The cliché is to compare Major League Baseball’s regular season to a marathon.
On Tuesday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts used the mile as his analogy instead.
“The third leg is the hardest leg,” Roberts explained, drawing a comparison to the four laps run in mile-long 1600-meter races. “I think it’s just kind of like that.”
Indeed, the Dodgers came flying out of the gates at the start of this year, reaching Independence Day with five more wins than any other team in the majors.
But then, in a repeat of last season, came an early second-half slide, with the club going 23-26 over its subsequent 49 games.
The third lap was taking its toll –– especially for an aging roster coming off back-to-back World Series marches.
“You can layer in the fact that we’ve had a lot of seasons together, and played a lot of baseball,” Roberts said.
“They call them the dog days for a reason,” newly acquired pitcher Tarik Skubal added.
This week, however, has brought another familiar turn in the Dodgers’ pursuit of a third-straight title.
Also like last season, they have begun a return to form just as October has appeared on the horizon, matching a season-long win streak on Tuesday by collecting their sixth victory in a row with a 3-2 defeat of the Cincinnati Reds.
“You get that second wind in September,” Roberts said.
“Everyone’s kind of turning up the intensity a little bit,” Skubal echoed.
It was at almost this exact point last season when the Dodgers made a similar shift following a late-summer slump. On Sept. 6, they were walked off for a second-straight night by the Baltimore Orioles. They were in a dogfight in the NL West after a 22-32 slump.
From there, though, they closed the regular season on a 15-5 tear, locked up the NL West crown in the final week of the regular season, and proceeded to win nine of their first 10 playoff games en route to a second-consecutive title.
This year, the turnaround has begun a few days earlier. And this time, another strong finish should put the club in an even better playoff spot.
With Tuesday’s win, the Dodgers’ magic number to clinch the NL West is already down to seven. More importantly, they are now 2 ½ games up on the Atlanta Braves for the National League’s No. 2 playoff seed –– which would not only come with a bye, but perhaps put the Dodgers on the easier side of the NL postseason bracket (as things stand, the No. 2 seed is likely to face either the Braves, Dbacks or Padres in the Division Series, while the currently top-seeded Brewers would likely be in line for a more daunting matchup with either the Phillies and Cubs).
“We realized [the magic number] was 7 because they put it on the scoreboard,” Teoscar Hernández joked afterward. “But we’re not thinking about October right now. We’re thinking about just playing the game, win games and just be ready for it.”
Just as important as playoff positioning, after all, is the way the team has been playing to right the ship this week.
It starts, fittingly, with starting pitching, where the Dodgers on Tuesday watched Skubal deliver his most efficient outing with the team.
For his first since arriving in Los Angeles, and his second time all season, the two-time Cy Young Award winner worked into the eighth inning in a 94-pitch effort, allowing just two runs (both on a monstrous 444-foot Elly De La Cruz homer in the third) over 7 ⅓ frames to lower his ERA in seven Dodgers starts to 2.93.
The lineup, meanwhile, has made such production on the mound count –– thanks to renewed production at the plate from several important veteran bats.
Will Smith opened the scoring on Tuesday with his first home run since coming off the injured list. Then Hernández continued his blistering return to form with three hits and a walk, including a triple that nearly went for an inside-the-park home run (he was thrown out at home on a whopping 105 mph relay throw by De La Cruz at shortstop) and a tie-breaking RBI single in the fifth. He is now 16-for-32 over his last nine games.
“This just changes the dynamic of our lineup,” Roberts said of Hernández. “Especially when there’s still some guys that aren’t swinging the bat well.”
That includes Shohei Ohtani, was back out of the lineup on Tuesday while being load-managed.
And yet, the Dodgers didn’t break their stride, or lose any momentum in a stretch run that has seen them steadily gain steam.
“The fourth leg is the easiest,” Roberts said, referring back to his mile metaphor, “because you see the finish line.”
