The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants have played 16 games against each other this season and the teams have split the season series 8-8 so far. Most of the Dodgers’ wins came early in the season and the Giants have held the upper hand recently.
The teams faced off in two series in the past week-plus, playing seven of their first 10 games against each other coming out of the All-Star break. It presented L.A. with a chance to catch or overtake San Francisco in the National League West standings, however, they only came away with two wins.
“When you’re playing a team that you’re chasing, you have an opportunity to really impact it going head-to-head, and we didn’t do that,” manager Dave Roberts said. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Those guys outplayed us.”
The Dodgers are now three games behind the Giants, but with another two months to play, the division is hardly settled. “It’s alive and well,” Roberts said of the NL West race.
“We have so much respect for those guys. Obviously, it’s a very good ball club. They’ve earned this right now up to this point and they’ve played better the last seven games, clearly.
“All we can do is turn the page, get ready for Arizona and keep trying to play good baseball. That’s the only focus we have right now. We’ve still got a ways to go. Our destiny is in our own fate. We’ve got to play good baseball. That’s the bottom line.”
Roberts had previously praised the Giants for doing the little things better than the Dodgers, which has helped lead them to the best record in baseball.
“I think you’ve got to be honest with yourselves. It’s two evenly matched ballclubs and if you look at how we’ve played — whether it’s an at-bat here, execution on defense, a missed play, a walk in a bad spot — they’ve been better than we have on the margin,” Roberts said this week.
“If you look at the win-loss, they’ve got the best of us.”
For the Dodgers, Roberts said they will need to get back to who they were and continue doing the little things well.
“I think it’s sort of who we have been in year’s past, and it’s pretty much the same core group of guys. To win the margins and play the game the right way, not give away outs and bases, take good at-bats, that’s who we are,” Roberts said.
“We just haven’t been consistent with that this year, but that sense of urgency, I know is resonating in our clubhouse.”
Dodgers’ defensive struggles
This year, the Dodgers have struggled on defense by allowing 58 unearned runs, which is something Roberts has emphasized that they need to improve on.
“It has been a problem. I think one side of it is I give our pitchers a lot of credit for continuing to go out there and keep making pitches while giving up unearned runs,” Roberts said.
“I think we’ve talked pretty much this entire season about tightening up our defense and not giving away bases. We’ve got to continue to stay on top of that.”
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