It’s probably safe to put the T-shirts in production.
Because barring an epic September collapse, the Dodgers now seem to be on a glide path to another National League West title.
In one game that effectively counted for three in the standings, the Dodgers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks 11-6 at Chase Field on Monday afternoon — a victory that not only moved the team six games clear of Arizona in the NL West race, but also clinched their season series (and potential end-of-season tiebreaker) against the club in their 13th and final meeting of the campaign (the Dodgers finished 7-6 against the Diamondbacks this year).
“For us to win three here is a tough feat,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It took some big hits, some big pitching. Overall, to come out of here up six games on these guys — we took care of business.”
No one was rolling out champagne bottles yet.
With four weeks to go, and important absences remaining on the mound, much can still go awry for a currently shorthanded Dodgers team.
Tony Voda couldn’t hold on to Shohei Ohtani’s historic 40-40 home-run ball, but he’ll always cherish the support Dodgers fans gave him afterward.
But with only 24 games left in their schedule — and some relatively easy ones at that, with series against the Angels, Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies (twice) still remaining — the Dodgers (83-55) have put all the pressure on the Diamondbacks (77-61) and the San Diego Padres, who were 5½ games back in the standings ahead of their series opener against the Detroit Tigers on Monday night.
Even if the Dodgers go just .500 the rest of the way, the Diamondbacks and Padres (who come to L.A. for three games the last week of September) would have to win roughly 75% of their remaining games, if not more, to catch them.
By taking three of four games at Chase Field this week, the Dodgers basically put one hand on what would be their 11th division crown in the last 12 years.
“If you’re looking at division leads this early in September, you’re doing the wrong thing,” first baseman Freddie Freeman cautioned.
Still, countered Monday’s starting pitcher Jack Flaherty, “there’s no secrets” about the standings.
“Every game just becomes a little bit more important,” Flaherty added. “So just a big, big win today, to win the series and just continue to move things forward.”
After back-and-forth shootout wins for the Dodgers on Friday and Saturday, then a season-worst blowout loss on Sunday, the club got a more straightforward victory Monday.
Flaherty, their top trade deadline addition, delivered a solid 5⅔-inning, one-run start — working around a Diamondbacks lineup that typically feasts on fastballs by locating them with precision in a seven-strikeout start.
“You just compete,” Flaherty said of pitching in a high-stakes series. “When you get into these kind of moments and these situations, games like this on the road with a team that’s trying to catch you, it makes it a lot of fun.”
Flaherty had plenty of support, both from a defense that turned several key plays — including an early double play by Chris Taylor from deep in the hole — and a lineup that exploded at the plate again, finishing this four-game set with 32 runs.
Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman got the scoring started in the third inning, when Betts hit an RBI single and Freeman followed with a two-run blast.
Then, the Dodgers broke it open with three runs in the seventh and five more in the eighth.
In the seventh, Shohei Ohtani scored on a sacrifice fly after stealing second and third base on back-to-back pitches (he had three steals overall, raising his season total to 46), while Will Smith smacked a two-out, two-run single the other way (he had five hits and five RBIs in what was been a bounce-back series).
In the eighth, Betts and Freeman provided a spark again. Betts had a two-run, two-out double. In the next at-bat, Freeman clobbered another two-run homer, finishing the series with four long balls after missing the club’s previous three games with a right middle finger fracture.
Teoscar Hernández also had five hits, finishing just a long ball short of the cycle. Chris Taylor went two for four at the bottom of the lineup.
“[That was] a lot of the same guys that we saw last October, that we didn’t have success with, and even some parts of this year,” Roberts said, taking solace in the Dodgers’ ability to hit against the club that swept them in last October’s NL Division Series.
“So to come here into their backyard and swing the bats like we did and beat the starter, tax the pen — I thought we had a great offensive game plan throughout. The big players, the big stars performed.”
A loss on Monday would have put the Dodgers in very different position for the stretch run of the season.
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw was put on the injured list a day after he was forced to exit early against Arizona because of a bone spur on his left big toe.
With the tiebreaker, Arizona effectively would have been 3½ games back in the standings. And even with a relatively easy schedule on the horizon, the Dodgers would have been facing pressure with an uncertain starting rotation.
Of the team’s three big-name pitchers on the injured list — Yoshinobu Yamamoto (shoulder), Tyler Glasnow (elbow) and Clayton Kershaw (toe) — Yamamoto is closest to returning, scheduled to make another three-inning rehab start with triple-A Oklahoma City this week.
The rookie Japanese right-hander might be ready to return to the Dodgers’ rotation after that, though Roberts said it will depend on whether his pitch count is built up enough to not put the bullpen back in a difficult position once he is activated.
Glasnow and Kershaw remain bigger question marks.
Glasnow stretched his catch play out to 120 feet on Sunday, moving him closer to throwing off a mound again. For now, however, Roberts has been careful not to put a definitive timeline on his return.
“Once he gets off a mound,” Roberts said, “it’ll be a little more tangible.”
Kershaw is in a similar boat, needing the swelling caused by a bone spur on his left big toe to dissipate before the Dodgers will have a better sense of his status.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman says his break from playing gave him a chance to relax his mind and focus on his family amid a mentally taxing summer.
“Inflammation still is there,” Roberts said. “I think he’s supposed to be in a walking boot sometime soon.”
Asked if the state of this year’s rotation is better than the short-handed unit the Dodgers carried into last October, when they were swept by the Diamondbacks in three games, Roberts cast some doubt.
“Honestly, the current state of our roster? Probably not,” he said. “We’re making it work though. I don’t know how it’s going to look once we get to October, but we still have a lot of baseball to get there.”
In the wake of Monday’s result, however, the pressure on the club should be somewhat eased — with the Dodgers emerging from this week’s trip to the desert with a commanding division lead entering the campaign’s final stretch.
“I think it’s character,” Roberts said of his club’s recent 17-6 run, which has stymied the once-surging Diamondbacks and Padres in the standings.
“I know character is not tangible, but I believe in it — there are some things that are out of our control that we’ve managed and we’ve overcome. We’ve still got a lot of baseball left. I said a couple weeks ago — I’m in playoff mode and I know our guys are too. It’s just going to be a long playoff season for us. But that’s a good thing.”
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