Dodgers halfway through the 2022 season, Freddie Freeman & Trea Turner make their mark

Wednesday night was the Dodgers’ 81st game of the season, the exact halfway point of the regular season, so let’s take a look at where they stand.

The Dodgers have the best record in the National League at 52-29 (.642), their six-game lead over San Diego the largest divisional lead in the NL. Fifty-two wins is tied for the ninth-most through 81 games in franchise history, and perhaps it’s a sign of how good this era of Dodgers baseball is that they had better starts in both 2019 (55 wins) and 2017 (53 wins). Last year, the Dodgers started 50-31 en route to winning 106 games. Counting the postseason, the 2020 Dodgers were 56-22. That’s a lot of winning.

Trea Turner and Freddie Freeman have each started every game this season for the Dodger. It’s the most consecutive starts to begin a season by a Dodger since Eric Karros started all 162 games in 1997. The last time two Dodgers started every game this deep into the season was in 1975, when Steve Garvey started the first 136 games and Ron Cey started the first 138 games.

Turner has 99 hits at the halfway point, and Freeman isn’t far behind at 96. Only three Dodgers have had a 200-hit season in the last 40 years – Steve Sax (1986), Mike Piazza (1997), and Adrián Beltré (2004).

Freeman has 25 doubles. Only one Dodger had a 50-double season – Johnny Frederick, with 52 doubles for Brooklyn in 1929. The Los Angeles Dodgers record for doubles in a season is 49, by Shawn Green in 2003.

In addition to Freeman, both Turners have 20 doubles this season. The Dodgers have never had more than two players with 40 doubles in the same season. The major league record is four players with 40 doubles on the same team, done five times. The last NL team with at least three 40-double players was the 2018 Braves, who got 44 doubles from Freeman that season.

Trea Turner has 59 runs batted in and Freeman has 50. The last time the Dodgers had two players drive in 100 runs was 2009, with Andre Etheir (106 RBI) and Matt Kemp (101). The Dodgers have only four individual 100-RBI years since then.

Max Muncy has struggled coming off elbow surgery, hitting just .167/.321/.321, but also leads the team with 48 walks. In case you were wondering, the only player with a sub-.200 batting average in a 100-walk season in MLB history was Joey Gallo, who hit .199(/.351/.458) with 111 walks for the 2021 Yankees.

Mookie Betts has scored 56 runs in his 64 games played. Since moving to Los Angeles, only seven Dodgers have scored 112 runs in a season. Cody Bellinger was the last, in his 2019 MVP season, with 121 runs scored.

Bellinger’s 90 strikeouts put him on pace to break the Dodgers single-season strikeout record, set by Chris Taylor in 2018, with 178 strikeouts. Taylor was on pace to obliterate his own record, already reaching 101 strikeouts this year. But his left foot fracture throws a wrench into any sort of pace plans.

Dodgers pitchers have allowed 261 runs, lowest in the National League, 0.65 runs per game fewer than the second-place Padres. The last time the Dodgers allowed such a low run total (currently 3.22 per game) was 1968, a year famously dubbed “The Year of the Pitcher.”

Second half starts tonight.