As of the end of the day Monday, June 9, the San Francisco Giants hold an 8.5 game lead over the Dodgers in the National League West division and are one of the hottest teams in all of baseball. In 2013 the Los Angeles Dodgers took off once the calendar turned to June and went on to run away with the National League West title. Now, in 2014, they will have to make another incredible run in the summer months if they are going to catch the first place Giants.
Can it be done is the question, though? It is easy to say yes because of what they did last season and it would be easy to say no because of how good the Giants have been playing all season long. You could easily make an arguement for way. The Giants will get first baseman Brandon Belt back who was their best player for the first month of the season and the Dodgers are getting production out of Matt Kemp that they haven’t seen in a long time. Both teams offer those reasons and more as to why you could argue this each way.
For me, it comes down to one simple thing that sways my opinion. These two teams only play two more series on the season for six games. If both teams perform against the opposition at the exact same rate the Dodgers could sweep the Giants in those games and still be 2.5 games behind the Giants in the division. That’s what sways me to believe the Dodger won’t catch the Giants this season, and to make it even worse, this team is 3-7 against the division leaders this season so it is highly unlikely that they would sweep the rest of the series.
It is hard to bet against a team like this one, though, that has this much star power and I could easily be wrong, but it is going to take amazing second half performances by Hanley Ramirez and Yasiel Puig for the second year in a row and Clayton Kershaw is going to have to start pitching like the Cy Young winner that he was. On top of that they would likely need the Giants to hit road bump like they did in their last two seasons where they didn’t make the playoffs when Buster Posey was injured and lost for the season and Angel Pagan was injured and lost for most of the season. It can be done, but it won’t be easy, but nothing worth having is.