The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres are widely considered two of the top teams in baseball and expected to be part a close race in the National League West.
While L.A. has historically given the Padres a lot of trouble, that changed in the past year during the postseason as San Diego advanced by eliminating the Dodgers from the NL Division Series. That came after the Padres aggressively upgraded their roster to compete with the Dodgers, which continued into this past offseason.
The rivalry between the two teams has been growing over recent seasons and it’s reached the point where nearly every game has a playoff-like atmosphere in the eyes of Will Smith, as seen on SportsNet LA:
“It’s fun. They always show up every day when we’re here. They want to beat us and we want to beat them, so it’s fun. These are postseason games basically in May. We always look forward to these games and seeing where we’re at.”
The Dodgers ended up taking two of three over the weekend and now hold a three-game lead over the Padres in the NL West standings entering play Monday. The Arizona Diamondbacks sit between the two clubs, but that figures to change by the end of the season.
Many of the Dodgers players said they had no added motivation facing the Padres, including Saturday’s starter Dustin May, who didn’t get a chance to pitch against them in the NLDS. However, each of their matchups could prove to be the difference at the end of the season when the division title is settled.
Current projections from FanGraphs have the Dodgers finishing the year with 90 wins and a 45.8% chance to win the division while the Padres are just behind them at 88 wins and 38.6% NL West odds.
Padres troll Kershaw after Dodgers loss
In the opening game of the series between the Dodgers and Padres, the two clubs met for the first time since the San Diego eliminated L.A. in the NLDS.
The Padres came away with the win and decided to troll Clayton Kershaw after the game with an edited meme of the southpaw crying. Kershaw was shown the video, but brushed it off and put the focus on improving his own performance in order to avoid such treament.
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