Los Angeles Dodgers have all the championship pieces

The Los Angeles Dodgers have been nothing short of great this season, which is getting fans excited for another potential World Series run.

Nobody knew what to expect after the Los Angeles Dodgers lost their second World Series in as many years. While the talent was certainly there, would the team come back in another dreadful World Series hangover or would that loss fuel the team even more?

The latter ended up being the case as the Dodgers have been a team that is nothing but business thus far this season and has heads and shoulders been the best team in baseball this year.

The Dodgers are the first team to 60 wins this year and currently have the third-best record entering July 5 in MLB history. Not only that, but the team is practically unbeatable at home with a 37-9 (.804) record.

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To put that into perspective, only three teams in the history of the league prior have had a .800 winning percentage at home and the best all-time is the 1932 New York Yankees with a .805 winning percentage. There is still a lot of season left to play but the Dodgers are bordering on historical numbers.

And the fact of the matter is that the Los Angeles Dodgers have all the pieces that a championship team should have; all of the boxes are checked as the team looks like a more complete product than the team that has won back-to-back National League Pennants.

Offensively, the Dodgers have cured the problem that plagued them last season and ultimately haunted them in October: they are no longer over-reliant on the long ball.

This Dodger team is much better at manufacturing runs and has a .269 batting average with runners in scoring position, which is the ninth-best in the league. The team is also sixth in RBIs with runners in scoring position with 301.

They can certainly still slug the ball, though, as they rank fourth in the majors in home runs with 142.

Most importantly, the offense knows what it takes to get on base. The team has the best on-base percentage in the majors and is the only team with a walk-rate higher than 10 percent (10.1 percent).

Not only that, but the team is striking out much less as well. The Los Angeles Dodgers have the third-lowest strikeout rate, striking out 20.1 percent of the time. Defensively the Dodgers are well above league average and this is a team that is missing two crucial bats in Corey Seager and A.J. Pollock.

Once those two return, the lineup is going to be even more stacked and it is going to be hard to find enough spots for all of the players.

That isn’t even where the team is at its best either as the pitching staff has been absolutely crucial to the Dodgers’ success. The Dodgers have the second-lowest ERA all together and in the starting rotation, trailing just the Tampa Bay Rays.

The three-headed monster of Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Walker Buehler are going to be very tough to face in the postseason and if Rich Hill can return healthy then the Dodgers will have a terrifying four-man rotation come October.

Plus, the bullpen is starting to find its groove as well. Over the last 30 days, the Dodgers’ 3.14 bullpen ERA is the third in the majors. Joe Kelly is starting to find the swing of things and other guys are settling into their roles.

More hiccups are going to occur and the team won’t be perfect but it is nice to see that the bullpen is not as big of a worry as we once thought.

Mix that all in with the fact that this team is virtually unbeatable at home, has experience and is pissed off and the Los Angeles Dodgers look like the perfect World Series-winning team.

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We don’t want to jinx anything. There is still a long way to go before even considering winning the Pennant. However, just in terms of pieces, the Dodgers are locked and loaded, more so in 2019 than any of the last two years.

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