If there was any doubt about the mindset of the people in charge, let there be no more. The Dodgers aren’t going for broke. But they are doing everything they can to help keep this great thing going. 

With only 44 games to play in the regular season, the Dodgers, who are on-pace for a historic number of wins, improved their outfield depth, acquiring Curtis Granderson. 

Dodger fans, @cgrand3 has a message for you. #LetsGoDodgers pic.twitter.com/Td87uPqoqN

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 19, 2017

Fangraphs still has the Dodgers’ World Series odds at 19 percent. That’s better than any other team, but still only a little better than a literal roll of a dice. Which is why a move like this, for an already-dominant team, is seen as necessary. Even for a team 52 games over .500 in August, Andrew Friedman and co. still thought they needed to make some marginal improvements. 

Granderson is known as a great clubhouse presence and a great guy in baseball circles. He’s been a Roberto Clemente Award winner and is in the lineup for the Dodgers today (Saturday). 

For Dodgers fans — if you didn’t know I am one — this is more confirmation that the Friedman/Zaidi front office is smarter than everyone. Nobody had Granderson on their radar. Nobody I saw was even talking about the need for another outfielder. People were “worried” about Joc Pederson, but nobody had any ideas on what to do about it. 

But the Dodgers did. And they acted. It was swift, decisive, and measured. As has been the case basically since Friedman and Zaidi have been in place, the Dodgers’ front office is the best in baseball. They proved why again on Friday. 

In case you were wondering, the National League West is the best division in baseball. I know it’s only the beginning of June, but the division the Dodgers have won for so many years in a row has a few surprise teams. 

The NL West is historically good right now. It's the 3rd time in divisional era ('69) 3 teams from 1 division enter June 10 gms above .500.

— Joe Davis (@Joe_Davis) May 31, 2017

As of the writing of this article, three teams in the National League have 33 wins. They’re all in the NL West. The Houston Astros are the only other team in baseball with more wins than any of the top-three NL West teams.

Kiké Hernandez has been swinging a hot bat for the Dodgers during their current streak. By Owen Main

The Rockies and Diamondbacks both had great starts, but the Dodgers have come-on recently, winning 10 of 12 games before losing to the Cardinals on Wednesday night. 

The adage about a rising tide buoying all ships really applies here. We all know the Giants won a bunch of World Series titles recently and the Dodgers have asserted their past, present and future dominance of the division. 

But the Rockies and Diamondbacks have both recently refocused their organizational efforts and it seems to be paying-off through about a third of the 2017 season. 

I guess it’s possible that all three teams keep up their torrid paces throughout the season. They certainly have a head-start. For now, the division that people have scoffed at over recent years looks deep. Colorado and Arizona fans should enjoy it while it lasts. 

I’m not here to be a Yasiel Puig hot take machine. The baseball season is 4 games old. And all four of those games have been against the Padres. I want to have some context.

Expectations were not super high for Yasiel this season. I got him in the final round of my fantasy baseball draft and there was talk of platooning him with lefties in the Dodgers outfield.

But he’s been good in the first four games to the tune of three home runs, including two today off Jared Weaver. He’s talked more about elevating the baseball, and it’s paying off. At least so far. 

Yasiel Puig has been excellent in the early-season for the 3-1 Dodgers. By Owen Main

With Andre Ethier out, the Dodgers could really use a Puig hot streak. Dodger fans have never really seen Puig go on an extended run of playing excellent. Puig has never hit more than the 19 homers (in 109 games) he hit in his first season. Injuries, mentality, and ability to get along with teammates have all be factors. 

But maybe Puig can have some kind of break-out year. His age (26) suggests he might just be entering his prime. His approach on lifting the ball suggests he might be starting to really listening to what the organization is telling him. And his results, so far, have been good. 

However you feel about Yasiel, you can’t argue with the dominant start. If this is a guy at the middle/bottom of the Dodgers’ order providing something like 30 homers this year, then Dave Roberts’ lineup starts to look and feel quite a bit more dangerous. Let’s see how the long months of summer shake out. 

Are you optimistic about Puig yet?

Upon first hearing about the done deal between the Dodgers and Rays today, I was a little underwhelmed. Logan Forsythe, my limited knowledge told me, is a good player who isn’t a star, but is probably an above average second baseman — something the Dodgers didn’t have most of last season.

@DustinNosler @JaredJMassey really though nothing not to like about this totally reasonable if slightly underwhelming trade right?

— Owen (@owenmain) January 24, 2017

Some of Dodger twitter had similar reactions.

