández (.859) boast an OPS above .800 this postseason.

“Not great,” Muncy said. “We’re missing on the big opportunities, myself included. I’m one of the big culprits of that.”

Tommy Edman struck out in the sixth inning and is hitting just .167 in the World Series. He is not alone in his cold streak. , (Harry How / Getty Images)

At least one change could come before Wednesday, when the Dodgers get a second look at Yesavage. Roberts has openly considered removing the struggling Andy Pages from the lineup. Pages had two hitless at-bats in Game 4, lowering his OPS this postseason to .215, before being pinch-hit for.

The choice essentially amounts to whether Pages will be swapped out in exchange for Alex Call (who would play left field, pushing Kiké Hernández to center) or Miguel Rojas (who would play second base, pushing Tommy Edman and his balky ankle into center field).

“It might look a little bit different tomorrow,” Roberts said.

The manager arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday and hoped that a return to Dodger Stadium would be a welcome sight for his team’s struggling hitters. Now, if they want to win another World Series, it’ll have to be back north of the border.