O Dodger are winning again.
They followed their New York Mets sweep taking the last two games of their three-game series against the Colorado Rockies during the weekend.
Mookie Bets scored in the series finale against the Rockies, a 4-0 victory on Sunday at Dodger Stadium. Freddie Freeman also honored. Sophomore right-hander Gavin Stone further cemented his place in the rotation by pitching five scoreless innings.
The Dodgers are 38-23, the second-best record in the National League. They have a 6 1/2 game lead in the division over the second-place San Diego Padres.
However, none of this was convincing.
None of this answered the long-standing questions about them.
See more information: Gavin Stone delivers more quality innings for Dodgers in series win over Rockies
None of this seemed like convincing evidence as to why they wouldn’t crash and burn in the postseason like they had in each of the previous three years.
They identified a postseason Game 1 starter in Tyler Glasnowbut who comes after that?
One of three pitchers facing the Rockies this weekend – Stone, Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Walker Buhler – will probably have to establish himself as the second starter before October.
Stone, 25, is the most consistent but least experienced.
Yamamoto is 5-1 with a 2.72 earned run average in his last seven starts, but has pitched just once a week in Japan and manager Dave Roberts it seemed like the Dodgers were determined to keep him on a similar schedule this season. Yamamoto has yet to start with less than five days rest.
“Sitting here, I think our priority is to make sure Yoshi continues to get his kind of extra rest, so I don’t see that changing, even until October,” Roberts said.
Buehler has made just five starts since returning from his second reconstructive elbow surgery and the Dodgers remain uncertain about what they have in him. In your most recent startBuehler struck out seven batters in six innings — but also gave up four runs — three earned — during a loss to the Rockies.
With James Paxton casting relatively well, and Clayton Kershaw It is Bobby Miller expected to return from their respective injuries, the Dodgers have pitching depth that should help them rack up wins in the regular season. But just because a pitcher can beat a talentless team like the Mets or Rockies in a midweek game doesn’t mean he can win a game in October. Remember, Lance Lynn was a perfectly serviceable pitcher during last year’s regular season. Lynn was crushed in the postseason.
Questions about the pitch even extend to Glasnow. How will the Dodgers prepare him to play four days off in the playoffs?
Glasnow has maintained a similar schedule to Yamamoto, as the Dodgers are aware that the injury-prone right-hander has never pitched more than 120 innings during a season. Roberts said he envisioned Glasnow starting a traditional five-day cycle in August.
“It’s not an exact science,” Roberts said. “Tyler is still going to play harder than he has in a while.”
Equally, if not more, problematic is the bottom of the lineup, which has made the Dodgers overly dependent on the Big Four: Betts, Freeman, Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith.
The combined batting averages of the Dodgers’ Nos. 6, 7, 8, and 9 hitters were .204 entering the series finale against the Rockies, who ranked fourth-worst in baseball.
Chris Taylor is batting .108, Kike Hernandez .198 and Gavin Lux .209.
Max MuncyAyr’s oblique injury further amplified this problem, as Muncy’s move from the middle of the order to the injured list shortened the lineup. It is no coincidence that shortly after Muncy’s injury, the team went on a five-game losing streak.
The Dodgers will have to resolve this issue by the trade deadline.
If this all sounds overly critical of a first-place team, well, that’s because of the prism through which that team is viewed.
In what is a testament to their ownership group, the Dodgers have made the regular season unimportant. They’ve made the playoffs in 11 consecutive seasons and won their division 10 times in that span, making October baseball seem like a given.
See more information: Analysis: ‘We need them.’ Why it’s crucial for the Dodgers to find ‘spark’ in the bottom half of the lineup
Maybe that’s not fair to them.
Perhaps observers shouldn’t let the specter of the playoffs dampen their appreciation for regular-season developments like Stone’s emergence as a legitimate major league starter or catcher Smith’s improvement in eliminating would-be base stealers.
But this is the reality of the Dodgers.
The Dodgers are held to a different standard than any other team in baseball, with the New York Yankees being the only possible exception. For the Dodgers, success is measured in championships, and everything they do – or don’t do – is judged by how it might affect them in the postseason.
And at this stage, doubts remain.
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