Logan Forsythe: Better than what the Dodgers had before. By Keith Allison on Flickr, via Wikimedia Commons

Can I just stop for a minute and say thank you to Dodger Twitter. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll restate my love for Dodger Twitter in this way — if there wasn’t such a good Dodger fan/commentator community (and larger sports fan global community) on Twitter, I would say that the medium is complete garbage.

Instead, there are fans that do exist and, while many of them have been understandably less baseball-centric over the past few months, it’s so awesome to think that in a matter of weeks, we’ll have baseball things to read about again. Hooray baseball!

OK, my love of Dodger Twitter aside, here are a few good/relevant tweets on the trade today:

Dozier 15-16: .818 OPS / 117 wRC+
Forsythe 15-16: .791 OPS / 119 wRC+

OPS counts OBP/SLG equally. wRC+ values OBP higher. (+is park adj)

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) January 24, 2017

Mike Petriello is the man. Seriously, the former MSTI blogger turned MLB advanced stats gatekeeper always has the most well-informed and logical takes about the team and stays pretty positive too.

This is a pretty rosy view of the difference between the two players. The Dodgers definitely took their single biggest lineup weakness and made it a relative strength today. Some fans won’t be happy, but those people probably aren’t happy with anything. This move made sense already to me and Petriello’s tweet made me happier about it.

Surprised by how attached fans are to JDL

— Mister Doctor (@EephusBlue) January 24, 2017

Me too, though I understand it given how high on prospects positive fans have had to be in order to justify not trading for or signing certain stars in recent years. I’ve talked about 2018 as a target year for a while, but you’ve got to build up to it and the front office is starting to move that direction now. Sorry prospect huggers, the Dodgers are starting to slowly, deliberately, cash in their chips in ways that make sense for winning sooner and sooner.

Dodgers hoard prospects: "Oh god, why won't they build to win now"
Dodgers trade prospects: "Oh god, Delino for Pedro round two"

— Daniel Brim (@DanielBrim) January 24, 2017

Like I said, you’re kind of damned either way, but this move made total sense.

Jose DeLeon is really well-regarded among scouts and prospect watchers. Internally, Dodgers think Urias, Alvarez and Buehler are better.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) January 24, 2017

So why wouldn’t you do the deal?

Glad the Dodgers found their second baseman but I'm really gonna miss JDL. Hope he has a long and successful career.

— Jared Massey (@JaredJMassey) January 24, 2017

And I’ll end by echoing Jared’s thoughts. Good job Dodgers. Good job Dodger Twitter. Thanks allowing me to open up Twitter and not have to think about… other things… .

Owen is pretty stressed before the Dodgers play the Nationals and he also has something to say about the sliding, the rule, and how he’s basically taking an opposite stance to Dave Cameron’s thinking about changing the slide rule. 

This is important.

Fantasy sports is a thing that has been prevalent in the Dodgers clubhouse over recent years. Stories of Zack Grienke  The sign in the clubhouse says no gambling, but it seems to be a bonding experience for the team, and I’m sure it’s all in good fun — nothing wagered and so nothing gained or lost. Except maybe, one’s pride.

I saw some tweets with the “Big Board,” and I have to say, I’m a fan of some of the team names. I like the idea that some teams are co-managed and that dudes will be trash talking throughout the season. Stuff like this is, generally, good for team chemistry.

@mattmoneysmith Farhan Zaidi took David Johnson in the Dodger fantasy draft. #smartestmanintheroom pic.twitter.com/IOV7R0pTAx

— #JoeYourFriend (@awkwardsport) August 29, 2016

I was looking at all the players who were participating and I saw a name out of place. Farhan Zaidi. The General Manager. The guy whose job it is to measure how good players, albeit from a different sport, are on paper, and make roster moves. Farhan Zaidi is one of VERY few people whose actual job it is to manage a REAL sports team. And they let him play fantasy sports against them. The team with one of the best defenses in the majors let an easy grounder go through their legs on this one.

Team Gonzo/ Kendrick
Who do you like the best?
King is Joc pic.twitter.com/k5WbUU9cgN

— Adrián González (@Adrian_ElTitan) August 29, 2016

I’m not sure how much authority I have here, but I know it’s not zero.

So in a competition between the guy whose job it is to pick athletes to put up good numbers vs. the athletes themselves, I’ll take Zaidi against the field. If he finished outside the top three, it will be a monumental upset, and I haven’t even looked at who he drafted.

I know players on the Dodgers are competitive, but if Zaidi put any thought into his fantasy football team, the rest of the clubhouse should look out. Farhan’s a gamer too.

The question: How long can the Dodgers go with underperforming hitters dotting their lineup and guys hitting under .240 in the three-hole?

The answer: until right about now.

This weekend, the Dodgers made two personnel moves and a few lineup shifts that completed the chapter on a few players and pointed toward rewarding early-season success and moving on from players who no longer could contribute — even in providing depth.

