Defending NL king mired in mediocrity
LOS ANGELES — This is why a team should never be declared dead in the first six or seven weeks of a season. After an inactive winter by an overconfident front office that bordered on irresponsible, after losing Corey Seager for the season and Clayton Kershaw for about a month and after dropping successive series to the bottom-dwelling Cincinnati Reds and Miami Marlins, the fourth-place Dodgers are only 31⁄2 games out of first place in the NL West.
The Dodgers have won six of their last seven games, including a 3-0 victory over Colorado on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium. They still haven’t changed the perception they’re not good. What has changed is the other teams in their division have revealed themselves as equally unremarkable.
“I think we’re very fortunate,” said manager Dave Roberts, whose team was five games under .500 and nine games out of first place on May 1. They are still five games under .500 but have somehow reduced the gap between them and the top of the National League West.
“Teams ahead of us are going through some of the things we went through,” Roberts said.
The most notable are the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had the best record in the NL on May 8. They have dropped to second place after losing an astounding 13 of 14 games since, which allowed the Rockies to overtake them for first place in the division. The Diamondbacks averaged fewer than two runs and batted .174 over their 14-game free-fall. They collected only 10 hits over a three-game series in Milwaukee this week in which they were swept. Their only reliable source of offense, A.J. Pollock, is sidelined with a broken thumb. They also haven’t played the Dodgers in two weeks, depriving them of the opportunity to further pound a team against which they are 8-4.
As for the division-leading Rockies, they have yet to experience the kind of extended stretches of misery the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks have endured.
The only other team between the Dodgers and a sixth consecutive division title are the San Francisco Giants, an old team that became even older by adding Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria.