On July 20, we wrote about the Dodgers winning 11 in a row and the cushy lead they had built up in the NL West. That 11th win put them at 31-4 in their previous 35 games, which is unfathomably good: a full season at that pace would give a team 125 wins, which, spoiler, has never been done before.
The Dodgers might be 2 months from regular season history
Wednesday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the still-unstoppable Dodgers, Johnny Cueto’s arm and opt-out, and a pretty good catch.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Los Angeles would lose its next two games after this column discussed how unstoppable the team had been, so please, never doubt the power of the written word again. The thing is, though, that the Dodgers quickly recovered, and they’ve rattled off nine wins in a row since those consecutive defeats, meaning they’re now 40-6 in their last 46 games. Forty wins. Six losses. An .870 winning percentage in that stretch. The winningest Lakers team of all time, the 1971-1972 edition that went 69-13, had an .841 winning percentage. Just two Lakers teams ever were even over the .800 mark.
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Of course, that’s an entire season — and an NBA one at that — against a somewhat cherry-picked portion of the Dodgers campaign. With that being said, though, Los Angeles’ record for the entire season is 75-31, good for a .708 winning percentage, they’re up on the second-place, first-wild-card-holding Rockies by 14.5 games in the NL West, and Tuesday’s victory put the Dodgers on pace for 115 wins. That would put them ahead of the 1998 Yankees for the second-most in a season and leave them one W behind the all-time mark held by the 2001 Mariners and 1906 Cubs.
The Dodgers still have 56 games left, and chances are good those aren’t going to go quite as well as the previous 56. They don’t have to for Los Angeles to complete a special, historic regular season; however: The 2001 Mariners had a .716 winning percentage, and the Dodgers are real, real close to that pace for the year. If they just play a tiny bit better the rest of the way than they have in aggregate to this point, MLB just might have a record broken come late September.
What no one in Los Angeles wants to think about right now is that neither of the Mariners or Cubs won the World Series in their respective record years, and Seattle didn’t even make it to the Fall Classic before being eliminated. That is, in theory, what adding Yu Darvish is supposed to help the Dodgers avoid.
- Austin Jackson not only caught a ball at Fenway Park that Torii Hunter could not back in the 2013 ALCS, but he also managed to land on his feet instead of his head.
- Here are the five winners and five losers from the 2017 MLB trade deadline, and yes, we understand no one really knows who won or lost yet since there are still two months of regular-season games to play, and some acquisitions like Darvish were meant more for October than anything, but ... hey, where are you going?
- Dallas Keuchel is not happy with how his Astros handled the trade deadline.
- Little League World Series star Mo’ne Davis is back on the mound for the RBI World Series in Cincinnati.
- Brandon Kintzler was in the middle of feeding a rhino when he was traded from the Twins to the Nationals.
- Alex Avila was fine with his dad trading him to the Cubs, but Alex’s mom was not so thrilled.
- Johnny Cueto has a mild flexor strain, which means the Giants are giving him a week off and then re-evaluating him after that. Here’s a reminder from Grant Brisbee that this arm trouble could end up meaning Cueto isn’t going anywhere despite his opt-out.
- Brock Holt missed tagging home plate, so he decided to just straight-up play tag at home.
- Max Scherzer hit his first career homer, which was cool. Max Scherzer then removed himself from the game with a neck injury, which was substantially less cool.
- The Phillies need to rescind Pete Rose’s Wall of Fame induction given the latest turn in his defamation lawsuit.
- The O’s are rolling the dice by standing pat at the trade deadline, but it should be pointed out that they tried to trade Zach Britton repeatedly, with ownership interfering in the end.
- Beyond the Box Score tried to figure out what’s behind Trevor Story’s sophomore struggles.
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