Dodgers badly need to win series finale against Pirates

Kyle Madson

Dodgers badly need to win series finale against Pirates image

We're far from "must-win" territory in the baseball season. That's true for all 30 teams, but it's even further away for clubs like the Dodgers that sit with a 7.0 game lead in their division and the second-best record in the National League. However, Thursday's series finale against the Pirates in Pittsburgh is one the Dodgers need to get before visiting the Yankees for a huge series in New York. 

Since the middle of May the Dodgers have been in a weird place where they can't quite get their offense going, and instead of really pulling away in the NL West and keeping up with the Phillies in the NL they've just been treading water. 

It's not that it's time to hit the panic button. It's just that it wouldn't be ideal coming off a sweep going into a series against the best team in baseball. 

LA has gotten some really good pitching lately, and when their offense finally showed up Wednesday their pitching faltered in a 10-6 loss.

Thursday is a prime opportunity to get a little bit of momentum going into New York where a series win could kickstart the Dodgers' climb back toward the top of the NL standings. 

It may be that LA's lineup just isn't good enough right now and that series in New York will be rough no matter what they do against Pittsburgh on Thursday. There was enough success through the first quarter of the season though to believe there's a level of sustainability to that though. They were averaging over 5.0 runs per game, which would be plenty to start stacking wins given how good their pitching staff has been lately.

There's no empirical data here that says one win over Pittsburgh would mean they go into New York and go blow-for-blow with a red hot Yankees club. It would give some optimism though that this weekend's series could be more of a World Series preview than just LA trying to get itself back on track against a team that's steamrolling everything in its path. 

Kyle Madson

Kyle Madson Photo

Kyle Madson neither likes writing about himself nor writing in the third person. Nevertheless, he persists. While Kyle has spent most of his writing career covering the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and San Francisco 49ers, he’s never lost the love of baseball that has resided in the deepest recesses of his soul since he began playing T-ball at 4 years old (no matter how hard John Fisher has tried). Aside from writing, Kyle also hosts a radio show, the Insiders, with James Ham on ESPN 1320 in Sacramento. When he’s not being a sports dork, Kyle loves being a normal dork and traveling, visiting museums, diving further into K-Pop fandom (#SKZ) and hanging out with his wife and cats. Don’t follow him on Twitter or Instagram at @KyleAMadson.