Dodgers Team News

Dodgers Still on Top in MLB Power Rankings, Because of Course

Over at The Athletic, they’ve put out their weekly power rankings and once again the Dodgers are at the top of the heap. Winning 106 games with over a week left in the season will do that, I guess.

The rankings are voted on by all the MLB writers at The Athletic, but the blurbs for the National League teams are written by noted Giants fan Grant Brisbee. (Grant actually has a lot of good qualities, too, so don’t hold it against him too much. You can’t help where you’re born.)



So the blurb about the Dodgers being the best team in baseball is filled with a little more snark than you might expect:

The Dodgers lost 11-0 in a game where they allowed a rare, milestone homer. Are they cooked? Probably. What kind of team loses 11-0?

Except, maybe, just maybe, that was an anomaly. Maybe the Dodgers are still good. Maybe they’re still on pace to win 300 games this season and scare the bejeepers out of everyone else in the postseason, as they should. Even when they figure out that their closer probably shouldn’t be their closer, they realize it in time to make adjustments.

But until they actually mow through the postseason, they’ll have some doubt about their championship aspirations, and that’s all you can latch onto right now. They lost a game by a huge margin, and the player on the other team took curtain calls on their home field. Boy, what is going on down in Dodger Land???

Everyone point and laugh! Mostly because I’m tired of writing “The Dodgers are the best team in baseball, and this will never change” capsules. Gets repetitive.

The best part is, Grant also had to write the blurb for the Giants, who are hanging out down at number 16, which ended with this super-optimistic paragraph:

They entered the season thinking, “Maybe LaMonte Wade Jr. can keep getting MVP votes,” and they’ll leave it thinking, “Uh, maybe there’s a position player on the active roster who can be above-average next season.” So it goes for a team that was at the top of these power rankings this time last year. So it goes.

So it goes, indeed. What a difference a year makes. One year ago, the Dodgers were trying to chase down the Giants in the NL West, a quest that ultimately failed, forcing them to beat the Cardinals in the NL Wild Card Game before heading up north and beating the Giants in the NLDS. A year ago, the Dodgers were about a week away from losing Max Muncy and Clayton Kershaw to injury in the final weekend of the season, injuries that would eventually play a big part in their inability to get past the Braves in the NLCS.

This year, the Dodgers aren’t playing for anything. They could clinch World Series home-field advantage as early as Wednesday, giving them a full week of games that are entirely and literally meaningless, as opposed to the past month that has just been essentially meaningless.

It makes Grant Brisbee sad, but I gotta admit, I’m pretty happy about where things are right now.

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Jeff Snider

Jeff was born into a Dodgers family in Southern California and is now raising a Dodgers family of his own in Utah. During his previous career as an executive at a technology company, he began writing about baseball in his spare time. After leaving corporate America in 2014, he started doing it professionally. Jeff wrote and edited for Baseball Essential for years before joining Dodgers Nation. He's also the co-host of the Locked On Dodgers podcast, a daily podcast that brings the smart fan's perspective on our Boys in Blue. Jeff has a degree in English from Brigham Young University. Favorite Player: Clayton Kershaw Favorite Moment: Kirk Gibson's homer will always have a place, but Kershaw's homer on Opening Day 2013 might be the winner.

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