Brewers square off against juggernaut Dodgers
L.A. 29-7 since all-star break
LOS ANGELES – For those who like to peruse the major-league baseball standings every morning, it’s a won-loss record that jumps off the page. 90-36. That has to be a typo, right? No team could possibly be 54 games over .500 with five weeks remaining in the season.
Yet, that’s exactly where the Los Angeles Dodgers stood Thursday after a 5-2 victory in Pittsburgh. Somehow, they lost to the Pirates on Wednesday evening, 1-0, despite Rich Hill taking a perfect game into the ninth inning and no-hitter into the 10th, but that’s one of the few things that has gone wrong for L.A. in a storybook season.
“They’re on a historic pace,” Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “You certainly respect that. There’s not many teams saying they beat them. That’s the bottom line.
“They’ve gotten better as the season has gone on.”
And, now, the Brewers find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the juggernaut Dodgers. Milwaukee opens a threegame series at Dodger Stadium on Friday evening, the final stop on a three-city, nine-game trip that began in Colorado and moved on to San Francisco.
The Brewers have known this series was coming all season but there was no way to predict when it arrived that Los Angeles would be putting together one of the best seasons in big-league history. The Dodgers forged a 61-29 record in the first half, impressive enough to build a 71⁄2-game lead in the National League West.
But the Dodgers were just getting started. They have gone 29-7 since the all-star break, an astounding .806 winning percentage. At one point, going back to June, they had won 50 of 59 games.
For perspective, consider that Arizona is 7058, which would have placed the Diamondbacks a game ahead of the Chicago Cubs if they played in the NL Central. But, because they are in the NL West with Los Angeles, the Diamondbacks are 21 games out of first place and thinking wild card only.
“The last time we played the Dodgers, they were doing well but it was before they really took off,” Brewers first baseman Eric Thames said. “We played three close games against them.”
Thames referred to a
three-game series at Miller Park during the first weekend in June. The Brewers lost two of three to the Dodgers but easily could have swept the series.
With Jimmy Nelson outdueling Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw in the opener, the Brewers took a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning. But Milwaukee closer Corey Knebel surrendered a home run to Yasmani Grandal, and Los Angeles went on to win, 2-1, on rookie Cody Bellinger’s homer off Neftali Feliz in the 12th.
The next day, the Brewers absorbed one of their toughest losses of the season. They scored five runs in the seventh, with Travis Shaw hitting a grand slam, to take an 8-4 lead. The Brewers were up by three in the ninth when reliever Carlos Torres blew up, giving up five runs, including a slam by Chris Taylor, as the Dodgers pulled out an improbable 10-8 victory.
The Brewers recovered to win the finale, 3-0, behind six shutout innings from Zach Davies, who starts Saturday against the Dodgers. At the end of that day June 4, Los Angeles was 35-23 and Milwaukee was 30-27.
The Dodgers have since gone 55-13, while the Brewers have compiled a 36-35 record. Los Angeles has been extraordinarily good at home this season, forging a major leaguebest 51-14 mark.
“We had them beat but they still come back and beat you,” said Counsell, whose club had Thursday off before the showdown in L.A. “It’s a tough game. You earn your record, and they’ve earned it. You know you’re going against a historically good team when you go in there.
"It comes at an important time in the season. Let’s face it. The ultimate goal probably goes through L.A. at some point. It is a test. It’s three games, and we’re chasing. So, we have to keep up.”
The second-place Brewers could ill afford a sweep by the Dodgers if they want to stay in the thick of the playoff races. By splitting their first six games of the trip, including a disappointing 1-2 stop in San Francisco during which the offense stalled, they sat three games behind Chicago in the NL Central.
On the wild-card front, the Brewers trailed Colorado by 31⁄2 games for the second berth after the Rockies beat Kansas City, 3-2, on Thursday.
Despite their unexpected showing this season, the Brewers are not living metaphorically in La-La Land. They understand that even with Kershaw, left-hander Alex Wood and runaway rookie-of-the-year leader Bellinger on the disabled list, the Dodgers have been an unstoppable machine thus far.
That doesn’t mean they're going into the lair of the beast expecting the worst, however.
“We’re all men,” Thames said. “We have a job to do, so we’re going to go there and do our best. We just want to focus on our game and play good baseball.
“You can’t get caught up in how many wins and losses they have. We can’t worry about that. We want to get to the postseason, too, and we’ve done a good job of focusing on that. We look at it as another challenge.
“It’s always nice to be in L.A., with the good weather and everything.”
Just do yourself a favor. Don't look at the standings. They will blow your mind.