We have arrived at the final off day before the All-Star Break.
Just in the past week, the Dodgers have completed a four-game set with the San Diego Padres, whose season looks as cooked as a well-done steak made for a timid geriatric, and a sloppy three-game set against the Colorado Rockies.
It’s worth repeating after this recent holiday: if you want well-done steak, just have chicken. Or turkey, which is an apt description of the Dodgers’ play over the past week.
Speaking of which, the Dodgers will not see the Padres again until the final home series of the regular season in September. The Dodgers have one last trip to Colorado in mid-August, but otherwise are finished with the Rockies in 2026.
The Dodgers currently have a 14-game lead over the second-place Padres, which is a 105-win pace for the regular season. This essay was originally supposed to drop earlier this week, but the urge to play Paul Harvey was too irresistible…and now you know…the rest of the story.
Before getting to the kernel of the idea that originally prompted this essay, it is time to address something that been in my craw since Game 3 of the 2025 World Series.
“Steven Kwan was right there!”
As you may recall, the Dodgers famously did not trade for Cleveland Guardians outfield Steven Kwan last trade, even though the entire league expected the move.
Instead, the Dodgers got Alex Call from the Washington Nationals in a move that felt reminisicent of having “Steven Kwan at home.” For the rest of the year, I used a shorthand whenever Alex Call failed to deliver: “Steven Kwan was right there!”
I admit it’s unfair to Call, but sometimes the right response to annoyance is a well-timed barb. Jump forward from the trade deadline to Game 3 of the 2025 World Series. The consensus is that the game was an all-time classic. I politely and firmly disagree. The game was entertaining sure, but to me a classic game is one that is played well.
There were far too many boners and gaffes that night for me to call the game a classic. The vast majority of which are a subject for another day as the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays careened from glory to disaster and back again, while I tried to keep the site from slowing to a crawl.
While things worked out how they did, including the legend of Will Klein, the game should have ended far sooner. In the bottom of the 13th inning, Alex Call is facing Eric Lauer with Tommy Edman on third with only one out.
All Call needs is a fly ball and the speedy Edman will propel the Dodgers to a 2-1 series lead. Call has a 2-0 count and gets a hittable pitch that catches plenty of the plate.
Alex Call is about to etch his name into Dodgers postseason history…never mind.
Five stressful innings later and the Dodgers had victory by the skin of their teeth. While Call’s pop up hurt my soul, it’s important to remember that Ernie Clement gifted the gift horse right back in the ninth inning of Game 6.
Yes, baseball is hard and yes, Kwan has been an offensive liability since the trade deadline, but Steven Kwan was right there!
If anyone wants to know the source of my general indifference, at best, towards Call, the above-play is my Exhibit A, which brings us to last night.
Alex “Blown” Call
Alex Call’s playing time has been scarce since the return of Teoscar Hernandez. Granted, Hernandez has not been tearing the cover off the ball, with one cinematic exception.
In the first inning of last night’s game, Alex Call somehow spectacularly burned through both of the team’s ABS challenges on successive pitches.
To add insult to injury, Call struck out while smiling during the entire ordeal.
The first challenge was defensible. The second challenge on the very next pitch was both somehow moronic and arrogant at the same time. Doubling down at the earliest opportunity at the blackjack table when you’re losing is a quick way to lose money even faster.
Or, if I am being too subtle:
Call’s behavior would have been unacceptable for just about anyone on the roster. For a role player with dwindling playing time with reinforcements on the way and promising prospects waiting in the wings to do so is borderline insane.
As much as some sectors of baseball media have been trying to get me to care about Dalton Rushing this year (I don’t), if there was a “hold my beer” moment that did not need to occur, it was last night.
Would Alek Thomas or Ryan Ward or any other promising outfielders currently toiling away in Oklahoma City be so glib and cavalier as Call? Probably not? We are afield of my expertise, lest my idea be blown.
Alex “Blown” Call, everybody.
What is even more striking is that Call is not the first person this week to unsuccessfully use their team’s ABS challenges as quickly as possible, which is not the goal.
Case in point, Randy Arozarena of the Mariners burned both of the Mariners’ challenges two batters into the game on July 4th with actual consequences to the Mariners in that game. One would think Call would think before depriving the rest of the offense and Roki Sasaki one of the tools of the arsenal.
Colorman Eric Karros called Call’s second challenge “a BS challenge” in one of the better puns one will hear during a broadcast this year.
