Dodgers Week 16: Picking up right where they left off

Dodger Stadium was the showcase last week, starting with All-Star festivities in Los Angeles for the first time since 1980, and all the cool moments that came with it.

In games that counted, the Dodgers further distanced themselves from divisional competitors last week by taking all four games against the Giants. It wasn’t necessarily dominan, with the Dodgers breaking ties with winning rallies in the eighth inning twice and the seventh inning another time. San Francisco led twice during the four-game series, and in both cases the Dodgers retook the lead in the bottom of the inning.

They did just enough to win each game, with a relentless offense that kept taking advantage of the windows opened by the Giants’ porous defense. On balls in play during the series, Los Angeles had a .320 batting average, well ahead of the .289 mark across MLB this season. The Dodgers did a much better job of catching the ball, and it showed.

Clayton Kershaw got his long-awaited All-Star Game start on Tuesday, savoring every moment of it. On Sunday he couldn’t complete the fifth, allowing the only earned runs by Dodgers starting pitching during the series. But Kershaw’s early exit was no problem for the Dodgers, who kept the Giants at bay the rest of the way, then struck late, again.

The Dodgers have won eight straight games, and 19 of their last 21. They own a commanding 11½-game lead over the Padres in the NL West. The sweep of the Giants pushed San Francisco to a whopping 16½ games back in the division.

Los Angeles is on pace for 110 wins this season, after setting franchise marks with 106 wins in 2019 and 2021. In between, they won a championship with a 43-17 mark. Since the start of 2019, the Dodgers have won just over two-thirds of their games, going 319-159. It’s the most wins over a 478-game span since the 1942-45 St. Louis Cardinals.

Starting to think this team is pretty good.

Batter of the week

The offense got contributions throughout, but the charge was once again led by Freddie Freeman, who added two more multi-hit games, reached base more than half the time, and extended his hit streak to 11 games.

Pitcher of the week

Julio Urías has somehow become the unheralded member of the starting rotation, though he’s been rock steady of late. The left-hander pitched six scoreless innings on Saturday to beat the Giants, giving him 12 starts allowing zero or one run in 19 outings this season. Urías ranks seventh in the National League in ERA (2.76) and fifth in xERA (2.90), and leads the Dodgers with 99 strikeouts.

Urías averaged 94.6 mph on his forty-seven four-seam fastballs on Saturday, up a tick and a half from his season average, and his highest velocity in any game this season. That prompted this wonderful postgame quote from Dave Roberts:

Week 16 results

4-0 record
25 runs scored (6.25 per game)
13 runs allowed (3.25 per game)
.768 pythagorean win percentage

Year to date

64-30 record
487 runs scored (5.18 per game)
306 runs allowed (3.26 per game)
.701 pythagorean win percentage (66-28)

Miscellany

Milestone dinger: Mookie Betts started the scoring on Saturday with a third-inning home run off old friend Alex Wood. It was Betts’ team-leading 22nd home run of the season, one shy of his total last season, and the 200th home run of his career. Betts is the 362nd player in major league history with 200 home runs.

Long weekend, but for San Francisco: The Dodgers won every game of their weekend series against the rival Giants, the first time they’ve had a four-game sweep of San Francisco in any ballpark since June 22-25, 1995, which was at Dodger Stadium. Sarah Langs of MLBcom shared that this was the 26th four-game series between the two teams since that 1995 sweep. Since Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, the Dodgers have swept the Giants in four games only three times — 2022, 1995, and April 21-24, 1980.

Two-baggers: In both the first and last game against San Francisco, the Dodgers hit five doubles, giving them six games this season with at least that many. At 182 doubles through 94 games, the Dodgers are a shade ahead of their 2017 pace, when they set a franchise record with 312 doubles. Los Angeles also leads the National League with those 182 doubles, five more than Atlanta, who has played three more games. The Dodgers last led the NL in doubles in 1955, when they were in Brooklyn.

Transactions

Amazingly, no roster moves this week. Feels weird.

Game results

• Tuesday: American League 3, National League 2
• Thursday: Dodgers 9, Giants 6
• Friday: Dodgers 5, Giants 1
• Saturday: Dodgers 4, Giants 2
• Sunday: Dodgers 7, Giants 4

Previous weekly reviews: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 | Week 14 | Week 15

Up next

The Dodgers run the Zach Day gauntlet, finishing off the homestand with three games against the lowly Nationals, followed by LA’s last four games at Coors Field this season, still looking for their first series win in Denver this year. Wednesday ends a four-week stretch in which the Dodgers were away from Los Angeles — or assorted All-Star break respite locales — for only three nights.