{"id":33095,"date":"2025-07-02T17:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33095\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:06:08","slug":"the-dodgers-have-baseballs-best-record-with-room-for-improvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33095\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dodgers have baseball’s best record, with room for improvement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With a 6-1 annihilation<\/a> of the downtrodden Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night, the Dodgers<\/a> extended their advantage in the National League West to eight games.<\/p>\n

Eight games, despite slumps by Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eight games, despite injuries to Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eight games, despite being less than three weeks removed from sharing the division lead with the San Francisco Giants.<\/p>\n

Almost everything that could go wrong this season for the Dodgers has gone wrong, and they are ahead of the second-place San Diego Padres by eight games and the third-place Giants by nine. The Dodgers have looked nothing like the 120-win juggernaut<\/a> they were expected to be, and they have the best record in the major leagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still believe our best baseball is ahead of us,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

Three months remain in the regular season, more than enough time for the Dodgers to become whole, more than enough time for them to transform into baseball\u2019s version of the Mongol army.<\/p>\n

Roberts said the Dodgers are \u201cnot really playing our best baseball,\u201d and he\u2019s right. They haven\u2019t steamrolled their opponents as much as they have outgutted them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t been at full strength all year,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cA lot of teams can say the same thing. But to our credit, no one has made any excuses about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dodgers and Giants were even in the standings on June 13. The Dodgers won 13 of their next 16 games. The Giants lost 12 of their next 16, their blockbuster trade for Rafael Devers<\/a> shaking up the division but not in the way they wanted.<\/p>\n

From mid-May to mid-June, the Dodgers played 26 consecutive games against teams with winning records, but the Giants and Padres failed to take advantage of that. Roberts\u2019 team emerged from that stretch in first place and has continued to increase its division lead since.<\/p>\n

What should be disconcerting for the Giants and Padres \u2014 as well as the New York Yankees and Mets, and any other aspiring contender \u2014 is that the Dodgers have managed to distance themselves from the competition without looking particularly imposing.<\/p>\n

Their win over the White Sox on Tuesday night marked the rare game in which they dominated every aspect of the game, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> giving up just one run in seven innings, the offense scoring four runs in the first inning, Shohei Ohtani<\/a> launching his 30th homer in the fourth, and Jack Dreyer<\/a> and Anthony Banda<\/a> each pitching a scoreless inning in relief.<\/p>\n

They need more games like this but not just to win the division or secure a first-round bye in the playoffs. They need them to create the momentum required to make another championship run.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I\u2019ve learned,\u201d Roberts said, \u201cis the most important thing is once you\u2019re [in the playoffs], you\u2019ve got to be playing your best baseball because anything can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ohtani has resumed pitching, albeit in a limited capacity. As much talk as there was about how his mound return affected his hitting, Ohtani still homered seven times last month.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers aren\u2019t counting on Ohtani to make seven- or eight-inning starts in the postseason, but they think he could contribute four or five innings at a time without compromising his offensive production.<\/p>\n

Betts was kept out of the lineup on Tuesday, Roberts categorizing the day off as \u201cmore of a mental day.\u201d Betts hasn\u2019t found much of an offensive rhythm this season, but his track record indicates he is bound to break out of his slump.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an easy guy to bet on,\u201d Roberts said of the eight-time All-Star.<\/p>\n

The same could be said of Freeman.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers also received uplifting news on the injury front.<\/p>\n

Roki Sasaki<\/a> played catch on Tuesday and was clocked at 91 mph, a sign that his season might not be over.<\/p>\n

Snell and reliever Blake Treinen will pitch live batting practice sessions on Wednesday, marking their first time facing hitters since landing on the injured list. A day later, Glasnow is scheduled to make what could be his final start of a minor league rehabilitation assignment, with the Dodgers hopeful he can throw about 75 pitches over five innings. If management continues to have doubts whether Snell or Glasnow will be available in October, it can always make a move before the July 31 trade deadline.<\/p>\n

As the team with the best record in baseball, the Dodgers technically have nowhere to go but down. In reality, they can only improve from here. This is their floor. By the time the playoffs come around, they should be a better team than they are now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a 6-1 annihilation of the downtrodden Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night, the Dodgers extended their advantage…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[591,27043,2977,2442,27709,1910,27707,3688,1266,2749,26804,5950,4712,62,3007,27708,11584,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-33095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blake-snell","10":"tag-division","11":"tag-dodgers","12":"tag-enough-time","13":"tag-game","14":"tag-good-record","15":"tag-inning","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-mookie-betts","18":"tag-roberts","19":"tag-season","20":"tag-shohei-ohtani","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-team","23":"tag-third-place-giants","24":"tag-tuesday-night","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114784736731395661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}