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After sweeping the Reds over the weekend, then taking the opener against National League rival Atlanta, the Dodgers are 5-0 at Dodger Stadium this season.
But they also won their final fifteen home games to end the 2021 regular season, so how long is their current home win streak? Is it five games, or is it 20 games? If it’s the latter, that ignores the six playoff games played at Dodger Stadium last October, of which the Dodgers won four. They lost Game 4 of the NLCS against the Braves but won Game 5, which turned out to be the final Dodger Stadium game of 2021. So if we’re counting last year, is the home win streak six games?
Dodgers-Braves lineups
| Pos | Braves | Pos | Dodgers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pos | Braves | Pos | Dodgers |
| 2B | Albies (S) | RF | Betts |
| 1B | Olson (L) | 1B | Freeman (L) |
| 3B | Riley | SS | Turner |
| DH | Ozuna | DH | Turner |
| RF | Rosario (L) | 2B | Muncy (L) |
| C | d'Arnaud | LF | Taylor |
| CF | Duvall | 3B | Alberto |
| LF | Arcia | CF | Bellinger (L) |
| SS | Swanson | C | Barnes |
This is all semantics, really. Not quite as mind-numbing as wasting time debating whether a hot dog is a sandwich, but still rather easy to delineate. For purposes of streaks, and most stats, the postseason is considered separate from the regular season. Nobody says Henry Aaron has 761 career home runs, which lumps in his six postseason dingers with his more iconic 755 regular season blasts. So it’s rather easy to dismiss the postseason numbers when counting a streak.
Unless you are twelve years old, and will talk anyone’s ear off about how Orel Hershiser actually pitched 67 consecutive scoreless innings, which encompassed his final 59 innings of the regular season, then the first eight scoreless frames of Game 1 of the NLCS. But then again, you might have been sore after throwing a mini tantrum after seeing the Mets come back to win that Game 1 in the ninth inning, after which you were sent to bed early. Hypothetically, of course.
But even using regular season numbers only, it still seems odd to count something over seasons. I’m not even talking about Hershiser’s 1989 Donruss card, the one showing him juggling a baseball with the words “59 and Counting” on the front. Any bizarreness of that streak lasting longer than 1988 was dashed in the very first inning of 1989, when Hershiser finally allowed a regular season run.
Trea Turner had his 27-game hit streak snapped on Sunday, but that was only the Dodgers’ ninth game of the season. The first 19 games of Turner’s streak came at the end of the 2021 regular season. “It kind of feels weird to say a 20-something-game hitting streak when you take a five-month break, but I guess how that works,” Turner said Saturday.
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The Dodgers at home have won 20 straight regular season games. Their last such loss was August 29 against the Rockies, akin to their last loss this season also against Colorado, though this year was in Denver (the Dodgers have won seven straight games overall since then). The current home winning streak started with a series against the Braves, and the Dodgers have swept every home series since.
In those last 20 games at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers have outscored opponents 126-56. It’s the second-longest home winning streak in franchise history, behind only the 22-game run at Washington Park by the Brooklyn Superbas in 1899.
In the modern era, the only two National League home winning streaks longer than the current Dodgers streak were 26 games by the 1916 New York Giants (which also stands as the longest overall win streak in MLB history; New York played 31 games in a row at the Polo Grounds at one point that September) and 24 games by the 1978 Pirates.
Game info
- Teams: Dodgers (8-2) vs. Braves (5-7)
- Location: Dodger Stadium
- First pitch: 7:10 p.m. PT
- TV: SportsNet LA, TBS (out of market)
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