Another weekend has come and gone, and the Dodgers find themselves sitting atop the NL West at 55-36, in SPITE of losing 2/3 to the Arizona Diamondbacks mid week 🤦‍♂️

(A quick aside: I am very very serious when I say that I do not want to play the Diamondbacks in the playoffs. I’ll admit. I’m afraid of them. What are you supposed to do when they have a player in Christian Walker that treats Dodgers Stadium as his personal Home Run Derby stadium? Comparisons to prime Barry Bonds may be over the top, but tell me the last time a player was able to walk into a road team’s stadium and hit a home run…every. single game. It hasn’t been done before.)

In spite of the disappointment, we were able to win a weekend series against the Brewers, and set us up for a big mid-week series against the Philadelphia Phillies to fight for NL supremacy. The Phillies are a great team with a great pitching staff, with non better than their ace Zack Wheeler (9-4) on the mound on Tuesday against Bobby Miller (1-1), so will be a tough task for the Dodgers to score some runs.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This past weekend, we saw some really good things out of the Dodgers, as well as some continuing themes of concern that we need to fix, ASAP (Rocky).

1. Will Smith on FIRE

Whew, was that 3HR game into a HR at his first at bat of Saturday’s game needed from Will Smith. June was a rough month for Smith as he went 15-74 (.203) and looking really bad in the process. There were many games where he just did not come through as we needed him to, and was tough to watch. But it looks like he has turned it around in July punctuating it with 4 HRs against the Brewers. By the end of Sunday, Smith is now hitting 6-20 (.300) for July and looks like he is really finding his groove, already at 5 RBIs on the month and slugging .950. We are going to need his bat as the bottom of our order continues to struggle with consistency.

2. Pitching Issues

I’m not entirely sure where to start off with this one. Reaching back a little further than just the weekend, we had Gavin Stone, Landon Knack, and then Tyler Glasnow all get lit up. I think with Glasnow it is a big test case to see if he can truly be that ace that carries us through the season. His history in Tampa Bay was always ‘immensely talented, can’t stay healthy’, and through his first 15 starts or so, it looked like he was showing that he could finally be healthy.

In back-to-back outings, he has given up 5ERs with Friday’s back breaker being that grand slam to Hoskins in the 4th inning. Now it might be a hyperbole to say a back breaker since the Dodgers ended up winning that game and his previous outing against San Francisco where he only lasted 3 innings, but the concern still stands. That being said, take away the game against San Francisco and his strikeout numbers remain high, so I have hope that he’ll fix whatever issues he’s been having and get it back. But all the pitching struggles have made me really miss Yamamoto even more 😩

But more than the starting pitchers, the Dodgers bullpen has looked VERY human here in July after looking dominant in June. If there are no more Ryan Yarbrough haters in the world, I will have passed away. My non-researched take is that every time he comes on the mound, he gives up at least 1 run. It feels like clockwork and we need to get it fixed. No Dodger fan can tell me that when they see Yohan Ramirez come out the mound, they feel a TON of confidence… Even Blake Treinen has been struggling with walks over the last few weeks. So here’s to hoping that the Dodgers make some moves at the deadline to bolster that bullpen AND the starting rotation if possible.

3. What moves are coming?

Cavan Biggio. Gavin Lux. Chris Taylor. These are all names that I could see being gone from the Dodgers after the deadline passes. I think Biggio is almost a guarantee…I would be SHOCKED if he was still on the roster after the deadline, but the other two I think will be difficult because of financial and emotional equity invested into them. But it is highly necessary that we make moves with the postseason in mind as the bottom of that order has not produced with any amount of consistency. The 6-9 hitters went 7-43 (.162) in the weekend series against the Brewers, which we probably would have lost if Will Smith did not go crazy with HRs. I believe the Dodgers have a team that can win the World Series, and think we need to do everything we can to go all in for that.