Even as his team entered perhaps its most crucial stretch of the season, Dave Roberts said he wouldn’t be managing the Dodgers any differently this week.
Given the way the club has been playing, he really didn’t need to.
With a 6-3 defeat of the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday night, the Dodgers continued their surge through August, taking a three-game series against a fellow World Series contender while moving four games clear of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West, matching their largest division lead in the last three weeks.
“Great homestand, really good baseball,” Roberts said after his team won seven of nine games at Dodger Stadium over the last week and a half. “I thought we showed well. I don’t think it was a litmus test or anything, but it’s still good to go out there and find ways to win baseball games.”
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This week figured to be a defining moment in the Dodgers’ up-and-down season.
Hosting the Orioles was the first big test. The next will come this weekend, when the Dodgers travel to Arizona for a critical four-game series against the second-place Diamondbacks.
If the Dodgers were feeling the pressure to turn up the urgency, however, it hasn’t been reflected in the way they’ve talked publicly.
“Obviously, everybody knows the situation,” catcher Austin Barnes said after returning to the lineup. “But we’re kind of an older team. We’ve been in these situations before … We just got to focus on winning baseball games.”
The same goes for how they’ve carefully managed their injury-plagued roster.
The club held first baseman Freddie Freeman out of the starting lineup for a third straight game, hoping a series-long break would help ease the discomfort he’s been feeling in his fractured right middle finger. Freeman is expected back in the lineup for Friday’s series opener in Arizona.
The Dodgers’ batting order didn’t look overly menacing. Slugging third baseman Max Muncy was on the bench against a left-handed starter. Another left-handed hitter, streaking second baseman Gavin Lux, was dropped to the No. 8 spot. Light-hitting Tommy Edman was the cleanup hitter for the first time in his career.
