The two hottest teams in baseball today are in the National League West, and somehow neither one of them is the Los Angeles Dodgers. The division race is suddenly tightening; the star-studded Dodgers, once favorites to cruise to another pennant, are now just 2.5 games up over the San Diego Padres and 3.5 up on the Arizona Diamondbacks. It's not exactly that the Dodgers are imploding—they're still in second place in the National League, only a couple games back of the Philadelphia Phillies—although they have not been playing great, stretching all the way back to before the break. Instead, the Padres have been kicking mondo ass, and the Diamondbacks have been kicking even mondoer ass, and as a result the competition over there is starting to become cool as hell.
The Padres came screaming out of the break, taking impressive road series off of the first-place Guardians and the first-place Orioles, sandwiched around a sweep of the lowly Nationals, who for however good James Wood might be are parachuting out of the wild-card hunt. The Padres, who wrapped up a sweep of the Pirates in Pittsburgh Thursday, have now won 14 of 17, and they do not play another very serious team (with apologies to fans of the Pirates, Marlins, and Rockies) until August 19, when they will kick off a homestand against the Twins and Cardinals. They snatched a two-game set off the Dodgers immediately after the trade deadline, giving them the season series with three games left to play.
Their last two wins over the Pirates weren't super convincing—both required late luck and some helpful implosion—except that they reinforce the sense that the Padres are loaded with winning mojo. Even when they seem primed for a loss, they wrangle a win. On Wednesday night they got a game-tying dinger in the ninth, and then clutch run-scoring at-bats in the 10th from Xander Bogaerts, Manny Machado, and Jackson Merrill. Thursday they again came from behind in the ninth, this time with the aid of some bad Pittsburgh pitching and another Oneil Cruz error, and then built a cushion via a clutch Luis Arráez double. It feels, coming out of this series, as if the universe would prefer for the Padres to continue winning games for a while.
Bogaerts is one of several Padres who were lousy to start this campaign but who lately have become Gods. He had 10 total extra-base hits at the end of May. By the end of April, Bogaerts had an OPS of .571; when he fractured his shoulder in late May, that number was still a super crud-like .581. Since his return to action on July 12, he's batting .410, with 32 hits in 19 games. It's sort of wild that the Padres were hanging around the wild-card picture while Bogaerts—one of their most important and richly compensated players—produced at the Pokey Reese level, but it is certainly not a coincidence that their current charge up the standings overlaps with Bogaerts and his groove becoming reacquainted. The top of their lineup is now as terrifying as it looks, with Arráez and Jurickson Profar slotted in ahead of Bogaerts, and Machado directly behind him. Machado's own recovery from a crummy start has been less sudden, but since June 19 he's produced a .945 OPS, with 20 extra-base hits in 39 games.
The Padres are cool as hell, steam is presently gushing from their ears and nostrils, and they are primed to become even cooler. In the places where general manager and certified transaction freak A.J. Preller declined to strengthen their lineup ahead of the deadline, good luck and injury recovery should do some of the trick. Their coolest and most talented position player, Fernando Tatís Jr., hasn't played since mid-June. The Padres are presently rolling out David Peralta and Bryce Johnson in right field, which brings their team coolness to a screeching temporary pause every couple of innings. But the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wednesday that the Padres do expect Tatís to return to the lineup in September, not quite at the end of his recovery from a stress reaction in his femur but at a point when he is capable of playing without pain or much risk of re-injury. Tatís, per the Union-Tribune, is playing catch, doing light running, and hitting in the cage, and moving all the while closer and closer to a return.
The Diamondbacks are in an even cooler position, despite the manifest super-uncoolness of their general deal as an organization. They dropped a game to the Phillies Thursday night, but this was just their third loss in their last 15 games, and they just wrapped up a sweep of the Guardians in Cleveland. They've benefited from an easier schedule, yes, but like the Padres certain of their extremely good players are only lately starting to exit the Bozo Zone. Reigning NL Rookie of the Year Corbin Carroll, who for the first half of the season played like he'd forgotten just about everything he ever knew about being good at baseball, is once again doing stuff. His OPS has now risen 200 points in two months. Carroll's percentile rankings, per Statcast, are still worryingly blue in the categories having to do with, you know, striking a ball with a bat, but the point is that he is no longer the glaring negative that he was coming out of springtime. He stroked a pinch-hit walk-off sockdolager in an unlikely come-from-behind win in Washington on July 29, he's got two triples and a dinger already in August, and since the start of June he's slugging .514.
Meanwhile, Ketel Marte has sort of quietly been one of the handful of best players in the NL all season long, and he, a suddenly monstrous Joc Pederson, and various other non-Carroll Diamondbacks have done enough to keep the team afloat despite a pitching staff that ranks ahead of only the putrid Rockies in the NL in Baseball Reference's Wins Above Average metric. They too got stuff done at the trade deadline, and in the nick of time: Christian Walker, who was having a fine season at first base, strained his oblique in a win on July 29; the next day, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen traded the dreaded cash considerations to the self-kerploding Miami Marlins for journeyman switch-hitter Josh Bell. Bell is probably no longer anyone's idea of a long-term solution at a premier position, but all he's done since taking over fill-in duties during Walker's IL stint is crank four dingers and a triple in seven games, including a murderous laser of a shot to right field Wednesday in a win over the Guardians, one of two he hit in the game.
The pitching situation should improve. The Diamondbacks strengthened their bullpen in hot stove trades, and they just got a very credible five-plus innings from starting pitcher Eduardo Rodríguez, who made his season debut Wednesday after a shoulder strain and subsequent setbacks derailed what was supposed to be a triumphant first of four years in Arizona. Yes, Jordan Montgomery has been horrendous (although he pitched respectably enough in the loss Thursday); no, this still is not a rotation that will strike fear into the hearts of opposing hitters. But the Diamondbacks have quietly scored more runs than any other team in baseball, and most of that came before their superstar outfielder remembered how to play the sport. This is not an outfit that will require the services of several aces in order to spend what is left of this regular season beating the hell out of opponents.
I don't know, man! I am looking at the Dodgers and considering their recent ho-humminess, and I am sizing up their worryingly unimpressive outfield and their heart-breakingly Brusdar Graterol-less bullpen, and I am feeling like possibly Jack Flaherty is not a panacea! I am feeling like Amed Rosario, Tommy Edman, and Kevin Kiermaier are just guys! I am feeling like Mookie Betts's return next week from a fractured hand had better pay instant dividends, or the Dodgers might find themselves looking up in the standings at not one but two division foes! The race out West, very often settled by this time of the year, might soon get very, very interesting.
