Dodgers have a chance to be one the best teams over the last 70 years

The Dodgers are on pace to be one of the greatest single season teams in history.

Even after the Dodgers’ 11-game winning streak was snapped Thursday night in a 3-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves, and lost again 12-3 Friday evening, the team is still an incredible 35 games above .500 in July. With a 66-31 record, the Dodgers are now on pace to win 110 games.

This would be the most by NL team in 111 years since the 1906 Chicago Cubs won 116 games. This would shatter the Dodgers’ previous high win total of 105 back when they were in Brooklyn in 1953.

Reaching the 100 win mark would be a milestone that the Dodgers haven’t reached since the 1974 team that won 102 games and lost in the World Series to the Oakland A’s.

What’s remarkable about the Dodgers’ record is that they didn’t get off to a great start. They were an average team through the first month of the season, getting off to a 15-14 start. Since then, they have been on fire, going 51-16 with a 10-game and 11-game winning streak, respectively.

They have also won an incredible 31 of their last 37 games.

Regular season-wise, the Dodgers are on pace to have one of the greatest years but to truly be mentioned as one of the greatest teams ever, they have to finish it off by winning a championship.

It may not be fair, but that is the way it’s always been in all of sports. Everybody remembers who wins but never the team who loses.

The last team in general to win at least 111 games was the 2001 Seattle Mariners. That Mariner team won a record tying 116 games during the regular season but fell in five games in the ALCS to the New York Yankees.

Nobody calls those record-breaking Mariners one of the greatest baseball teams because they lost even though you could argue that they should be.

The same way people don’t call the 2016 Golden State Warriors, who won a record 73 games, one of the greatest teams in the NBA because they didn’t win it all.

The 2007 New England Patriots, who got off to a perfect 18-0 start before losing the Super Bowl, might be better than all five of Tom Brady’s championship teams, but nobody will ever say that because they didn’t win.

The truth about the Dodgers is that this season will mean nothing if they don’t win the World Series. The Dodgers are currently in a 29-year championship drought. It’s the longest they’ve ever gone between championships since the Jackie Robinson-led Brooklyn team won back in 1955.

The Dodgers have been knocking on the door of the fall classic, making the playoffs every year since 2013, which include two NLCS appearances, before ultimately falling short.

This season’s Dodgers team seems like it could be the best one over the past several years and the team that could get over the hump. There appears to be some sort of magic about this team with the countless comeback wins and big moments.

The team chemistry is the best I’ve ever seen in a Dodger team. Everybody seems to understand their role and have their egos in check, which I believe hurt recent Dodger teams.

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It is really hard to rank this Dodger team across all of baseball history. There are plenty of teams that had dominant seasons (mostly Yankee teams) back when baseball was still segregated and did not have many teams.

I often discount how great these players and teams really were, seeing that not everybody was allowed to play baseball, which makes it too hard to compare. So, I am going to start this comparison since 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

Looking at the late 40’s and 50’s, there is one team that had a great regular season that stood out to me the, 1954 Cleveland Indians who went a remarkable 111-43. However, they got swept in the World Series by the New York Giants.

SI.com recently put out a list comparing the Dodgers to all the expansion era teams that won at least 104 games. Only six out of those thirteen teams wound up winning the World Series: Tigers (1984), Yankees (1998), Yankees (1961), Reds (1975), Orioles (1970), Mets (1986).

Out of all those teams, I believe the ’98 Yankees was the best of the bunch. I heard Charlie Steiner on the Dodgers Fox Sports Radio AM 570 radio broadcast the other day compare this team to the ‘98 Yankees.

It’s a great comparison by Steiner when you look at the correlation between the way that Yankee team was made up and this Dodgers team.

Those Yankees went 114-48 during the season and 11-2 in the playoffs en route to winning the World Series. They had a +1.91 run differential per game and scored 309 more runs than they allowed.

In comparison, the Dodgers have a +1.85 run differential and have scored 169 more runs so far (on pace for +282). The Dodgers are clicking on all cylinders having by far the best pitching in NL, allowing 50 fewer runs than any other team and offensively 3^rd in runs scored behind only the Nationals and Rockies.

Next: Dave Roberts and Another MOY?

If they can continue at this pace and cap it off winning a World Series, they will go down as one of the best baseball teams over the past 70 years.