Dodgers' Turner: 'Right now, we're the worst team in baseball'

Justin Turner is not mincing any words.

Turner's Los Angeles Dodgers continued their epic September slide on Sunday, losing their 10th game in a row and 15th in their last 16 contests by an 8-1 score against the visiting Colorado Rockies. After holding a 21-game lead in the NL West on Aug. 25, the Dodgers now sit just nine games up on Arizona.

At 92-51, the Dodgers are still baseball's best team record-wise by a large margin. But as Turner noted after Sunday's defeat, that fact is of no comfort to the reeling squad right now as they search for a way to stop their slide.

"Just sitting back and saying, 'We're still the best team in baseball' isn't the answer," Turner told Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times. "Because regardless of what the record says, right now we're the worst team in baseball.

"What we did three months ago doesn't mean a whole lot right now. No one in this league is going to feel sorry for us. No one in this league is going to show up and be like, 'Oh, poor Dodgers.'"

Los Angeles' best chance to right this ship is probably going to come during this next two-week stretch, as they play seven of the next 10 contests against the lowly Giants and Phillies. Only a three-game series at Nationals Park against the NL East champions from Washington represents a significant hurdle.

But those sub-.500 teams could also represent trap games for a reeling Dodgers club - especially in the case of the Giants, who would likely love nothing more than to derail their longtime bitter rivals even more as they close out their own lost season.

"There are a bunch of sharks in the water," Turner said. "We're bleeding a little bit right now. I think teams are smelling blood."