The second half of the MLB season gets underway today. The Dodgers will open up with a three game series in the nation’s capital against the Washington Nationals. L.A. was baseball’s hottest team heading into the break. Since June 22, the Dodgers have gone 17-5, pushing them back into contention in the NL West race. The Blue Crew now sits 2 1/2 games behind Arizona for the division lead. The injuries and woeful bullpen pitching of the first half have been well chronicled, and Yasiel Puig is now a nightly fixture on SportsCenter. So what must the Dodgers do to keep up the pace and move ahead of the Diamondbacks in the standings?
ARMS RACE
Pitching wins championships. Ah, so cliché, but so true. The D’Backs and the Dodgers are at the head of the pack not because of heavy hitters like Puig or Paul Goldschmidt, but because they have the strongest starting pitching in the division. The Dodgers pitching staff ranks 6th in the NL with a 3.62 team ERA. Arizona, they’re 7th with a 3.81 ERA. The once vaunted Giants’ pitching staff ranks only 12th with a 4.11 ERA. Dodgers’ fans who were worried Tim Lincecum’s no-hitter against the Padres might galvanize the Giants had all fears allayed when Barry Zito dropped a dud the next day, and the Padres beat the Giants 10-1. Colorado and San Diego, well they have the two worst pitching staffs in the National League, 4.19 and 4.22 ERA respectively. Run of the mill for the Rockies and hitter-friendly Coors’ Field, shocking almost for the Padres at pitcher friendly Petco Park. The Dodgers’ have already strengthened their rotation with the addition of Ricky Nolasco. Both the Dodgers and D’Backs should be in on Cubs’ pitcher Matt Garza, the most common name in trade rumors. Whoever wins the arms’ race wins the division.
THE REST OF THE DIVISION
The most important part of the Dodgers’ recent run is that the vast majority of it has been done against NL West opponents. Although the boys in blue have done their part against their divisional opponents, the other teams in the division have slowly started falling off. The Giants have been struggling for a while. They had an NL worst 10-17 record in June, they haven’t fared much better in July going 4-9. San Francisco is in the middle of the pack offensively, and they actually have the third best team batting average in the National League (.264). But the Giants need pitching help badly. Despite Tim Lincecum’s no-hitter last week he still sports a 4.26 ERA. Barry Zito, 4.88. Matt Cain, 5.06. Chad Gaudin has filled in nicely, but apparently he’s a massive perv. The Rockies are very similar to the Giants. They have a killer offense led by Troy Tulowitzki (.332/.400/1.008) and MVP-candidate Carlos Gonzalez (.302/.370/.980). The Rockies average 4.4 runs per game, second in the National League behind only St. Louis. However, their pitching is the second worst in the NL. While Jorge De La Rosa, Jhoulys Chacin, and Tyler Chatwood have formed a nice front of the rotation for Colorado, they’re not front-line starters, and they d0n’t eat up the necessary innings to save the bullpen in hitter’s haven like Coors Field. The Rockies’ badly need pitching help, but the Rockies are rarely a team that makes big deadline deals, and regardless of the help they get, it may not be enough to catch the Dodgers and the D’backs. The Padres are 2-12 in July, the worst mark in the Major Leagues. They’ve been outscored by 35 runs in only 14 games so far this month, they have the worst pitching staff in the National League, and their best hitter, Everth Cabrera, might be facing a PED-suspension. Look for the Padres to be in sell mode at the trade deadline. That leaves the first place Diamondbacks. They’ve been the most consistent team in the division since opening day. They have an MVP candidate in Goldschmidt (.313/.395/.952) and a Cy Young candidate in Patrick Corbin (11-1, 2.35 ERA, 1.00 WHIP). Arizona has managed to stay near the top of the heap all with Ian Kennedy rocking a 5.42 ERA and Trevor Cahill being on the disabled list all of July. Therein lies Arizona’s problem, as the trade deadline approaches, the D’backs must decide if they are willing to part with some of their good young players to improve the major league roster. Corbin, has been great, but the peripherals on guys like Kennedy, Cahill, and Randall Delgado don’t bode well, whereas the Dodgers have been on cruise control behind the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Hyun-Jin Ryu, and now Nolasco. Arizona will continue their consistent play, but it appears the Dodgers now have the upper hand.
MATT KEMP: X-FACTOR
The Dodgers lineup is now clicking on all-cylinders. Puig has electrified the team, Hanley Ramirez is destroying lives at a .400 clip right now, Adrian Gonzalez has continued his steady and superb production, and Andre Ethier has regained his stroke batting .362 in July. The lone Dodger to get in on the action has been Matt Kemp, still arguably, the team’s best and most dynamic player. Kemp has been rehabbing his surgically repaired shoulder and appears on schedule to rejoin the team on Sunday. Kemp was finally looking like he was in a groove before he injured his shoulder. Kemp had gone 6-19 with a pair of home runs in the four games prior to his getting hurt. If Kemp can regain anything close to the form he exhibited in his 2011 MVP-runner up season, the Dodgers’ offense will be unstoppable. There will be absolutely no pitching around anyone. Kemp’s swag is sorely missed by the Dodgers, even though Puig has done a pretty nice job in that department.
Ricky Nolasco will take the mound at Nationals’ Park tonight and square off against Stephen Strasburg. Talk about a nice welcome back, but now more than any other time in the season, the Dodgers will be ready.
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