On The Brink Of Five Games Under .500

When you watch baseball games, either live or on TV with Orel Hershiser endlessly droning on about how "this guy just needs to find his rhythm," there's this illusion that you're seeing some sort of sporting drama that contains surprises and great feats of athleticism. But if you stare hard enough, you see the entire game turn into a series of 1s and 0s. It's a vortex from which you cannot escape.

What appears to the untrained eye to be a baseball game is, in fact, a series of random, often unevenly distributed, statistical occurrences with the occasional hamstring pull. That's the only way to explain the Dodgers' season thus far. In short order, they pitched a no-hitter (using four pitchers), then lost a series to the Padres, then lost a series to the Marlins, then got swept at home in a four-game series by the Cincinnati Reds and their horrible pitching staff, then went to Florida and lost two more games to the Marlins. In the process, they looked like the worst baseball team ever assembled. They couldn't hit, they couldn't pitch, they couldn't field. They lost eight games in a row where the deficit was two or fewer runs.

Then they blew the Marlins out 7-0. Justin Turner, risen from the disabled list, drove in five runs, and Kenta Maeda pitched eight shutout innings.

Then the Dodgers went to Washington and proceeded to sweep a doubleheader, including a ludicrous game where Rich Hill's finger exploded after two pitches and the lame Dodgers' bullpen somehow managed to outpitch Max Scherzer. Then today, they won a game started by Steven Strasburg. Kiké Hernandez and Yasiel Puig hit two-run homers. They looked like every bit the team that went to the World Series last year, or at least like a possible playoff team. 

Essentially, all the bad statistical occurrences got laid out across a horrific stretch of baseball like what Padres fans suffer through every year, but like Dodgers fans only have to deal with about one season per decade. A more even keel would be nice, but the baseball gods are playing Yahtzee with us. Now the script will be flipped, the worm will be turned. We will descend into the time tunnel and come out on the other side and the numbers will be perfect.

Here we are, 46 games into the season, with 116 more to go. The Dodgers have a worse record than everyone in the division except for the Padres, who are due for relegation. And yet because Arizona has been systematically feeding its star players into a meat grinder, the Blue find themselves only five games out of first place. Tomorrow night the Rockies come to town only a half-game back themselves, so we can hear a lot about Nolan Arenado and his "professional at-bats." We've played the D'Backs 53 times, but haven't played the Rockies once. I look forward to getting bored with them soon. 

First place or bust! In this division, that may be the same thing.