The world according to Jim:
• While 29 of baseball’s fan bases moan and groan about how the Dodgers have unfair advantages, spend too much money, have too many deferred contracts, gobble up all the best players and need to be reined in with a salary cap, the 30th fan base has been wondering what happened to that supposed dominance.
And – it’s got to be said – whether the two guys to which the club committed a combined $309 million last winter, Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz, might turn out to be bad investments. …
• The midseason tailspin is becoming a Dodgers’ tradition of sorts, the losing skid that eats away at a big division lead and has their fans worrying only to be forgotten by the end of October. Friday night’s seventh straight loss – maybe the most brutal of this stretch, with Díaz hanging a slider to rookie Ryan Waldschmidt for a walkoff two-run homer and a 4-3 loss at Arizona – continued a stretch in which the Dodgers have gone 8-14 since July 10.
A 14-game division lead shrunk to 7½ over the Diamondbacks after Friday’s game, and a team that had a 2½ game cushion in the race for baseball’s best record entered Saturday not only fourth overall but third among NL division leaders and potentially facing the wild-card round again. …
• We remember those dogpiles on the field at the conclusion of the last two World Series, but it’s easy to forget all of the times in 2024 and 2025 when those championship runs seemed to be in jeopardy. The point? It’s too soon to panic, but it’s definitely not too soon to be concerned. …
• They lost 11 of 14 in July last year, touched off by consecutive sweeps by Houston and Milwaukee, to start a 12-24 stretch that wiped out a nine-game division lead. They won the division by three games, swept Cincinnati in the wild-card round and went on from there. And the Dodgers were 1-6 at the start of July in 2024, had an 8½-game lead trimmed to two in late August but won the division by five games, earned the first-round bye, survived thanks to that bullpen game in San Diego when they were on the verge of elimination and went on from there. …
• They also squandered a 21-game division lead in 2017 by losing 16 of 17 from Aug. 26 to Sept. 11, but still won the division, reached the World Series, and we all remember why that series deserves an asterisk. …
The point: It’s not too soon for concern, Dodgers fans, but please stay away from the panic button for now. …
• Speaking of the World Series, MLB still has yet to release the traditional documentary from last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays classic. Supposedly the plan was for a splashy debut around midseason, but that’s come and gone and there’s still nothing beyond a YouTube mini-movie released by Fox last November. …
• And another example of MLB sometimes having trouble getting out of its own way: Why on earth did the schedule makers deviate from long-standing tradition and schedule the Dodgers and Angels at home at the same time, not just once but frequently? From July 28 through the end of the season, the teams will have played at home on the same date 18 times, including two full concurrent homestands. …
• Candidate for strangest injury of the season: Dodgers’ speedy outfield prospect Kendall George required surgery on his left meniscus recently, after originally injuring his knee in May at Double-A Tulsa.
How, you ask? In the process of scoring a run he had to leap over the dog that the Drillers used to retrieve bats. The bat dog has since been benched. …
• The Chargers returned to San Diego for two days this past week, holding training camp practices at the University of San Diego for the second straight summer. And while it was old home week for former USD coach Jim Harbaugh, returning to a town where a good slice of the townsfolk still feel jilted seems kind of curious. …
• Tom Krasovic, columnist for our sibling publication, the Union-Tribune, made the observation that many of those who showed up for those two days of workouts were younger, suggesting that the “they’re dead to me” folks ignored them and that the Chargers are cultivating younger San Diegans as part of their fan base.
But Chargers communications chief Josh Rupprecht pointed out the other day that those crowds also included folks wearing jerseys of the old heroes, Lance Alworth from the franchise’s early days and Junior Seau, LaDainian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates of more recent vintage. …
• Today’s quiz: What happened in the Chargers’ last home game in San Diego, and why was it an anticlimax? Answer below. …
• Are we bored yet with the Kawhi Leonard cap circumvention saga? Can the NBA and the law firm investigating this reach a conclusion so everyone – and particularly the Clippers and Toronto Raptors – can get on with their lives?
• Or would the league be better off just honoring the results of Pablo Torre’s investigation? The podcaster/investigative journalist has made more progress on this thing than the people the NBA hired to get to the bottom of it. …
• Sudden thought: If the battle over a salary cap really does threaten the 2027 baseball season, is there anyone who can step in and save the season the way then-federal judge (and now Supreme Court justice) Sonia Sotomayor did in the spring of 1995, by issuing an injunction in the players’ favor that ended the strike? …
• Quiz answer: The final San Diego Chargers home game at now demolished Qualcomm (aka Jack Murphy) Stadium took place Jan. 1, 2017, a 37-27 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. It ended a 5-11 season and was followed almost immediately by the firing of head coach Mike McCoy, via press release, a little more than an hour after he’d conducted his postgame media session and made his case to serve out the final year of his contract.
But no, that wasn’t the anticlimax, because by then the move to L.A. was pretty much a fait accompli and there was little fan emotion left to expend. The true outpouring of sentiment came the season before, a 30-14 victory over Miami on Dec. 15, 2015, in the season’s final home game highlighted (on the field, anyway) by Danny Woodhead’s four touchdowns.
That day was the emotional one because San Diegans feared that was it. The place was packed, the fans wouldn’t leave after the game ended, and one by one their heroes – Gates, Philip Rivers, Malcom Floyd, Eric Weddle, etc. – came back onto the field to mingle and sign autographs. (I particularly remember Rivers signing a banner that protested the move, and shaking hands with another fan who was leaning over the rail and holding a sign that said: “I Won’t Go To L.A.”)
• I missed the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions this weekend, but I’m curious: When Drew Brees received his yellow jacket, were his four seasons in San Diego – 58 of his 59 games as the Chargers’ starting quarterback – even mentioned?
jalexander@scng.com