2020 NL simulation: Dodgers at the break
By Bill Felber
In our simulated season, the Dodgers have finally taken first from the Diamondbacks, thanks to a brutal series in Chicago.
At the All-Star break of the simulated 2020 season, the surprise team in the National League is pretty obvious. The Arizona Diamondbacks have battled the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers for supremacy in the NL West all season.
Yet thanks to a pre-break three-game inter-league sweep at the hands of the Chicago White Sox, the D-Backs have ceded first place to the Dodgers, who they now trail by a game and a half.
It’s Arizona’s first experience actually looking up at the Dodgers since early May. After playing brilliantly for the simulation’s first three months, they are 4-7 in July. That raises the question of whether the only significant challenge to the Dodgers’ eighth straight division championship is in the process of disintegrating.
The St. Louis Cardinals have traded control of the NL Central with Cincinnati most of the year. They enter the break two games in front of the Reds and Milwaukee Brewers, with the Chicago Cubs three more games behind. Like Arizona, Cincinnati has hit a rough patch in July, winning only twice against eight defeats.
The Atlanta Braves are facing no such concerns in the NL East. With consistent offense and pitching, the Braves have steadily opened up a seven game lead on their nearest division pursuers, the Philadelphia Phillies.
For now, the D-Backs remain comfortably in control of the first NL wild card spot, nine games ahead of the Phillies, who hold the second position in that race. Philadelphia’s position is far more precarious. They lead the Reds and Brewers by only one game each, the Washington Nationals by just two and a half, the Cubs by four and the Padres by five.
At this stage, it appears that the New York Mets, Miami Marlins, Pittsburgh Pirates, Colorado Rockies and San Francisco Giants have played themselves out of playoff contention.
What follows is a division-by-division summary of the simulation to date. With the return of actual baseball in less than two weeks, a final regular season simulation will follow later this week, that being followed by a simulated post-season.