Alex Guerrero got straight DFA’d. The Dodgers swallowed almost $50 million over the past week, and it was totally the right choice. By Owen Main

Last week, the team announced it was designating Alex Guerrero for assignment. Guerrero, whose bat showed some promise at the beginning of 2015, could never find a defensive position. Guerrero’s contract guaranteed him $28 million, of which probably less than half is still owed. At this point, the team essentially would rather have him out of their organization than to try to help him continue to improve. In 16 games in the minors this season, the 29 year-old hit just .136 with a single home run, 14 strikeouts and two walks in 68 plate appearances spread between three levels.

The remaining financial commitment to Carl Crawford, who they designated today for assignment, is more substantial. A 14 year veteran, Crawford is still owed about $35 million. But this season has been tough for the 35 year-old. He his just .185 in 30 games and his OPS+ stands at 30. To contextualize that, a 100 is average and anything below 75 is considered poor. Again, Crawford’s was 30 this season with the Dodgers. It’s hard to say a guy who is almost exactly my age is over the hill, but it was time for CC to move on.

On the same day the team made the Crawford move, Trayce Thompson batted third and played right field. I don’t believe Thompson is likely to be a long-term option at that lineup spot, but finally — FINALLY — the Dodgers didn’t have somebody hitting under .225 in that role. Finally, Dave Roberts and co. seem to be placing some import on what players have done so far this year. After all, we are about a third of the way through the 2016 season.

Guys who were struggling also had a nice weekend feasting on Braves pitching. Yasmani Grandal hit a home run, Howie Kendrick’s bat looks good, and Justin Turner had a few hits on Saturday night before he got a day off on Sunday — a proven recipe to keep him on-track. Scott Van Slyke is off the DL, and there’s hope that Yasiel Puig can find some semblance of his stroke while on the 15 day disabled list. Cal Poly grad Casey Fien has done a fine job in Dodger blue so far. Maybe he can be a long-term solution in middle relief.

As if that weren’t enough, Brett Anderson is well into his rehab… .

Day 2: Throwing went well again and my ability to perspire a lot hasn't subsided any.

— Brett Anderson (@BrettAnderson35) June 4, 2016

Stay sweaty, Brett.

Any way you look at it, this season is starting to look up. It’s nice to have enough depth to replace an outfielder you hoped could help. It’s nice to be able to swallow almost $50 million for two guys who aren’t helping you. Letting things play out with Crawford and Guerrero won’t hurt the Dodgers’ chances this season. They’re 3 1/2  or 4 games behind the Giants with over 100 games to play. Sounds doable.

It seems like theres a trend in baseball to put-down emotion. In a long season, players who have to grind it out. They can’t tie all their emotional energy to one at-bat. One bad inning. One bad game. Recently, the hip thing for fans to do is to try to match that level of coolness after each game. And it’s becoming a little too much for me.

On Tuesday evening, author Molly Knight, who has appeared on the Fansmanship Podcast, tweeted what she later said “was a poor attempt at an overreaction to one baseball game joke.”

And people lost their friggin minds. The Dodger twitterverse, which I usually really enjoy, was kind of set ablaze by the tweet. Everyone from Brett Anderson to random fans seemed like they had something to say for the author of The Best Team Money can Buy. 

Knight deleted the tweet and tweeted a response.

Good grief. A poor attempt at an overreaction to one baseball game joke has got people hoppin' mad. Never tweet.

— Molly Knight (@molly_knight) April 20, 2016

But for some people it was too late.

Also, if you tweet me to say you are blocking me, but I don't know who you are/have never followed you.. Uh. Godspeed.

— Molly Knight (@molly_knight) April 20, 2016

The theoretically funny thing Knight was joking about is that we are 14 games into a 162 game season.

.@BiblicalDaddy I made joke about tonight's Dodger game, in the middle of April, costing them the season. It could have been better executed

— Molly Knight (@molly_knight) April 20, 2016

Following her tweet, there was a lot of vitriol. The Dodgers did play a crap game on Tuesday night, as they will at least 70-80 more times this season. Joke or not, people needed to calm down here.

The angry character Knight was trying to portray in her poor attempt at humor wasn’t all wrong either. Divisions are won and lost by just a few games a lot of the time and every game that the Dodgers don’t give themselves a chance to really win contributes to that. The adage that every game matters isn’t technically wrong. But the sometimes-crazy reaction to Knight’s joke tweet shows us that we have to come back and find some middle ground here.

