Let's Soak This Division Title In

Major League Baseball Standings, as of June 8, 2014:

The Giants were 43-21. The Dodgers were in second place, 33-31, 10 games back.

From there, the Dodgers went 58-37, or .610 ball. Along the way, we hadn't had a win steak of more than 6 games all year (though we hadn't lost more than three in a row (while the Giants lost as many as six in a row, twice). Meanwhile, the Giants went 42-52, or .447 ball.

And that's why we won the West.

I'm not sure if this was a monumental collapse by the Giants, or more a strong run by the Dodgers. Or both.

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The Cardinals' loss yesterday guarantees the Dodgers will have home-field advantage for the NLDS, according to the LAT:

The victory, coupled with a loss by the NL Central-leading St. Louis Cardinals, guaranteed the Dodgers home-field advantage for at least the first round of the playoffs.

"It's the first step," Kershaw said. "We know that."

That means Kershaw's next start will be Oct. 3, when the Dodgers open the NL division series at Dodger Stadium."

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ESPN.com's David Schoenfield notes that the Dodgers' offense is coming alive at the right time. It's a great piece (especially the insight on HanRam's swing) so I will let you revel in most of it:

1. Matt Kemp looks like 2011 Matt Kemp. Last postseason, Kemp was watching from the dugout with crutches. Now, he'll enter October as one of baseball's hottest sluggers, with a .303/.360/.589 line and 16 home runs in the second half. He's sixth in the majors in wOBA since the All-Star break -- only Buster Posey and Victor Martinez are high among guys on playoff teams -- and third in home runs.

2. Hanley Ramirez is swinging the bat well. It's all about health for Ramirez, but he's also worked to lower a leg kick that got too high early in the season. Hitting coach Mark McGwire has worked with him to lower the leg to go back to something more like his approach in 2009, when he won the batting title. Ramirez has hit .357 in September -- granted, with no home runs -- but he's spraying the ball all over the field. Remember, last year's NLCS might have turned out differently if Ramirez hadn't been injured in Game 1 (he didn't play the second game after suffering a hairline fracture in his rib and struggled in the series, hitting .133).

3. Adrian Gonzalez leads the majors in RBIs. OK, RBIs are overrated, but Gonzalez has performed his best with runners in scoring position, hitting .330/.389/.546. Like Kemp, he's also hit better in the second half: .308/.362/.530 compared to .251/.309/.429 in the first half.

4. Yasiel Puig looks to be over his slump. I still think the sudden loss of power was a result of his hip injury, but he hit his 16th home run on Wednesday, lining an 0-2 sinker from Tim Hudson out to right field. After going homerless in June and August and hitting just two in July, he has three in nine games. Puig should also benefit from having gone through last year's postseason, in which he seemed a little too hyped up and emotional, taking every strikeout like it was the end of the world. He hit .227 with 10 K's in the NLCS, but look for him to do a better job of getting on base in front of Gonzalez and Kemp.

5. Carl Crawford is hitting. This might be the biggest surprise, since Crawford hasn't really hit much since leaving Tampa Bay. But he's hitting .324/.367/.458 in the second half and .433 in September and turned Andre Ethier into the forgotten man in the Dodgers outfield. He's even running a little more, with 22 steals, his most since 2010.

6. Better depth than 2013. Between Juan Uribe (.311 overall and .378/.403/.554 in September), Dee Gordon and Justin Turner, the Dodgers have better infield options than in 2013, when Nick Punto and Mark Ellis had to play. Gordon had the hot start and made the All-Star team, but it will be interesting to see how Don Mattingly works Turner into the lineup considering his .333/.397/.482 line and .374 batting average in the second half. Plus, you have Scott Van Slyke to start in left field versus left-handers or coming off the bench as a pinch hitter. And Ethier becomes the most expensive $15 million pinch hitter in the game.

OK, the lineup isn't perfect. A.J. Ellis and Drew Butera haven't provided much offense from the catcher slot. Another small secret weapon: Greinke, Kershaw and Dan Haren are all pretty good hitters for pitchers, so they have a chance for some offense from their pitchers.

