Dodgers Given Lifeline Amid Worrying Slide as Playoff Tension Reaches Fever Pitch

The Los Angeles Dodgers have entered the final month of the season with their bags packed, as 15 of their final 25 games are on the road. The only good news is that most of their opponents are non-playoff teams, including the Pirates, Orioles, Giants, and Diamondbacks.

But as this past week showed, “easy” opponents don’t always play easy—with last-place Pirates swept the Boys in Blue to start September, winning 9-7, 3-0, and 5-3, and with the most recent 2-1 walk-off loss to Baltimore stretched the losing streak to four. That stumble sliced their NL West lead over the Padres down to just 2.5 games and left them chasing the Phillies by three games for a crucial first-round bye. So, if the season ended today, the Dodgers would have to host the New York Mets in a Wild Card Series.

But just as the panic began to set in, a massive relief came from Eno Sarris of The Athletic. In his recent article, Sarris wrote, “No starting rotation has come online just in time like the Death Star forming in Los Angeles.”  Sarris noted their top three—Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow—carry the No. 1 projected ERA and WAR in baseball.

And this ranking doesn’t even include Shohei Ohtani, who had the third-best strikeout-minus-walk rate, sitting just behind Tarik Skubal and Zack Wheeler among qualified pitchers, or future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, who had 5 wins in his last 7 appearances.

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Sarris’s praise came with a warning: “Of course, there might be a thermal exhaust port here.” The flaw, of course, is health. So he pointed that the trio—Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow—has provided very little, “that’s due to injury, which could still crop up with this bunch.”

So, to really understand where this “Death Star” stands, we need to go back.

We need to rewind one month

The Dodgers rolled out their full rotation in August for the first time all season and led all of Baseball with a 3.50 ERA and 5.58 average innings per start, third-best in the league. Their underlying numbers, like a league-leading 28.1 percent strikeout rate and 21.5 percent strikeout-minus-walk rate, are finally giving the bullpen some relief. But the story wasn’t just about numbers; it was the arms.

Clayton Kershaw looked timeless in that time period with a 1.88 ERA in the 28 2/3 innings he pitched. Yoshinobu Yamamoto went 37 1/3 innings with a 3.13 ERA, and Blake Snell is finally back with his 2.54 ERA and 34 strikeouts in more than 28 innings. Then there is Tyler Glasnow and Emmet Sheehan, both hovering around 3.50 ERA over 23 innings they pitched. Only Shohei Ohtani had an ERA over 3.52 for August, but his 27 strikeouts against only two walks in his 17 1/3 innings show there is nothing left to worry about.

On the other hand, their primary rivals, the San Diego Padres’ rotation, have been battered—Michael King is sidelined, Dylan Cease and Yu Darvish have been inconsistent with an ERA of 4.81 and 5.75. Nick Pivetta has been their only bright spot at 2.87 with a record of 13-5. The Padres’ recent stretch saw them post the league’s worst rotation ERA since their last series win against the Dodgers.

And in the recent months, the Dodgers’ offense has the mixed results as players like Max Muncy and Tommy Edman are still out of the lineup with injuries. But Shohei Ohtani (1.020 OPS) and Freddie Freeman (.582 slugging) did their part, each crushing seven home runs in August.

So here we are: in September, the most important month of the season, the Dodgers have the talent to repeat as champions but are also fragile enough to collapse before the NLDS even begins.

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