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The Dodgers Have To Find Themselves On The Road To Save Their Season

By Keith Rivas

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The Dodgers have a 12-18 record on the road — they’re about to see what ten straight road games added to that tally looks like.

LA was able to barely escape their series against the San Francisco Giants and begin a 10-game road trip against the Chicago Cubs tonight at 8:05 ET.

Chicago is probably the best team to start this road trip off for the Dodgers, being that they are just as strong a team as LA, at least at this point in the season.

The Cubs are 37-30 right now and the Dodgers are 39-31, with the latter being in first place of their division but Chicago being in third place in their respective region.

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Why?

It’s the same division as the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals, two very consistent regular season teams.

Chicago is one game behind Pittsburgh for second place, but a whopping seven behind St. Louis for the top spot in the NL Central.

And if the Cubs have nearly the same tally as the NL West-leading Dodgers, that just goes to show how good the Cardinals really are right now.

Four of the Dodgers’ ten straight road games are in Chicago before the trip shifts to the city of Miami for three contests against the Marlins.

And then for the closing parts of the road trip the Dodgers will take their talents and swagger to Arizona to duke it out with the Diamondbacks.

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    • Miami (30-41) is second to last in the NL East, and thus far have broken even at home — winning and losing 17 games a piece, respectively.

    It’ll be another fairly even battle, but with Miami the Dodgers will need to be aware of any late-game heroics from the Marlins’ roster because if they’re not careful then their own weak bullpen will be exposed.

    And that’s never really a good thing.

    When the series does shift to Arizona, the Dodgers will have the most on the line.

    By then it’ll be games eight, nine, and ten of the road trip, but more importantly it will be three divisional games in a row.

    And if the Dodgers haven’t found a way to let the division lead tighten up even more by then, just one loss would put ten times more pressure on the Dodgers to keep up the great kick start to the season that they’ve had.

    If you didn’t know by now, it’s pretty obvious the Dodgers aren’t ready for the major pressure yet.

    They’re just not all there as a team.

    Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ most valuable pitcher and player, will need to be on his A-game against these weaker teams for LA to keep up their momentum moving forward.

    Kershaw is barely at .500, winning five of nine games given to his name this year. He also has an ERA of 3.29, his worst since his rookie season in 2008 (4.26).

    Bottom Line: The road trip could very well be what the Dodgers need to figure things out in the dugout

    If nothing else, the last thing that the Dodgers want to do is relinquish their lead to the hungrier-than-ever Giants, who are less than two games from taking the top spot.

    So what that means is any falters against the Cubs, Marlins, or D-backs could end up costing the boys in blue dearly.

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