There are concerns in the rotation once you get past Kershaw and Greinke, and Kershaw will have to prove he's a big-game pitcher after getting shelled in that season-ending Game 6 loss to the Cardinals last year. Plus, the middle relief is a concern, the defense isn't great and Mattingly's postseason tactics last year were questionable.

But this looks like a lineup that will score some runs in the postseason, and the Dodgers do have the best pitcher in the game. We'll see how that sauce tastes in a few weeks.

I'm guessing the sauce isn't going to be weak sauce, that's for sure.

Post-Game 159 Thread: Dodgers Win 2014 NL West

DODGERS 9, GIANTS 1: DODGERS WIN 2014 NL WEST

A little shaky early on, when the Dodgers were down 1-0 to the Giants through four and a half. But Clayton Kershaw was just letting the tension rise, for dramatic effect. His first career triple tied the game at one, and then the Dodgers opened four-run cans of whup-ass in both the sixth (catalyzed by a Yasiel Puig solo HR) and the eighth (a 33-minute torture session for the Giants, who watched Juan Uribe single home two RBI, not to mention reliever Juan Gutierrez walk a run in).

At 5-1, the game was out of reach. At 9-1, it was an official drubbing, in our final game with the Giants this season, securing the series victory 10-9.

Dodgers win the NL West, for the second-straight year. Clayton Kershaw wins the MLB ERA title for the fourth consecutive year, the first player to ever do so (Kershaw went off the field in the eighth inning to a full stadium chanting "M V P"!). Puig added a great defensive highlight nailing Gregor Blanco, who tried to stretch from first to third on a single, and was summarily gunned down by Puig for his MLB-leading 14th outfield assist.

Oh, and Buster Olney and his suit were innocent bystanders when Kershaw was dunked by the gatorade cooler, during post-game interviews. Nice.

And now we play for playoff positioning...though we really could use the time to recuperate a bit. Rest up, Dodgers (starting with an off-day tomorrow)! You deserve it.

photo: Jeff Gross, Getty Images

Dodgers: In Drivers' Seat?

Not exactly sure how Will Leitch of Sports on Earth comes up with this math, but he says the Dodgers are in control in the NL West:

There are only three weekends left in the Major League Baseball season. That is so few! Only three weekend sets, only 15-18 games for each team, and then the season is over. It really happens quite fast. I'm always conflicted this time of year: It's when the pennant chases are at their most intense, and that means the postseason -- which is basically six increasingly cold hours of terror and elation every night -- is almost here. It also means we're that much closer to there being no baseball at all. In 48 days, on October 30, the 2014 baseball season will be over. That's so soon.

Of course, for 20 of the 30 MLB teams, it will be over three weeks from Sunday. As of Friday morning, September 12, five Major League Baseball teams have already been eliminated from the postseason: Arizona, Boston, Colorado, Minnesota and Texas. After this weekend, it is likely they'll be joined by Houston and the Chicago White Sox, with the Chicago Cubs (whose wild-card elimination number is 4), Tampa Bay (6), Philadelphia (7), San Diego (8) and Cincinnati (9) not far behind. That's where I'm setting the cutoff: 9, if just to give Mets fans a tiny illusion of relevance. So that's the question: Of the 18 teams still theoretically alive for playoff spots, what records do they need to notch over the last 2 ½ weeks of the MLB season to get in the postseason?

San Francisco Giants: Record: 81-65
Games remaining: 16 (vs. LAD, @ARZ, @SD, @LA, vs. SD)
Wild Card Magic Number: 9
Division Elimination Number: 15
Games ahead in second wild-card: 5.5
Games behind in NL West: 2

Record required for any hope: 4-12. The Giants feel comfortable with their Wild Card spot, but this is of course all about the NL West. Six games with the Dodgers, but they're two back: They'll need to win both those series and do what they have to against the lesser teams on the road. The Dodgers only have to do one of those things.

Most likely record: 10-6. Final record: 91-71.

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Los Angeles Dodgers: Record: 83-63
Games remaining: 16 (@SF, @COL, @CHC, vs. SF, vs. COL)
Division Magic Number: 15
Games ahead NL West: 2.5

Record required for any hope: 2-14. Obviously the Dodgers are in the playoffs, but I like them to win the NL West too. They just have too much margin for error. The Giants have to pound them in their two series and not falter against a tougher schedule than the Dodgers have. Don't see it.