If one held out hope that Manager Dave Roberts would have read Call the riot act after the game, or at least openly wondered why Call had failed to respond to the moment or why he had blown the challenges, that person would be out of luck.
That’s an outlier of a situation. [Call’s] been really dependable and trustworthy.
I wouldn’t call the situation an outlier, but we must move on. The entire episode does serve as the perfect segway to one of my bigger fears for the rest of the season.
The Summer Swoon arrives?
One might be tempted to think the division is all wrapped up. I am not one of those people.
Didn’t you predict the Dodgers would only win 92 games this year? Is this article your “I’m going to eat duck” mea culpa?
The meat of my position is the stretch of games happening right now. I can’t help but think back to last year, give or take a day or two.
One Piece Night came and went in 2025, as the Dodgers dispatched the Chicago White Sox. The team was 56-32 with a season-high nine-game lead over the Padres, which was just a 104-win regular-season pace.
Back then, people thought the division was all sewn up.
40 days later, on August 12, the lead was literally gone after a walk-off loss to the Anaheim Angels in Anaheim. The Dodgers did not permanently regain the division lead until August 25, when they kept a modest lead they would never relinquish.
Needless to say, the Dodgers didn’t win 104 games last season. Technically, they won 106 games (regular season and postseason combined). They only won 93 games during the last campaign.
From July 4 to September 6, 2025, the Dodgers were awful, going 23-32 while being generally dreary to watch. For the record, the Padres went 31-25 during this same stretch. Servicable is good enough when the leader of the race can’t seem to stop falling over.
The nadir was a six-game stretch in which the team posted meager results against last-place teams in Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
Why use September 6 as the end point of this stretch? Because the team had a team meeting to pick themselves up and no other reason whatsoever. Honest.
Okay, 95%-team meeting, 5%-the joke and “trauma” was right there.
It helps that the Dodgers went 15-5 to close out the campaign, looking nothing like the dreary imposters that had appeared in July and August.
Different years, different teams
It is worth stating, in Eric Stephen-like terms, that each season is unique and that what happened before is not grounds for panic or even stress now. But as One Piece Night returned to somehow garner even more coverage than last year, the Dodgers have started looking a bit sloppy again. For those wondering if Dodger Stadium was indeed that busy that night, per Sam Blum and Brooks Peck of The Athletic:
The trading card, portraying the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy in a batting stance, was projected to carry significant financial value. The get-in price for the 56,000-seat stadium hovered around $300. A StubHub spokesperson said it was “the most in-demand Dodgers home game this year, after Opening Day.”
Yes, the Dodgers had a stinker in a sparsely attended game against a team most would rather be out of sight, out of mind to close out the Padres series. One would likely expect changes in the management of the Padres after the team sale, considering the dearth of lasting success in AJ Preller’s tenure.
Unless the Padres’ final goal was to beat the Dodgers that one time in 2022, with zero follow-up, in which case, mission accomplished. The Padres have a lot in common with the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team: big talk, no results.
Yes, the Dodgers had some terrible at-bats and let a plucky Rockies team hang around a lot longer than it probably should have. Yes, the bullpen and defense creaked a bit more than we have come to expect over the past couple of days.
Should you panic? No, but unlike what Roberts thinks an outlier is a unique situation. When you see echoes of what came before at the same time of year, it’s fair to wonder aloud when the moment calls for it.
It is literally impossible to maintain Game 7 level focus for the entire season without a mental breakdown. And yes, things worked out last year. While these two teams are different, there is a lot of overlap in personnel.
Eric Karros mentioned that the Dodgers had a rough night a couple of nights ago. That’s how swoons start. A bad at-bat begets a bad inning, which begets a bad game, which begets a bad series, which begets a bad week, and so on and so on and before you know, you sleptwalked through a month or six weeks and what was a comfortable division lead is a but a memory.
It’s probably best to wait and see right now. If the Dodgers struggle against Arizona as mightily as they did with the Rockies, then it might be time for everyone to take a break.
Are the Dodgers ready for the All-Star Break? Probably. It doesn’t help the questions of shifting focus that the second half starts with an East Coast odyssey with two teams that serve as a nice barometer for how the season is going: the New York Yankees and the suddenly resurgent-Philadelphia Phillies.
Sometimes annoyance is like gas; it’s better to just let it out in a free moment than let it fester until it is too late to call anyone, much less get an unpleasant response.
