Playing meaningful baseball in the months of September and October has become the norm for the Los Angeles Dodgers in recent years as they have won five straight National League West championships and could be on the verge of a sixth.
They enter play Monday with a 1.5-game lead in the division and their magic number to clinch at six, with six games remaining on the schedule.
One player who hasn’t been around for the entirety of the NL West dominance is Matt Kemp, who played his first nine Major League season with the Dodgers but was then traded to the San Diego Padres before the 2015 season.
Kemp spent the 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons with the Padres and Atlanta Braves, who didn’t reach the playoffs at all in that span and were often eliminated from postseason contention weeks before the end of the regular season.
In a surprise trade this past offseason, Kemp wound up back in Los Angeles for a chance to redeem himself with the Dodgers and so far, he has made the most of it.
After hitting his 21st home run of the season in a 14-0 win over the Padres on Sunday afternoon, Kemp expressed how excited he is to be back playing meaningful games down the stretch of the season, via Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times:
“This is fun, man,” Kemp said. “It’s fun to be able to be playing for something. The past couple years, it’s been a little rough going into September, just playing baseball and not playing for the postseason.”
Even after being traded back to the Dodgers, it wasn’t a sure thing that Kemp would still be a member of the team when the season started as they made it clear that they would attempt to flip him to another team.
Keeping him wound up being the right move though as Kemp has had an outstanding season for the Dodgers, being named a starter for the National League in the All-Star Game and batting .287/.336/.478 with 21 home runs and a team-leading 82 RBI.
Kemp slumped a bit after the All-Star break, but he has really come on as of late in the midst of a very important stretch of games. In 15 games in the month of September, he is hitting .318/.333/.568 with three home runs and 13 RBI.
He will look to carry that momentum into a potential postseason run, which he has not been a part of since he last played for the Dodgers in 2014.
