Although the Los Angeles Dodgers are a near lock to make the postseason, the year hasn’t gone the way most predicted it would for the pre-season favorites to run away with the National League West and win a second consecutive World Series.
The Dodgers currently sit four games behind the NL West division-leading San Francisco Giants, who continue to prove everyone wrong about their team. However, L.A. still has a 59% chance to win the division and 99.2% chance to make the playoffs.
While there is still a lot of work to be done and plenty of games remaining on the schedule, the Dodgers are in a pretty good spot overall, especially after acquiring Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, and getting Corey Seager and Mookie Betts back from the injured list.
“I think we’re right where we want to be.” Albert Pujols said. “We know we haven’t been playing the best baseball that we know how to play, and obviously that I’ve seen this organization play over the last 20 years.
“I know we have a great group of guys, a great team, we just got some guys healthy.”
The Dodgers believe they just have to keep playing good baseball and be ready for every team if they want to win a ninth consecutive division title.
“We don’t want to change anything. I think for us, we want to take the same approach. We’re always ready to go every day no matter who we’re facing,” Pujols said.
“That’s something I love about this ballclub. We had a couple tough series that we lost and we bounced back right away. Tough losses, we bounce back right away. That’s the attitude you want. Obviously, there’s a lot of games left. We just need to continue to win series and see where we’re at at the end of the season.”
The Dodgers are also still the favorites to win the World Series, but at the end of the day, the team will need to show some consistency and go on a hot streak soon or their fate might be decided in a one-game Wild Card matchup.
Betts: Dodgers need to play with ‘urgency’
Mookie Betts recently said the Dodgers have not played with the same sense of urgency this season that they did last year, and expressed his belief that in order to reach their goal of repeating as World Champions, L.A. needed to have a consistent drive.
“It’s what we did really good last year and haven’t done this year. I think we just have to start playing with some more urgency and getting things to turn our way instead of waiting for it,” Betts said.
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