Most likely record: 10-6. Final record: 93-69.

The Road Ahead

Two game lead with 24 games to play, both for the Dodgers and the Giants. I did a quick look at the schedule remaining, if for nothing else to see if I could contextualize the nervousness I'm feeling.

The Dodgers' remaining off-days are on Sept 4, then a six-game homestand, then another off-day, then a ten-game road trip, then three at home, an off day, and three more at home. It's fair to say that the ten-game road trip, where the Dodgers play at San Francisco, Colorado, and Chicago (the latter for four games at Wrigley Field) is the critical stretch. But put against our off-days, our schedule (starting tomorrow) has consecutive games of 2, 6, 13, and 3.

The Giants have it much easier, from a days-off perspective. Day off Sept 4, then three road games, then a day off, then six home games, three road games, an off-day, then six more road games, and then four home games. The Giants get days off on Sept 4, 8, and 18; they don't have any 13-game stretches (their consecutive games go 2, 3, 9, 10). Much nicer having those days off so easily spaced.

On the flipside, looking at our opponents' winning percentages, our weighted average opponents' winning percentage is only .470; SF's is .485. Not a big deal, but they have a slight disadvantage, marked by three in Detroit (Sept 5-7) and six more games against us. Meanwhile, after we finish with the Nationals on Wednesday, the six against the Giants are the only games we've got against an over-.500 opponent. So that's a benefit, I suppose.

We also have 14 more games at home (and ten on the road), vs. SF's ten at home and 14 on the road. Crazily, this gives us a slightly better weighted average winning percentage as well, as our road record of 43-28 dominates over our home record of 34-33. Should the trends maintain, this should also play in our favor.

I don't know if this makes me feel much better. But at least I've distracted myself with some nervous spreadsheet energy.

Then there's always the argument, "if we go .500 from here on out, the Giants have to play .583 baseball just to tie. Considering they've just rattled off six in a row, it's possible. Damn, I'm nervous again. But if we hold to our .558 winning percentage, that would have us win 13 of our remaining 24--which would mean the Giants would have to play .625 baseball to tie the division.

I'm still nervous.

Dodgers Still At 84% Chance Of Winning NL West

In times of need, we need statistics like baseball prospectus' playoff odds to ground us:

ESPN also has us at about 91% chance of making the playoffs, similar to baseball prospectus. See, things are bad after the sweep, sure. But they're not that bad.

Yet.

Post-Trade Deadline Predictions: Schoenfield Predicts Dodgers in WS

I definitely wouldn't treat this as gospel, but it did make me feel better to read David Schoenfield's ESPN.com piece (having read the article after watching Josh Beckett and Dan Haren blow their Cubs starts).

First, some predictions:

4. The Los Angeles Dodgers made a mistake by not getting Lester or Price.

Prediction: The Dodgers win the NL West.

Josh Beckett didn't do anything to boost the confidence of Dodgers fans with another poor effort on Sunday; he got knocked out after scuffling through 94 pitches in four-plus innings. In three starts since the All-Star break, he has gone 3.2, 4.1 and 4 innings, respectively. Dan Haren has been even worse, with a 10.03 ERA over his past five starts.

Still, I agree with the decision to hold on to Corey Seager, Joc Pederson and Julio Urias. At some point, you need to infuse some youth, and with Pederson heating up again at Triple-A, he may be in the Dodgers' outfield sooner rather than later. The Dodgers will win the West thanks to the best top three in the NL in Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu.

And last, here's his World Series predictions:

10. The A's are now World Series favorites.

Prediction: OK, I'll go with that. Aren't the A's overdue for some October magic?

So, my post-deadline picks:

AL wild card: Angels over Blue Jays
NL wild card: Giants over Brewers

ALDS: Tigers over Orioles
ALDS: A's over Angels

NLDS: Dodgers over Giants
NLDS: Nationals over Pirates

ALCS: A's over Tigers
NLCS: Dodgers over Nationals

World Series: A's over Dodgers ... Jon Lester wins Game 7 and then signs a $175 million contract with the Dodgers in the offseason. Sam Fuld wins World Series MVP honors. Billy Beane announces retirement and says, "I was never really into this sabermetrics stuff anyway."

