Why the Los Angeles Dodgers Can Chase Down the 105-Win Team Record

A year ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers were the most depressing team in baseball. They were hard to watch on the field, and cash-strapped owner Frank McCourt spent much of the season squabbling with Major League Baseball over money.

Now look at the Dodgers. They have a new ownership group that has both deep pockets and big dreams, and the team on the field is the most pleasant surprise of the 2012 season so far. They enter Monday's action with an MLB-best 32-15 record, and they have a very comfortable lead over the competition in the National League West.

Everything has gone right for the Dodgers this season, and there's no ignoring the fact that the team is on a historic pace. At the rate they're going, the 2012 Dodgers are going to win at least 100 games, and the club record of 105 wins set by the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers is very much at risk.

Yeah, yeah. I know. We're barely finished with a third of the season, and it's surely just a matter of time before Murphy's Law kicks in. What can go wrong in Los Angeles will go wrong.

I urge you not to write the idea off completely, though. Like it or not, these Dodgers are going to challenge the franchise record for wins in a season.

Part of the reason we know this is because the Dodgers have already had to deal with Murphy's Law this season. After a torrid April, star center fielder Matt Kemp had to be placed on the disabled list with an injured hamstring earlier this month. That should have been the Dodgers' cue to come back down to earth, but they didn't.

Kemp last played on April 13th. From May 14th until now, the Dodgers have won nine of their last 13 games, at one point winning six in a row. They lost their best player, but they've been able to keep playing good baseball.

This is as good a sign as any that the Dodgers aren't all about Kemp. In his absence, they've gotten contributions from all over, most notably from Andre Ethier. He's very quietly having an outstanding season, and he's hit .348 with nine RBI in the 12 games Kemp has been absent.

The Dodgers already rank in the top 10 in Major League Baseball in every significant offensive category (runs, batting average, OBP and slugging). Once Kemp comes back, they're going to have even more firepower.

The bigger question, I think, has to do with their pitching. The Dodgers rank second in baseball with a team ERA of 3.15, and that's thanks mainly to their starting rotation. Dodgers starters have a 3.01 ERA, and only three teams in the National League have gotten more innings out of their rotations than the Dodgers have.

We know that Clayton Kershaw is legit. We just can't say that for sure about the rest of L.A.'s starting rotation, which has clearly overachieved in the early goings this season. Chris Capuano, in particular, has been too good to be true. Asking him to maintain an ERA in the low 2.00s all season is asking too much.

Ted Lilly came back to earth in a big way in his most recent start. When Capuano follows suit, the Dodgers' starting rotation is going to consist of one ace and then four middle-of-the-road starting pitchers.

Even if that happens, nobody in L.A. is going to be in a position to panic. 

You have to consider the division the Dodgers play in. The San Diego Padres can't score runs, nor can they pitch particularly well. The Colorado Rockies can score runs, but their pitching is absolutely atrocious. The Arizona Diamondbacks have had to watch their pitching underachieve this season, which was bound to happen after it overachieved last season. The San Francisco Giants can pitch, but their offense is highly unpredictable.

The Dodgers still have a lot of games left to play against these four teams, and they're going to win the majority of these games. No team in the NL West can match the kind of balance the Dodgers have, and that's going to be the case even if their pitching levels out.

If the Dodgers end up desperately needing a pitching upgrade (or any other upgrade, for that matter), they'll be able to go and get one. General manager Ned Colletti told the Los Angeles Times recently that the team's new ownership is willing to dish out some money to help improve the club.

The Dodgers don't have the prospects to make major deals, but the team's ownership is apparently willing to take on bloated salaries. They will quite literally be buyers at the deadline. Teams looking to dump salary at the deadline will therefore be open to doing business with the Dodgers, and goodness knows there will be plenty of teams looking to dump salary.

So in all likelihood, the Dodgers are going to go from being a good team to being a better team at the trade deadline. Thanks in large part to their new ownership, the Dodgers are going for it this season.

Regardless of what they do at the trade deadline, the key for the Dodgers over the final four months of the regular season will be the same key as everyone else: just stay healthy. The Dodgers can't have Kemp turn into their very own version of Derrick Rose, and they had better hope that Ethier stays healthy as well. It goes without saying that they can't lose Kershaw.

If the Dodgers can stay healthy, they're only going to slow down if they take their foot off the gas late in the season. That, however, is a bigger danger with teams that have been there and done that before. The Dodgers have a chip on their collective shoulder, and because of that, it's hard to imagine them taking anything for granted this season.

No sir, they're going to treat all 162 of their games this season the same. And at their current pace, the question is not so much whether they'll win 105 games. It's whether they'll win 110 games.

Either way, the 2012 Dodgers will have the 1953 Dodgers in their sights.

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