Dodgers and Braves in the danger zone: NL powers slump themselves into playoff race
Perhaps it’s just a false alarm, and order will soon be restored. Maybe we’ll feel sheepish for trying to derive interest from a playoff slog for now devoid of drama.
Yet it doesn’t seem too soon to sound the alarm, to go full fatalist, to ponder a National League postseason field without a pair of stalwarts.
In short: Will the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers miss the playoffs?
It’d certainly look weird. The Dodgers have qualified for the playoffs 11 consecutive years, 10 of those as winners of the NL West. The Braves are six-time defending NL East champions and tangled with the Dodgers in the 2013 and 2018 NL Division Series, and the 2020 and ’21 NL Championship Series.
For almost the entirety of 2024, those patterns were presumed to continue. With Shohei Ohtani freshly signed and the pitching staff fortified, the Dodgers were virtually gifted the West before the year started. And while the Philadelphia Phillies jumped the field and ran off to a big lead in the NL East, Atlanta was entrenched in second place and firmly in control of the top wild card spot.
Meanwhile, a great, gray mass of playoff hopefuls assembled beneath them, an octet of .500-ish teams with playoff hopes but no threat to upset the hierarchy.
Well, things have changed in the last month.
The Braves are now out of playoff position, sitting in fourth place in the wild card standings entering Friday. The Dodgers are safer but their division lead has been slashed to 2 ½ games. And should the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks pass them by, L.A. would suddenly be at the mercy of The Field – and the danger of a team or two getting hot and boxing them out.
How did it get to this point? Let’s examine the endangered champions and disruptive upstarts:
Braves: Everybody hurts
In reality, the Braves have not played well since late April, when an 18-6 start gave way to a 42-54 struggle. The club lost ace Spencer Strider immediately, was dogged by underperformance and then hit with a rash of key injuries.
Ronald Acuña Jr. tore another ACL. Ozzie Albies broke his wrist and All-Star pitchers Max Fried and Reynaldo Lopez had forearm issues. The outfield was further dented by Michael Harris II’s hamstring injury.
With a grim trade market in the offing (thanks to that big mass of playoff hopefuls), GM Alex Anthopoulos was unable to match his 2021 deadline magic that netted a World Series title. Instead, an inconsistent club will start a 10-game road trip with a five-game losing streak in tow, the last a 16-7 beatdown from Milwaukee on Thursday.
While Lopez and Harris could be back soon, Fried could not get out of the fourth inning of his first start off the IL. Charlie Morton, the 40-year-old reliable, was shelled for eight runs on Thursday.
And an offense that ranked either first, second or third in runs and OPS the previous two years is ill-equipped to bail them out. Acuña is out for the year. All-Star cornermen Matt Olson (163 adjusted OPS in 2023) and Austin Riley (129) have seen those numbers dwindle to 99 and 119, respectively.
Never underestimate a champion, and all that. Yet right now, the Braves are simply a 60-54 team, out of the playoff picture thanks to the Phillies and Padres and Diamondbacks and, of all teams, the New York Mets.
That early-season equity is drained, as is any notion the Braves might flip a switch. Now, they’re just a flawed team trying to survive in a shark tank full of them.
Dodgers: An evaporating advantage
It certainly looked like the Dodgers assembled a sufficiently deep and largely dominant pitching staff to pair with their biggest off-season prize, Ohtani. Now, it looks like a little too much wishcasting.
That Tyler Glasnow would soar past his career high in innings and maintain his dominance (He certainly has). That Clayton Kershaw might be fixed with major shoulder surgery. That Walker Buehler’s extra-long recovery from Tommy John surgery would yield better results. And that Yoshinobu Yamamoto would justify the $325 million investment and transition seamlessly to the major leagues.
Most of that’s gone awry to some extent. After three starts, Kershaw is trying to get by with a 90-mph fastball and a .309 batting average against. Buehler, on the IL with a hip injury, has made eight starts with a 5.84 ERA. And while Yamamoto has dazzled, with a 2.92 ERA in 14 starts, he’s only now ramping up from a triceps injury with hopes of a September return.
While the River Ryans and Landon Knacks have filled in admirably at times, the downstream pressure on the bullpen was obvious. The Jack Flaherty acquisition will help that. Mookie Betts will return soon from a broken hand. Ohtani has performed like an MVP.
And the world is rooting for Freddie Freeman’s return to be permanent.
Yet the Dodgers are just 14-16 since July 1, their lead shrinking from 8 ½ to 2 ½ games. Yes, they should play better and the returning stars will help. But for now, they're just a half-game ahead of the Brewers for the No. 2 division leader spot, making the indignity of a wild card series very much a possibility.
And beyond that, they’re suddenly vulnerable should a team or two get hot and stay that way.
Anybody fit that description?
Padres, D-backs: Finding their grooves
L.A. nearly sneaked away with an 11th West title in 12 years with little resistance. But then the Padres had to trade for Dylan Cease, pair him with Michael King, add Luis Arráez and become a problem.
The trade deadline yielded another horror show for rivals, with relievers Tanner Scott and Jason Adam giving San Diego a legit power quartet at the end of games. Arráez tops a lineup that’s six deep in punishment, bookended by Jackson Merrill, who may box out Paul Skenes as NL Rookie of the Year.
The result: A 14-3 tear since the All-Star break, including a sweep of wild-card rival Pittsburgh, and a 64-52 record that gives them possession of the No. 1 wild card spot through Thursday.
But just as San Diegans chafe at the notion of “Zonies” invading their beaches each summer, these Padres have unwanted company rolling in from the desert.
The Diamondbacks shook off a relatively mild World Series hangover that imperiled hopes of defending their NL pennant but did not crush them. Most notably, Corbin Carroll got over what seemed like a sophomore slump that buried him with a .199 batting average and .582 OPS in his first 63 games.
In the 48 games since, he’s produced an .816 OPS and 22 extra-base hits. And the D-backs have won 24 of 33, pushing their record to 63-52.
Their biggest shortfall, a closer-less bullpen, got shored up with the acquisitions of AJ Puk and Dylan Floro at the deadline. And yes, there was an injury add that was “almost as good as a trade,” with Eduardo Rodriguez winning his debut Wednesday after missing the four-plus months with a shoulder injury. Merrill Kelly (shoulder) isn’t far behind.
And as if the Braves didn’t have enough reason to stay up late watching West Coast games, or the Dodgers to scoreboard-watch, the San Francisco Giants are suddenly above .500 for the first time since May 29 and, with Blake Snell and Robbie Ray healthy, boasting an imposing rotation deeper than most rivals.
They’re now within shouting distance – eight games – of the Dodgers and just three games out of a wild card berth.
Come Monday, they can greatly enhance those chances when they welcome Atlanta for a four-game series. As if the Braves and Dodgers needed something else to worry about.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB standings see Dodgers, Braves in danger as playoff race heats up
