Los Angeles Dodgers: With October In Question, Will Dodgers Repeat the Past?

As LA continues to fall, fans can’t help but wonder, is this entire season the Dodgers 2017 Game 7?

Well Dodgers fans, this has not been fun. In fact, this stretch of games, this whole season actually, has been closer to Game 7 than anything else. The additions of Manny Machado and Brian Dozier helped for a while. They patched cracks in a leaky ceiling, but the second it was fixed, another problem arose.

Are the Dodgers doomed? Probably not. They are capable of making it to the postseason, but being capable of something and actually doing it are two different things. As of late, the Dodgers have not been able to beat contenders. The just got swept by the Cardinals and played pretty poorly against the Rockies not long before that.

The bullpen, even with Kenley Jansen, is in shambles. The offense has been hit or miss. The starting pitching has been the best thing for the Dodgers but has not been enough.

Now, we have to ask, are the cracks in the ceiling simply too big to fix?

If this were any other month, I would not be nearly as worried. I would shake it off and say that the Dodgers can come back, win the division, and then win the World Series. But the fact is, it’s the end of August and this team is really running out of time. Even if they end up winning the division (something that isn’t fully out of reach), without a Verlander 2017-like waiver wire move, they might not make it out of the NLDS.

It’s not like this team is no-longer elite, because they still are. They have Manny Machado, Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner, Cody Bellinger, to name a few. They are the reigning National League Champs.

That said, that was 2017. 2018 has been a vastly different, and somewhat rude awakening. As a team, they are batting.243/.326/.427 this season (team batting average is 10th in the NL.) They’ve hit the most home runs of any national league team but rank eleventh in total hits. They rank first in total walks and tenth in total strikeouts. Those stats aren’t bad, and they definitely aren’t bad for the Dodgers, but at the end of the day, the 2018 Dodgers have been good, not great.

And “good” won’t win the World Series, not with as many elite teams as there have been this season.

So, where do the Dodgers go from here? Tomorrow night, they begin a three-game set against San Diego Padres in LA, and if they could enter next week with a sweep or a series win, all the doubters will have a lot more to cheer about.

Looking forward, the Dodgers best chance to win the division looks to come the first weekend of September, when the rival D-Backs come to down. A strong four-game series with them could (potentially) put the Dodgers back in first.

Will they be able to stay there?