On The Giants' Struggles

Last night, I'm reading ESPN.com and I see that the "Highlight of the Night" is the Giants' 5-2 win over the A's. Baseball Tonight accompanied the post with a video, How do the Giants turn it around? (which I didn't watch, as I didn't want to be nauseated).

And sure, they beat the best team in baseball on one night, but the Giants still dropped two to Oakland before that. And they're 8-19 over their past 27, which has helped the Dodgers claw back into first place. With the Giants' 5-2 win, and the Dodgers' second loss in Detroit, the Dodgers and Giants were tied for first again. And here's where the Giants would break out again, right?

Part 1: David Schoenfield (also of ESPN), recapped the game and was pretty guarded:

1. How good are the Giants? Not as good as their 42-21 start and not as bad as they've been the past month. They're probably about where they should be, on pace for 89 wins. That's about where most people had them projected before the season.

2. Sure, but they lost Angel Pagan on June 15. Right about when the slide started. No coincidence, right? His injury has hurt but one guy doesn't make a lineup. Pagan was having a nice season -- .307/.356/.411 -- but that's not exactly Willie Mays. It is true, however, that Giants center fielders have been a disaster since Pagan went down, hitting .145/.193/.205 since June 15 entering Wednesday's game.

A bigger factor for the offense has been the decline in home runs. Through June 8, they were second in the National League and fourth in the majors with 69 home runs, a great pace for a team that was next-to-last in home runs in the NL in 2013 and last in 2012.

Since June 9, however, the Giants have hit 14 home runs -- the lowest total in the majors. Pence homered on Wednesday. They need more of that.

3. OK, what's been wrong with Cain? I'm not sure anything is wrong. I've been going through his numbers, slicing and dicing and digging deep and there's nothing obvious that explains why he had a 2.93 ERA from 2009 through 2012 and 4.06 the past two seasons. His fastball velocity is the same. Things like swing-and-miss rate and strike percentage and batting average on balls in play are all stable.

But his walk rate is up slightly, especially this year, and he's given up a few more home runs (his home run per fly ball rate is up, although his actual rate of fly balls has been lower the past two seasons than before). That's enough to raise that ERA just a bit.

Why that's happening, I'm not sure. Maybe he's falling behind a little more often. Early last season, he was certainly grooving a few many pitches. This year, he has missed a few starts and twice landed on the disabled list -- first, with a cut on his right index finger suffered while cutting a sandwich and then a hamstring pull. So that could have had an effect. Overall, however, I see no reason why Cain can't be better the rest of the season.

4. What about the rest of the rotation? That's why Cain really needs to step it up. The rotation was bad last year and even this year it's not as good as its reputation. Look, Madison Bumgarner is a terrific pitcher, but he's not Clayton Kershaw and I'd be hard-pressed to say he's better than Zack Greinke. Tim Lincecum is pretty good against the Padres and pretty good at home, but has a 5.82 ERA on the road. Tim Hudson was the savior the first two months and Ryan Vogelsong has been much better than last season. Entering Wednesday, the Giants ranked 21st in starters' WAR via FanGraphs.

Part 2: Oh yeah, and then the funny thing about baseball is, everything can shift from day to day. Yesterday, the Giants were going to turn things around. Today's result: Oakland 6, SF 1. Dodgers are back to being alone in first, pending tonight's game vs. San Diego.

(Though the Giants do have the Diamondbacks this weekend, which is probably favorable for SF.)

A Look Back: Szymborski Calls The NL West To SF (June 13, 2014)

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when one unearths articles like this one, which called the 9.5-game lead for the Giants all but insurmountable in the NL West (link insider only). If nothing else, it reminds us how quickly fates can change...and how foolish it is to bet on the Giants:

With a payroll of $235 million on Opening Day, the Los Angeles Dodgers weren't a team put together for the purpose of finishing second in their division. But that's just where they stand in the National League West on Friday, with the San Francisco Giants having opened up a 8 1/2-game lead. While that might not sound like an insurmountable gap to make up, history suggests the 2014 NL West is almost certainly going to be taken by the men in orange and black, not Dodger blue.