You won’t ever hear me chastise someone for their feelings of fansmanship though — even if they are irrational. Molly’s tweet about the team failing to show up may have been a little off the wall. I’m sure if you asked the players, they’d say that they were right in the game and just couldn’t come through with big hits (they left somwhere around 734 men on base against the Braves). That’s a rational thing to think. Sequencing usually comes back to the mean.

There are also plenty of Dodger fans who actually feel exactly the way Molly’s tweet came off. And, that is OK too.

I’m all for being reasonable, but part of what makes sports — baseball especially — amazing for me is trying to find that sweet spot between intellect and emotion, rational thought with irrational rooting interests. Being a Dodger fan or a baseball fan online means you are part of a pretty large community with a lot of people, and a lot of views. I’m all for dialogue about how we all feel, but let’s leave some room for the die-hards who live and die with each pitch, each inning, each game. When we put people down for every emotional or irrational tweet, the leaders of the Dodger twitterverse can also come off as aloof, uppity jerkfaces. I’m not excluding myself from that group.

Instead, let’s encourage people to be pumped about the games and revel in the inherent conflict between our emotional tie to a team or game and the main part of our intellect that tells us that this single game doesn’t really matter. Maybe we’ll find some sports truth somewhere in there.

As a fan, it’s OK to be mad about a single loss. I won’t judge you. It’s also OK to tweet that it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re rooting for the Dodgers or whatever, shouldn’t we all be OK with how the next person does it?

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has to be smiling after the team has looked relaxed in winning their first two games of the season. By Malingering

Last year was weird in a lot of ways. One weird narrative went that the Dodgers’ bullpen was kind of an unreliable mess. While they probably weren’t as bad as that, the narrative was that they couldn’t be counted-upon outside of Kenley Jansen.

Again, small sample size notwithstanding, the pen looks pretty good early-on. Pedro Baez, Chris Hatcher, and Kenley Jansen each struck out two Padres in an inning of work each and Jansen gave up the Padres’ only hit in the final third of the game.

What’s fun is that these are the same guys who were in the bullpen last year for the Dodgers. Baez, who is 28 this year, pitched 51 innings, striking out 60 batters and walking 11. After a rocky start, Hatcher struck out 45 batters in 39 innings of work in 2015, walking 13.

Listen, I’m not saying they’re going to be perfect this season, but when the bullpen seems much more calmed-down and solid this season, let’s not go too nutty trying to find out a specific reason. My suspicion is that the bullpen, as a group, caught some bad breaks this year. Maybe this is the season they turn those breaks around. We know how important bullpens can be and many fans also suspect that Don Mattingly may not have been the most adept decision-maker when it came to pitchers and maybe Dave Roberts get a little something better about this group.

Or, perhaps, they were always pretty good baseball players and we just wouldn’t or couldn’t recognize it as last year went on.

With two strong performances, the Dodgers are now 2-0 on the season.

Kazmir sharp

Scott Kazmir looked really sharp in his Dodgers debut. For as long as he’s been pitching, Kazmir has never been in the National League. Pitching to hitters regularly has to be a welcomed change for the lefty.

Here are highlights from that Dodgers game:

Syndergaard a freaking Viking magician

Noah Syndergaard is a freaking magician. He throws a sinker that clocks-in faster than his fastball. His slider is mid-90’s. How does anybody ever hit him? He’s on my All-MLB.TV team this year. I’ll be posting that team sometime soon.

Hey Dodger fans, Owen here.

I’m one of you. I wasn’t the happiest when Zack Grienke left for Arizona.

Why didn’t the Dodgers match the offer? How could they give up one of the best pitchers in the game?!

LOUD NOISES!

It’s only one game, but calm Dodger fans have to be feeling pretty good about the team’s conservative approach to giving the lovable righty big money. I still like Grienke. I still think he’s a good player. But when some combination of Julio Urias, Jose DeLeon, Frankie Montas, Grant Holmes, Jharel Cotton, and maybe others are contributing at the major league level in the next 1-3 years, the Dodgers’ free agent chastity this past offseason will be lauded.

In fact, I’m going to make a prediction here: After a quiet offseason for free agents in 2015-16, the team will spend BIG money this upcoming offseason. As some of their young players come into their own, the team will make a concerted effort to build it into a true dynasty.

In case you’re worried that the team might not have a chance at the World Series, think about this: This time last year, I felt way better about the overall makeup of the roster, and look where it got them! The Royals didn’t look like a World Series team before either of the past two years, and look where it got them. There isn’t any reason to think this year’s Dodgers can’t get a little better, a little luckier, and make it to the World Series.

I know they won’t win 15-0 every game, and yes, the generalization of what I saw in one game to an entire season is ridiculous, but honestly — we need to stop being mad about Grienke. This is a playoff team again. To be honest, even with Grienke, that’s all it was the past few years too.