The Dodgers win again.
They followed up their sweep of the New York Mets by winning the final two games of their three-game series against the Colorado Rockies over the weekend.
Mookie Betts homered in their series finale against the Rockies, a 4-0 victory on Sunday at Dodger Stadium. Freddie Freeman also homered. Sophomore right-hander Gavin Stone further cemented his place in the rotation by throwing five scoreless innings.
The Dodgers are 38-23, the second-best record in the National League. They have a 6½ game lead over the second-place San Diego Padres.
Yet none of this was convincing.
None of this answered the long-standing questions about them.
Read more: Gavin Stone delivers more quality innings for Dodgers in series win over Rockies
None of this felt like compelling evidence as to why they wouldn’t crash and burn in the postseason like they have in each of the previous three years.
They have identified a postseason Game 1 starter in Tyler Glasnow, but who comes next?
One of the three pitchers facing the Rockies this weekend – Stone, Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Walker Buehler – will likely have to establish themselves as the No. 2 starter before October.
Stone, 25, is the most consistent but the least experienced.
Yamamoto is 5-1 with a 2.72 earned run average over his last seven starts, but pitched just once a week in Japan and manager Dave Roberts sounded as if the Dodgers were committed to keeping him on a similar schedule this season. Yamamoto still has less than five days of rest to start.
“Sitting here, I think our priority is to make sure Yoshi keeps his kind of extra rest, so I don’t see that changing, even in October,” Roberts said.
Buehler has made five starts since returning from his second reconstructive elbow surgery and the Dodgers remain uncertain about what they have in him. In his most recent start, Buehler struck out seven in six innings, but also gave up four runs (three earned) in a loss to the Rockies.
With James Paxton pitching quite well, and Clayton Kershaw and Bobby Miller expected to return from injuries, the Dodgers have pitching depth that should help them pile up wins in the regular season. But just because a pitcher can beat a talent-deficient team like the Mets or Rockies in a midweek game doesn’t mean he can win a game in October. Remember, Lance Lynn was a perfectly serviceable pitcher during the regular season last year. Lynn was crushed in the postseason.
The questions about pitching even reach Glasnow. How will the Dodgers prepare him to pitch on four days’ rest in the playoffs?
Glasnow has maintained a schedule similar to Yamamoto’s, as the Dodgers are mindful of the fact that the injury-prone right-hander has never thrown more than 120 innings in a season. Roberts said he envisioned Glasnow starting a traditional five-day cycle in August.
“It’s not an exact science,” Roberts said. “Tyler is still going to throw more than he’s ever thrown in a long time.”
Equally, if not more, troublesome is the bottom of the lineup, which has left the Dodgers overly reliant on the Big Four of Betts, Freeman, Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith.
The combined batting averages of the Dodgers’ No. 6, 7, 8 and 9 hitters were a combined .204 entering the series finale against the Rockies, who were ranked fourth in baseball.
Chris Taylor is hitting .108, Kike Hernandez .198 and Gavin Lux .209.
Max Muncy’s oblique injury has compounded this problem, as his move from center to the injured list has shortened the lineup. It’s no coincidence that the team went on a five-game losing streak shortly after Muncy’s injury.
The Dodgers will have to address this issue between now and the trade deadline.
If this all seems overly critical of a first-place team, that’s because of the prism through which this team is viewed.
In what is a testament to their ownership group, the Dodgers have made the regular season unimportant. They’ve reached the playoffs in 11 straight seasons and won their division 10 times in that span, making baseball feel like a given in October.
Read more: Analysis: ‘We need them.’ Why it’s crucial for Dodgers to find ‘spark’ in the bottom half of the lineup
Maybe this isn’t fair to them.
Perhaps observers shouldn’t let the specter of the playoffs diminish their appreciation for regular-season developments, such as Stone’s emergence or catcher Smith’s improvement, throwing out potential base stealers.
But this is the Dodgers’ reality.
The Dodgers hold a different standard than every other baseball team, with the New York Yankees being the only possible exception. For the Dodgers, success is measured in championships, and everything they do (or don’t do) is judged on how it can impact them in the postseason.
And at this stage, questions remain.
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
