Dodgers reclaim familiar place as MLB's best

We get the Dodgers vs. the Giants back this weekend, back in a big way in September.

Los Angeles will go into the series in first place in the National League West -- either tied with San Francisco or a game ahead depending on what the Giants do in their series finale Thursday vs. the Brewers -- after spending three months in second place this season, and another month in third.

This has always been a rivalry about history and romance, all the way back to Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds. Now here the Dodgers and Giants are again, the stakes so tremendous for both of them as they try to stay out of the NL Wild Card Game a month from now.

The Dodgers won again on Wednesday night. They won with Max Scherzer, even on a night when he didn’t get a win and got taken out of the game because of precautions about a hamstring, lowering his earned run average since coming to the Dodgers at the Trade Deadline to 1.29, which basically means deGrom-ville. Max is 37. But he has now thrown 35 innings for the Dodgers and struck out 50 and hasn’t lost for them yet.

And it wasn’t just Scherzer coming over in that huge deal with the Nationals, it was a streak of light named Trea Turner, who has pretty much been the best player on what we all thought was going to be the best team in baseball -- again -- at the start of the season.

It is a season that really began, at least in L.A., with the Dodgers going toe-to-toe with the upstart Padres. Then the Padres began a long, slow fade. It is the Giants against whom the Dodgers have gone toe-to-toe ever since, and will do so again this weekend, now that things are as real between these two teams, in this proud old rivalry, as they have been in awhile.

I asked manager Dave Roberts, who might be doing the best work he has ever done with the 2021 edition of the Dodgers, about Scherzer the other day. Here is what he said about the guy right there at the top of his rotation with Walker Buehler (13-2, 2.05 ERA) and Julio Urías (15-3, 3.17):

“[Scherzer] is much better than advertised. The lazy take on him is that he’s super intense. Which is true. But that doesn’t go far enough. What people don’t know is how uber-prepared he is. The only thing he cares about is winning, and the team. All players say they do, but not all live it every day. Max does.”

Roberts’ team is loaded, no doubt. The last time somebody acquired an ace pitcher as good and as talented as Scherzer was the Astros in 2017, when they got Justin Verlander, Max’s old teammate, from the Tigers, and Verlander did what Scherzer is trying to do this time, which means pitch his new team to the World Series.

But just because the Dodgers are as loaded as they clearly are -- up and down the lineup, there is no more talented team in baseball -- it doesn’t mean that they haven’t had to overcome things this season. They have, and not just because they have lost Trevor Bauer to his legal issues, a starter they thought was going to give them even more of an embarrassment of riches in their rotation than they had before they got Max Scherzer.

Cody Bellinger, a former NL MVP winner, one of their young stars for awhile, is still just hitting .172, with nine home runs in 75 games coming off shoulder surgery. Bellinger only has a modest lifetime average of .260. Somehow he is hitting nearly 100 points below that. Mookie Betts, healthy again after a season in which he has been slowed considerably by a nagging hip injury, seems very much poised to have a big September finish. For now, he is at .269 with 19 homers, 46 RBIs and his lowest OPS (.889) since 2017.

But on Tuesday night Mookie hit a home run and scored from first base and stole a home run from the Braves and was on base three times. And looked like himself again.

“We’re a lot better team when he’s out in the field healthy,” shortstop Corey Seager said. “What [Betts] can do, all around, he showed it tonight.”

At this best, it is well established that Betts is one of the elite in the game. And Turner has absolutely played like a total star this season, in both Washington and Los Angeles. Are there issues with the Dodgers? Of course there are. There always seem to be bullpen issues. Clayton Kershaw, who is about to pitch another simulated game, hasn’t pitched in two months. And did we mention that Cody Bellinger, who hit 47 homers and had 115 RBIs just two years ago, is hitting .172?

But here is how good the Dodgers really are as they go for two World Series in a row: They still woke up on Thursday morning, an off-day for them, about to play the Giants this weekend, with the best record in baseball.

This is what Roberts said about the Dodgers getting back into first place, where they've pretty much been since he got there in 2016:

“It’s a start.”

A start for the defending champs, looking at three against the Giants this weekend in San Francisco, looking for a very big finish in the NL West. Put it another way: Somebody else is the best team when it’s better than the Dodgers.