While there have always been teams that have blown significant leads in the standings, this actually happens less often than most people believe. We root for the underdogs, after all, which is why so many of our sports movies feature storylines with plucky losers catching the antagonists. The Dodgers didn't enter the season as the underdog -- the team would be even more frighteningly expensive if it was expected to be a .500 team -- but history suggests that leads like the Giants have now are usually safe.

Just to get a quick look at the overwhelming odds in San Francisco's favor, I tallied the June 13 standings in every year of the divisional era. Only 27 teams had a division lead of six games or greater, and of those 27 teams, only three ended up losing that lead. If closing a gap of this magnitude was easy, history wouldn't remember the 1969 Mets (Miracle Mets), the 1978 Yankees (the Bucky Dent year) or the 2003 Mariners collapse so vividly. (The Mariners' collapse isn't as famous as the other two, but Nate Silver ranked it the fourth-worst collapse in MLB history back in 2007.)

If you're keeping count, the division leaders blew their leads only 11 percent of the time (3 of 27), not exactly promising odds for the Dodgers on this Friday the 13th. Those are similar odds to those of a named character surviving the movie "Friday the 13th."

To be more precise on the Giants' division chances at this point, I consulted the ZiPS projection system, which is equipped to run updated divisional/playoff probabilities at any point in the season. ZiPS comes up with a similar estimation of the playoff probability of the Giants, estimating an 88.7 percent chance that they finish the season leading the NL West.

What should be especially concerning for Dodger fans -- and especially good news for Giants fans -- is that ZiPS sees the Giants as prohibitive favorites in the division now, despite not even thinking the Giants are as good a team as the Dodgers. ZiPS sees significant regressions ahead for Michael Morse, Angel Pagan, Hunter Pence and Brandon Crawford, but their early-season performances are all "in the bag," so to speak. In other words, ZiPS sees the Dodgers as having just a 1-in-10 shot of overtaking the Giants even though L.A. is a better team on paper.

The reason the Dodgers' odds are so slim is that at this point in the season, to make up a 8 1/2-game deficit, they need to be the equivalent of 14 games better over 162 games than the first-place team, and even an optimistic Dodgers fan can't think they are that much better than their rival.

The Dodgers had overtaken the Giants for first place in the NL West on June 30, 2014.

One Back.

And with a ten-point advantage in playoff odds, no less:

KEEP ROLLING, DODGERS!

Almost Time To Start That Roll

Buried in Brian Kamenetzky's post-game analysis of Saturday's 12-2 win was the statement that the Dodgers are still strong favorites to make the postseason, even without a 42-8 run looming on the horizon:

The Dodgers entered Saturday's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 29-27 record, 7 1/2 games behind the first-place San Francisco Giants. That's not good -- San Francisco's pitching is too solid for the Giants to fall off a cliff -- but it's not a disaster, certainly not before the calendar hits June. The simulations at Baseball Prospectus still land the Dodgers in the postseason 80 percent of the time. It's hard to believe they'll be a sub-.500 team at home all year. There isn't too much about L.A.'s situation that two hot weeks wouldn't help alleviate, in the standings and the team's collective psyche.

The Dodgers know they need to be better, and certainly they were in Saturday's 12-2 beatdown of the Pirates, but you wonder if they're fighting a perception of just how much better.

Take Matt Kemp. Before Saturday's game, most of the questions directed at manager Don Mattingly were about whether Kemp would ever again be an elite, MVP-level player. Reasonable enough, particularly given the $100 million Kemp will earn over the five seasons after this one, and the Dodgers would certainly love to see him bounce back to that degree. Except they don't need an MVP-level Kemp to make the playoffs. There's a lot of space between that guy and the one currently patrolling (however begrudgingly) left field. Garden-variety "good" would make a big difference. Approaching All-Star levels would be transformative.

Some hoped Hanley Ramirez might turn last year's momentum into a dominant 2014. Obviously, it hasn't happened yet, and while it would be nice, what the Dodgers really need right now is enough hitting from Ramirez to make his lack of defense a relative nonissue.

Both came up big Saturday.

Oh, and those Giants? They lost yesterday, 2-0. Lead drops to 6.5 games.