Ten things to mull over about the 2018 Dodgers

Here are ten things to think about as you get ready for the final regular season home game at Dodger Stadium.

1. What do Max Muncy and Babe Ruth have in common? They are two of the four players in Major League history to have hit at least 30 or more home runs and walked at least 70 times in less than a 500 plate appearances season. Muncy with 33 home runs and 77 walks in 455 PA, would be the first National League player to do this, Mark McGwire and Mike Epstein also did it in the American League.
2. What do Hyun-jin Ryu and Orel Hershiser have in common? They are two of the for Dodger starting pitchers to start at least 8 games and pitch over 48 innings at Dodger Stadium in a season and record an ERA under 1.30. Ryu has a 1.29 ERA heading into today’s start at Dodger Stadium. Ryu has pitched much less than Hershiser and the other two pitchers who did this, Sandy Koufax and Clayton Kershaw.
3. The Dodgers have a 11 players with minimum of 100 PA to have a Baseball-Reference.com 100 OPS+. They are Cody Bellinger, Yasmani Grandal, Kiké Hernández, Matt Kemp, Manny Machado, Muncy, Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, Corey Seager, Justin Turner. The total of 11 players would set a Dodger franchise record and is the most in the National League this season.
4. Once again, there are seven Dodger pitchers averaging at least 9 strikeouts per 9 innings (minimum 50 innings pitched). This ties a Dodger franchise record set in 2016. This also leads the National League this season.
5. This could be the first Dodger team to qualify for the postseason without a player driving in at least 90 runs in 30 years. Mike Marshall led the 1988 Dodger team with 82 RBI. 1988 National League MVP Kirk Gibson had 76 runs driven in. Matt Kemp currently leads this team with 79 RBI.
6. Cody Bellinger is no Jamey Carroll in the sense that Carroll stole ten bases with no caught stealings in 2011. Bellinger currently has 11 stolen bases with one caught stealing. His manager, Dave Roberts stole 33 bases with one caught stealing for the Dodgers in 2004. I think Roberts stole a few more big bases later that season.
7. Chase Utley is currently the ninth Dodger pinch-hitter (since 1908) with a minimum of 40 plate appearances to have a .900+ OPS. Utley’s .351 batting average is the fourth highest Dodger pinch-hitting batting average (min. 40 PA) since 1908.
8. Short of something happening this week, this season’s version of the Dodgers will be the first one with no complete games. In 2017, there were only two complete games. In 2006 and 2009, the Dodgers had one complete game. The last time the Dodgers had double-digit complete games was in 1998. 1988 saw the last time they had over 30 complete games. And 40 years ago, the 1978 Dodgers was the last team to break 40 with 46 complete games.
9. Matt Kemp has one of the signature stories this season. One should not discount his place in Los Angeles Dodger history. There are only three players with at least 4986 plate appearances that have an .800+ OPS. Ron Cey, Andre Ethier and Kemp are the only Los Angeles Dodgers to do that. Ethier and Kemp were the first two Dodgers in over 30 years to put up significant numbers and a good number of years with the Dodgers.
10. The Dodgers will likely go over 3.8 million tickets sold today. This will be only the second time since Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, that they have gone over this figure. Since the 2012 sale, the Dodgers have sold over 3.7 million tickets in each of the last five seasons with the 2018 attendance showing there is still more chance for growth.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com and their Play Index for assisting in the preparation of this article.