The Dodgers aren't as historically great as we thought
For the first five months of the season, the Dodgers treated MLB fans to a captivating narrative. Unfortunately, baseball's arduous 162-game journey lasts six months.
In the last week of August, the Dodgers boasted an incredible 21-game lead in their division. Since then, that lead has diminished to just 10 games thanks to a 1-12 stretch.
Ten games is a big lead for the middle of September. However, we need to face the reality that this isn't the historic team we believed we were seeing less than a month ago.
There are bound to be some struggles during a 162-game season, but the 2001 Seattle Mariners and 1998 New York Yankees - two teams the Dodgers were being compared to just three weeks ago - never endured anything like this.
In 2001, the Mariners, who won a still-baffling 116 games, endured a four-game losing streak. And they only did that once. In fact, that was the only time that roster even found itself mired in a three-game slump. The Dodgers, meanwhile, have had two five-game losing streaks Since Aug. 26.
If the Dodgers swept all of their remaining games, they'd finish with a 114-48 record. In other words, a 22-game winning streak still wouldn't make up the ground lost on the 2001 Mariners.
Instead, then, let's look at that 1998 Yankees squad, which won 114 games.
Like that historic Mariners team, the worst losing streak the Yankees weathered was four games. That's the length of some series. The Yankees did that just once that year, and it didn't even technically last four days because they won the second game of the doubleheader on the final day of the skid.
The Dodgers' slump hasn't seen many close games, either. During the 13-game meltdown, they were outscored 28-74.
By win-loss record, the worst 13-game stretch the Mariners had was a 6-7 period in which the team actually outscored their opponents 75-72. By run differential, they were actually unlucky to undergo such a "rough" stretch.
On the other hand, the Dodgers battling in the same division as the Arizona Diamondbacks has to count for something. In the midst of a 13-game win streak, there's a case to be made that the Diamondbacks are the league's second-best team.
A lot of that argument may depend on how many wins you deduct from the Washington Nationals for getting to beat up on such an inferior division. However, none of that actually matters.
The 2001 Mariners have the Dodgers beat in difficulty of competition. The second-best team in all of baseball - and the only other team to reach triple-digit victories - was the Oakland Athletics. No team in the American League West even lost 90 games that year, and a pair of them won more than 100 each.
Even the 1998 Yankees had to contend with the 92-win Boston Red Sox, who finished second in the American League.
No matter which way you look at it, the 2017 Dodgers clearly stand a tier below the most recent historically great seasons of the past half-century. Yes, they'll likely still cruise to a division title. And, if the Diamondbacks pull off the monumental comeback, L.A. will surely take a wild-card spot.
Thanks to the likelihood that the team still coasts to a postseason berth, there's cause to believe the clubhouse rhetoric that they aren't panicking.
While the Dodgers clearly aren't in the same class as the 2001 Mariners and 1998 Yankees, there's at least some solace heading into October. They still might finish as a better postseason team than that Mariners club, which failed to advance to the World Series.