The Dodgers are in first place again, because they are almost always in first place the way the Braves are. The one time in the past decade they didn’t end up in first place was 2021 -- a year when they won 106 but the Giants won 107. They don’t have Clayton Kershaw or Max Muncy right now, haven’t had Walker Buehler all season and lost Gavin Lux for the season early. Somehow, they are where they always are in the National League West. They are really good -- again -- and the bad news for everybody else in the league is that they might be even better the rest of the way.
Maybe that is the reason why their manager, Dave Roberts -- who might be doing the best work of his career -- sounds more like a Dodgers fan than a manager when you ask him about his baseball team.
“This is such a great group of men,” Roberts said over the weekend when I asked him to tell me about the Dodgers. “And such a fun team to root for.”
For sure, they have hit a lot better than they have pitched on their way back to the top of the division. The only team in the NL with more home runs than the 179 the Dodgers had hit through Sunday night is the Braves at 212. Mookie Betts leads them with 30 homers to go with a .285 average. Freddie Freeman is playing like the MVP that he was three years ago with the Braves, with a batting average of .339, 23 homers and 80 RBIs, plus the flawless first base he continues to play.
Muncy had 27 homers before injuring his wrist. J.D. Martinez has 25 and became an All-Star again once he got to Los Angeles. And you know who batted cleanup for Roberts on in his team’s Sunday Night Baseball game against the Padres? Amed Rosario, whom the Dodgers got from the Guardians and is now playing second base. Of course, Rosario jacked a home run himself, to go with the ones hit by Betts and Freeman.
So it is not just familiar stars hitting this way for the Dodgers. When I asked Roberts if there has been one big surprise for him so far, this was his response:
“The outfield production. [Jason] Heyward, [David] Peralta, [James] Outman, with a little Betts sprinkled in. They have been incredible.”
When Roberts talks about Betts, one of the truly great defensive outfielders in the game, being “sprinkled” in, it is because he has spent time in 50 games this season -- out of necessity -- at shortstop and second base. It might make him even more of an MVP candidate this season than he was when he won the award five years ago in Boston. But Roberts has been able to move him in from the outfield because of the performances of Heyward, Peralta, Outman.
Jason Heyward (11 home runs) has found his game again with the Dodgers, and isn’t it funny how often that happens with players once they put on a Dodgers uniform? Outman has hit 13 home runs. The veteran Peralta, who played most of his career with the D-backs before ending up with the Rays last season, has played 92 games for Roberts, batting .277 with seven homers and 40 RBIs.
Now we will see what happens with the pitching over the 52-game sprint to the finish. Kershaw, who sat down with a sore shoulder, is expected back soon, and the big dream for the Dodgers is that Buehler, on his way back from Tommy John surgery, might be available sometime in September. After assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness watched Buehler throw the other day, he said, “He looks like Walker.”
At the Trade Deadline, Andrew Friedman, who runs baseball operations for the Dodgers, did not just add Rosario, he got Lance Lynn and former Dodger Joe Kelly from the White Sox. On Sunday night against the Padres, Lynn pitched six innings, threw 96 pitches, gave up four hits and one run, struck out six and got his second win as a Dodger.
There are going to be questions about the Dodgers' bullpen all the way to October. Only a complete meltdown on Saturday night, the Padres scoring seven runs in the bottom of the eighth, kept them from winning the first three games of the series. But on Sunday night, Ryan Brasier, Brusdar Graterol and Yency Almonte backed up Lynn with three innings of one-run relief, and we all saw what the Dodgers, who can absolutely mash, look like when they pitch.
Everybody knows what Kershaw and Buehler can do when they are healthy. Kershaw has a 2.55 ERA through 16 starts this season, one that saw the Dodgers lose Dustin May to elbow surgery after nine starts and a 2.63 ERA of his own. But Julio Urías and Tony Gonsolin have made 33 stars for Roberts between them. Kershaw is expected back soon, and Buehler may still be coming in September.
That is the good news in L.A. and the bad news for everybody else, even in what looks like a Braves year in the National League. You’d say, here come the Dodgers, except for this: The Dodgers never go anywhere.