L.A.’s numbers worth of favorite label

In winning 106 games this season, the most by a National League team this century, the Los Angeles Dodgers finished 13 games ahead of the Washington Nationals in the league standings, edged the Nationals in the head-to-head season series and outperformed them in just about every aspect of the game and across every segment of their respective rosters.

The Dodgers are better almost across the board than their 2018 forebears, who merely won the franchise’s second consecutive NL pennant then lost to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

But that doesn’t make the Dodgers unbeatable, or the Nationals incapable of beating them three times across a span of three to five games, as in the NL division series that begins Thursday night at Dodger Stadium. It only means it will be an exceedingly difficult task.

The Dodgers both scored the most runs and allowed the fewest in the NL this season, producing a run differential — plus-273 — that is the third-best of any team this century, behind only the 2001 Seattle Mariners (plus-300) and the 2019 Houston Astros (plus-280).

Their pitchers posted the lowest ERA (3.37) and WHIP (1.102) in the NL this season, and their hitters the highest OPS (.810) and most home runs (an NL-record 279). Advanced stats love them no less: Per FanGraphs, both their pitchers and their hitters amassed the most WAR (wins above replacement) in the league.

What about defense? By defensive runs saved, as calculated by Baseball Info Solutions, the Dodgers’ figure (135) was the best in the game.

The Nationals, by comparison, were 18th, at minus-2. They were also tied for first in Baseball Prospectus’s defensive efficiency — the rate at which balls in play are converted into outs — at .729. (The Nationals were 15th, at .704.)

The Dodgers’ defensive numbers were undoubtedly helped by the fact they were the most prolific shifters in the game, employing a shift on 52.5 percent of all pitches, per Statcast. (The Nationals, by contrast, shifted on just 14.6 percent of pitches, ranking 28th in the majors.) Unlike most teams, which shift infrequently against right-handed hitters — the league average this year was 14.3 percent of overall pitches — the Dodgers did so at nearly three times that rate (42.3 percent).