Brian Kamenetzky: The Dodgers perform a successful Mile Heimlich

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Like most of the big Blue nation, I haven’t exactly basked in the glory of a dominating Dodgers squad over the last six weeks or so. Even with Wednesday’s 6-1 win over the Rockies in Denver, L.A. headed into Thursday’s rubber match with a 14-18 record since winning their 60th game of the season back on July 21, their lead in the NL West shrinking down to three games over Colorado.

Meanwhile, they sent Vicente Padilla, by most accounts a royal pain on his best days and an extremely inconsistent hurler on the rest, to the hill for today’s critical game. All while scoring two runs or fewer in five of their previous nine games against a Rockies team that has won 17 zillion games since firing Clint Hurdle and replacing him with Jim Tracy.

Inspires confidence, no?

Nine innings later, the Dodgers had a 3-2 win, giving them the series and a far more cushy four game lead over Tracy’s bunch at a point of the year when math starts to become a big deal. With 34 games remaining for each team, the Dodgers can continue to squeeze the Rockies with reasonably good play down the stretch. Mediocre might even do the trick. A 17-17 record means Colorado has to go 21-13 to tie. The news gets better from here, because with three games against the Reds, seven each against the Diamondbacks and Pirates, five with the Padres, and in a big, red, sweet, juicy cherry on top of their soft schedule sundae, three against the mighty Nationals of Washington, it seems likely the Dodgers will win more than 17 times between now and the end of the year. (At 16 games under .500, the Reds are currently the best of that bunch.)

Nine games against the Giants and Rockies don’t seem so daunting given the bigger picture.

But perhaps more important than L.A.’s remaining schedule is what they did this month, despite poor play, in the two series when their divisional supremacy was threatened. With a sweep, the Rockies could have cut L.A.’s lead to one. (NOTE: Correction-- a Colorado sweep would have left them tied with LA atop the division.) Two of three would have left them back by an all-too-close pair of games. Instead, the Dodgers went into Colorado and increased their cushion. Earlier in the month, after losing four of five and six of nine, the Dodgers went into San Francisco and also took two of three, sucking momentum from a Giants squad that had crept to within 5.5 games and sported the league’s best home record.

That’s four wins in the six most important games they’ve played in August, all on the road.

I spent last weekend in St. Louis visiting family. The Cardinals are red hot and running away with the Central. They look like a juggernaut, and fans in the Gateway City are giving off the same sort of vibe as Dodgers fans did back in early July. With a balanced lineup featuring baseball’s best player (Albert somethingorother) and a great complimentary player (Matt Holliday), two ace-level starters in Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter, and a reliable bullpen, I think the Cardinals are the best team in the National League ... but before losing to the Astros on Thursday afternoon, were 17-5 in August. The Cardinals are good; they’re not that good. No team is.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers aren’t as bad as the 15-18 run they’re currently enduring.

What they are is fallible, which is far less comforting to fans as when they looked like fallible’s preferable cousin, infallible. Unfortunately, that guy is hard to pin down. Manny Ramirez isn’t hitting for much power. Rafael Furcal, outside of a fantastic July, has been ordinary or worse offensively for the rest of the season, and has a sub .300 OBP since the All Star break. I’m still waiting for James Loney to become the sweet hitting machine I thought he’d be a couple seasons back. Casey Blake was more productive earlier in the year (though, as a whole, about what I figured he’d be). Russell Martin has struggled at the plate all year. These are things that will likely have to change if the Blue are going to have an October to remember.

Except it’s not October yet. And just as watching Carpenter, Wainwright, and #3 starter Joel Pinero rub out the opposition like a team of angry mob bosses might soothe a Cardinal fan’s nerves, neither their success nor L.A.’s August swoon mean success or failure come playoff time. In three weeks the Cards could be struggling while the Dodgers find their inner ’27 Yankees ... and it still wouldn’t translate to a bankable playoff result.

Bottom line, the Dodgers have more wins than any team in the National League, allow the second fewest runs per game (3.81) in baseball, score more runs per game than all but two teams in the NL, have baseball’s best per game run differential (1.02), and the eggheads at Baseball Prospectus rank them tops in defensive efficiency. They are a good team. They will not lose their lead in the NL West, and certainly won’t fall out of the playoff race entirely.

If they get good performances out of their pitchers, something they’ve managed (more or less) against the three other National League teams most likely to play into October, the Dodgers have a very good shot to advance. It would be great to be armed with a Cliff Lee or Carpenter, but a rotation of Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, and, at least if he continues to pitch like he has of late, Randy Wolf isn’t exactly horrible. If Hiroki Kuroda performs like he did in last year’s postseason, all the better.

The formula isn’t all that complicated. But as the great philosopher Tom Petty once said, the waiting is the hardest part, and it lets the mind wander. The good news? After today’s game, the threat that fans won’t actually get an NL West title for their troubles seems far more remote.

-- Brian Kamenetzky