It’s a dead heat between the Dodgers and the Giants in the National League West
On the final Sunday of June, Clayton Kershaw walked off the mound in Pittsburgh. Across the country, the San Francisco Giants walked off too, with a ninth-inning victory that left the home team leading the National League West by eight games.
Kershaw has yet to return to the mound. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Giants’ running away with the division.
The NL West is essentially a dead heat, with six weeks to play. The Dodgers play nine of their final 38 games against the Giants, including a three-game series that opens Tuesday at Dodger Stadium.
What would A.J. Ellis, the Dodgers’ perpetually optimistic catcher, have said had he been told he would sit in first place little more than a month after the Dodgers had lost the best pitcher in baseball and fallen eight games out of first place?
“I would have probably asked you what team I had been traded to,” Ellis said.
The Dodgers couldn’t have done it without the Giants. The Dodgers were 26-18 without Kershaw (through Friday), a .590 clip that would translate into 95 wins over a full season. But that would not have propelled them so far so fast had the Giants not posted the worst record in the major leagues since the All-Star break.
“You never want to see an eight-game lead evaporate, in any amount of time,” Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford said here Friday, “but hopefully we can get out of this funk, especially with the big series coming up.
“Every team goes through it at some point. Usually, it isn’t stretched out quite as long as how we’ve been playing the last few weeks.”
The Giants posted the best record in the majors before the break, with three of the top six batters in their opening-day lineup — outfielder Hunter Pence and infielders Matt Duffy and Joe Panik — on the disabled list for long stretches.
“We asked a lot of the guys and they really stepped up,” San Francisco General Manager Bobby Evans said. “At some level, maybe the guys just gave so much in the first half that they had to face the inevitable bump in the road with their production.”
This isn’t about injuries. The Giants have endured theirs, but the Dodgers have lost more players to the disabled list than any team in NL history.
This isn’t about trades. The Giants have not gotten much from starting pitcher Matt Moore (0-3, 4.70 ERA, 17 walks in 23 innings), reliever Will Smith (11.57 ERA in nine games) and infielder Eduardo Nunez (.250), but the Dodgers have gotten virtually nothing from outfielder Josh Reddick (.164, one extra-base hit) and starting pitcher Rich Hill (0 IP, blisters).
This isn’t about pitching. The Giants have a better earned-run average since the All-Star break than the Dodgers, and more quality starts too. August is the first month this season in which the Dodgers have given up more runs than they have scored.
We’ll take that last one back, sort of. This is about relief pitching. The Giants have lost six games after leading by at least four runs, the most in the majors. No closer has blown more saves than the six blown by Santiago Casilla, the Giants’ closer.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, have juggled 20 relievers and fashioned a bullpen with the second-best ERA in the majors, even as it has thrown the second-most innings of any relief corps. The Dodgers’ starters have pitched five innings or fewer in 18 of the 30 games since the break.
“I think the bullpen has done a crazy job,” Dodgers reliever J.P. Howell said. “It’s not physically painful. It’s not abusive. It’s just the mental side of feeling like you’ve got to be ready to go. Guys have picked it up on days we know we’re beat down. “
And, most importantly, this is about offense. The Dodgers have averaged 5.4 runs per game since the break, with 43 home runs. The Giants have averaged 3.97 runs per game since the break, with 25 home runs.
The OPS of virtually every Dodgers regular — catcher Yasmani Grandal, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, shortstop Corey Seager, third baseman Justin Turner and outfielders Howie Kendrick and Joc Pederson — is higher since the break than before it. Grandal, Gonzalez, Turner and Pederson each has an OPS over 1.000 this month.
“We had a number of guys who were underperforming established watermarks, in terms of what they had done in their careers,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations. “So we were confident those guys were going to pick it up.”
The Dodgers fell as far as 10 games out of first place in 2014, then rallied to win the division title. The big comeback might not be new, but the cast is more diverse, what with Kershaw on the disabled list and Zack Greinke with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“Not that we got a little complacent the last couple years, but we definitely got spoiled,” Ellis said. “We knew that, with Zack and Clayton, all you had to do was win one of the other three games and you were a .600 ballclub, and you’re going to be in the playoffs. You could take those guys for granted, because they were so special and how great they were, as a 1 and a 1-A combo.
“But now you come to the park every day and it’s kind of fun. It’s fun to embrace that fight of the unknown, and knowing we have to take things into our own hands.”
Said Howell: “This is the first time I can call the Dodgers grinders. We’ll tag runs on. We’ll keep rolling at all times. I can’t say it’s been like that in the past.”
What was it like in the past?
“We’d just kind of out-talent you,” Howell said. “If it didn’t work that day, we’ll get you tomorrow. This year is more, if it’s not working, let’s try something different. There’s an urgency to actually accomplishing that win that day.”
Kershaw won’t be back this week, but the Dodgers hope he can return by mid-September. That would mean he could face the Giants twice, since the Dodgers play six of their final 13 games against San Francisco.
The Giants can’t help but wonder if they missed the chance to kill the Dodgers while Kershaw remained on the disabled list.
“I don’t think we really try to focus on what’s happening with other teams,” Crawford said. “We try to focus on getting our job done. But it’s hard not to notice one of the best pitchers — if not the best pitcher — in the league going down, especially when it’s our rival team.
“Him being down, you would think it would have helped us. Obviously, it didn’t make much of a difference.”
Said Giants catcher Buster Posey: “Kershaw is a special guy. He has the ability to affect the team in a lot of different ways.”
For his part, Kershaw did not profess any surprise that the Dodgers charged ahead in his absence.
“It’s a 162-game season, so people are going to play well at different times and people are going to come together at different times,” Kershaw said last week at Dodger Stadium. “Right now, we’re playing as good as we can. So that’s fun, coupled with the Giants struggling.
“If your team is talented enough and good enough, then over time it will show, over the course of the season. If your team is not good enough, you’re not going win, no matter what. But, with the guys we have in this clubhouse, it was just a matter of time until it started clicking.”
Perhaps the Giants have weathered the storm. When they beat the New York Mets on Thursday and Friday, collecting 32 hits in the process, they won consecutive starts by aces Madison Bumgarner and Johnny Cueto for the first time since June 30-July 1.
The rest of the NL West field has been cleared out. The sprint to the finish is on. For the fifth consecutive year, the NL West will be won by either the Dodgers or Giants, with a wild card all but assured to the losing team.
“Now we just have an old-fashioned pennant race,” Evans said. “We’re both playoff teams. It’s just a matter of how it’s going to play out these last six weeks.”
The season ends in San Francisco, with the Dodgers playing the Giants on Oct. 2. Here’s hoping the race extends to that final day, an exclamation point on Vin Scully’s final regular-season broadcast.
Follow Bill Shaikin on Twitter @BillShaikin
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