The home schedule is complete. No more cheap Panda Express for anybody.
The 2025 Dodgers are locked into the postseason tournament. Whether they will be the NL West Division Champions or traveling somewhere is a question that will be resolved this week.
All the team has to do is take care of business over six games against opponents they should handle. …Why am I getting a sense of deja vu?
But Elizondo, you’re being unfair. The Dodgers handled the Giants over the past week and a half and effectively ended their season.
With a modicum of disrespect towards our northern cousins, the San Francisco Giants have been on Fraud Watch since Game 5 of the 2021 NL Division Series. I do not normally engage in schadenfreude, but the Giants’ lack of performance over the past week and a half did earn me a measure of silence from people who were starting to get a little chirpy about the state of things.
Did I gloat? Never. The continuing education of Gerald Posey III is an ongoing exercise for a later date. Yes, they won the finale on Sunday, which I was not paying attention. For an encore, the Giants laid an egg against the fellow-likely-Cancun-visitors St. Louis Cardinals in San Francisco, all but putting a bow on their season.
However, after nearly a century of trailing the Giants in the regular season matchup, the Dodgers pulled ahead of the Giants for the first time in 129 years by winning on Saturday.
With Sunday’s dismal effort, the 129-year rivalry is now tied again.
The best laid plans of mice and men
Eric Stephen put it succinctly: the Dodgers are likely to be the three-seed hosting either the Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets, or Arizona Diamondbacks in this year’s tournament. This essay is not concerned with who the Dodgers will play in October, as this essay is not a prediction.
All the Dodgers need to do to ensure their part of this scenario is win three games out of six on the road.
Here’s the problem with losing five in a row out of six to last-place teams literally two weeks ago: you lose all credibility that you will not find some comedic way to drive the four million attendees who went to see you at home in Dodger Stadium to drink by finding absurd ways to blow it.
The San Diego Padres clinched a playoff spot on Monday, besting the Milwaukee Brewers in extra innings. However, most of the rest of the playoff field teeters on a knife’s edge between making the postseason tournament and playing golf for the next few months.
In fact, the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers are each in the process of bungling what were seen to be likely playoff spots just weeks ago. For the first time since April, the Mets are on the outside looking in, and the Tigers, once the likely standard-bearer of the American League, look like they have forgotten how to play baseball.
The Dodgers are already in, but if they lay another road trip egg, and San Diego plays even marginally competent baseball, that final series in Seattle might actually matter, which no one could have predicted at the start of the year. We all had hope back in March when fans either woke up at 3 am or watched in hushed silence with 50,000 others in Tokyo.
There is no changing the past. But if the Dodgers are not careful, Sunday’s game could potentially be the last game played at Dodger Stadium in 2025.
The Dodgers and Padres have virtually identical records since August 1, so if you are wondering why the division race feels stagnant, there is your answer. If the magic number does not reach zero by the end of the week, the Dodgers will join the Tigers and Mets on the receiving end of baseball comedy.
Statistical comedy abounds
Teams are not the only ones engaging in statistical comedy, though.
For instance, Yoshinobu Yamamoto has the odd distinction of having the highest game score for a pitched game in 2025 that did not result in a victory for himself or his team. In the other top 19 performances by a pitcher in 2025, both the team and the pitcher won. In all of these performances combined, not counting Yamamoto’s, the combined opposition scored just three runs. The Dodgers allowed four runs that night.
Emmet Sheehan was spectacular on Sunday, joining a select group of Dodger pitchers who threw seven innings, struck out at least 10, with no walks, and gave up one hit or less:
Sunday’s game joins August 23, 2017, as the only other game on this list that the Dodgers managed to lose, which brings us to the crux of this essay: Blake Michael Treinen.
Apologies to children’s book author Judith Viorst
Not since a child lamenting lima beans and the existence of bad days in Australia has one had such a poor month of September, which is not even over yet.
Since the Dodgers blew up Yamamoto’s no-hitter outing on August 6, Treinen has done something never before seen, going back to 1912: be the losing pitcher of his club’s subsequent five consecutive losses. The Dodgers have been 9-5 since that fateful night, with Treinen taking the loss every single time.
At this point, Treinen’s lack of performance would be the stuff of comedy if it were not happening to a team we all care about.
During this stretch of games, earning his five losses to now have a record of 1-7 on the year, Treinen has thrown 5 1/3 IP with an ERA over 15 and 9 walks.
Treinen is also racking up a dubious list of non-achievements. He currently is third to last on the team in bWAR (-.6), ahead of only Matt Sauer (-.7) and Noah Davis (-.8). In comparison, embattled options Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates each have -.5 bWAR. As a reminder, a bWAR of 0 is a replacement-level player (think a low-cost reliever or minor leaguer).
As of this essay, Treinen’s ERA for the year is 5.55, which is almost double his career average of 2.86 ERA and three and a half runs higher than his career best of 1.93, set just last year.
As to what has been ailing Treinen, he has had the opposite problem of Tanner Scott, who throws too many meatball strikes: too many balls out of hand. Or put more comedically:
In case those were wondering if Treinen was going to be shelved any time soon, Manager Dave Roberts quickly put that thought to bed after Sunday’s loss.
Where the bullpen and Treinen were a source of strength in 2024, the corps has become an outright liability in the latter days of 2025 to the point that the Dodgers take a page from the 2019 Washington Nationals: delegate the starters to the relief core.
There were options to acquire at the trade deadline, which the Dodgers turned their respective noses up at. Like it or lump it, the Dodgers may tinker around the edges of the relief core with Roki Sasaki or Will Klein, but the Dodgers seem determined to try and make a deep playoff run with Scott, Yates, and Treinen.
First things first, the Dodgers have one final week to cement their postseason seed before formally defending their title.