Sitting at a desk inside Angel Stadium on Wednesday night, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged he and his team were not where he thought they would be.
“I wouldn’t have expected us to be in second place right now,” he said.
Really, no one could have expected this.
Not when the Padres last left Dodger Stadium, on June 19, having lost five of the seven games they had played against the Dodgers in the previous 11 days.
Not on July 2, when the Padres returned home having lost four of six on a road trip to Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
Not on July 3, when the Dodgers won for the ninth time in 10 games to move a season-high nine games ahead of the Padres.
“We played some bad baseball during that time, so we weren’t really looking up at that point,” Manny Machado said Wednesday. “We were just trying to get back in the win column. But we got back home and leading up to (the trade) deadline, we played some pretty good baseball. We got off to a nice little start in the second half.”
Machado spoke as he sat in the visitors’ clubhouse at Oracle Park after the Padres won their fifth game in a row and for the 14th time in the past 17 games.
Later Wednesday, shortly after the Padres arrived in Los Angeles ahead of a three-game series that begins Friday at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers lost their fourth straight game, leaving the Padres alone atop the National League West standings.
Since July 4, the Padres are 23-12. The Dodgers are 12-21.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani laughs with Padres first baseman Luis Arraez after Ohtani was hit by a pitch on June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)
The Padres began to play better just about the time their deficit in the West reached its largest. That mainly involved their offense becoming more consistent. But the results were still middling. They were not a team that was going to overtake the Dodgers.
They emerged from the All-Star break with a 5-5 road trip before coming home to sweep the Mets, who at the time had won eight straight and led the NL East. Then came July 31, a day off for the players but one of the busiest Padres President of Baseball Operations A.J. Preller has ever had.
On the day of the trade deadline, he filled the team’s holes in left field (Ramón Laureano) and behind the plate (Freddy Fermin), added an extra bat (Ryan O’Hearn) and two starting pitchers (Nestor Cortes and JP Sears) and deepened what was by some measures already MLB’s best bullpen by adding an extra closer (Mason Miller).
“Our GM went all out,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “So we’re not gonna disappoint, by no measurements. So we’re going out there, confident every single day, playing good baseball, clean baseball.”
The Padres’ Manny Machado hugs Jose Iglesias after he hit a two-run homer in the second inning of Wednesday’s game against the Giants. Ramon Laureano, at left, also scored on the homer. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
The Padres are 9-3 since the trade deadline. The Dodgers, who added a middle reliever and an extra outfielder to a payroll that was already an MLB-high $340 million, are 5-7.
That has put the Padres in first place in the division this late in a season for the first time since there were eight games remaining in the 2010 season and dropped the Dodgers from the top spot this late in a season for the first time since 2021 and just the fourth time since 2013.
Since July 27, the Padres rank fourth in the major leagues in runs scored to the Dodgers’ 13th. The Padres rank second in ERA to the Dodgers’ fourth.
Many of the Dodgers’ quotes lately would look familiar to Padres fans.
“It’s like, when we hit, we don’t pitch. When we pitch, we don’t hit,” first baseman Freddie Freeman told reporters this week. “Once we start rounding in shape, we’ll be OK. We’re frustrated in here. But no one’s really panicking.”
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani stands in the on-deck circle during the first inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
While the Dodgers haven’t been in this situation for a while — looking up at another team — it is way too early to have any idea how this race will conclude.
“We feel really good,” Tatis said Wednesday. “But … everybody knows this game, how crazy it is.”
The Dodgers know how to win. They’ve won the NL West 11 times in the last 12 years.
And their current skid is not unprecedented in that time. This is the Dodgers’ worst 33-game stretch since they went 12-21 from April 11 to May 17, 2018. They went to the World Series that year.
They went 11-22 from Aug. 26 to Sept. 29, 2017. They went to the World Series that year as well.
The Dodgers were ripe for a takeover last season, too. Their preposterously expensive roster was diminished by a rash of injuries, primarily to pitchers, while the Padres were sizzling.
With a victory in the opener of their series at Dodger Stadium on Sept. 24, the Padres got to within two games of the NL West lead with five games to play. The Dodgers won the next two nights to clinch their 11th title in 12 years.
San Diego Padres Jurickson Profar leaps into the stands to steal a home run from Dodgers’ Mookie Betts in the first inning during Game 2 of the NLDS at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
A little more than two weeks later, the Padres led the Dodgers two games to one in the NL Division Series before not scoring over the final two games.
They left Dodger Stadium on Oct. 11 shocked and with a winter to think about what might have been.
Whatever happens this weekend will not be anywhere near that final.
For one thing, the teams play each other again next weekend at Petco Park.
Even after that, they will each have 31 games remaining.
According to FanGraphs.com projections, which consider a team’s remaining schedule and its players’ projected performance, the Dodgers still have a 62% chance of winning the West to the Padres’ 38% chance.
“We’ve got a month-and-a-half to play,” O’Hearn said.
The Padres’ Ryan O’Hearn, right, celebrates with Xander Bogaerts after hitting a game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s victory over the Diamondbacks. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
It was clear by his tone that O’Hearn did not anticipate getting all that worked up.
“We’ve got another series to play,” O’Hearn said. “They’re a really good team. We’re gonna show up, we’re gonna play hard and try to win a game. I’m not gonna get too caught up in the rivalry. Maybe that’ll change. I don’t know what’s gonna happen this weekend. As of right now, that’s where I’m at.”
O’Hearn acknowledged he was new to the rivalry. But what he said was pretty much out of the textbook.
“We’re excited to go compete,” manager Mike Shildt said Wednesday. “Clearly, it’s a series people are going to be paying attention to, and we’re just going to go play good, clean, fundamental Padre baseball.”
Shildt comes as close to managing every game like it might be his last as is possible when a season involves 162 games. When that is the mantra and the mindset, there is less inclination to make a certain series bigger.
Even if it is.
“Very important,” Tatis said. “The team is in our division, and we want to gain ground. So we better get out there and take care of business.”