5 Dodgers who have made the biggest impact since the All-Star break

The Los Angeles Dodgers spent most of the time before the All-Star break second place in the NL West. The team boasted injury problems and a very glaring bullpen weakness, most notably, with some offensive hiccups and starting rotation woes along the way.

As All-Star Weekend approached, things started to sort themselves out. Now that we're a month after the break, it seems it's all closer to normalization. Teams like the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks, who had gone on great runs, have came back down to earth. The Dodgers have become the team that LA fans had hoped for and are surging.

Their 71-46 record is good for an 8.5-game lead over the second-place Giants. The D-backs are .500. A lot has changed. But let’s look at the players who have performed the best since the All-Star break and caused this resurgence for the Dodgers.

Freddie Freeman

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as Freddie Freeman has been incredible all year. Up until the All-Star break, Freeman led the Dodgers with a .320 batting average, and since then he has been batting .400 with a 1.176 OPS. It’s worth noting Freeman has also played in every single game this season. That's 117 games of going out there and being one of the best players in all of baseball. Freeman is truly an irreplaceable talent and has been a key factor in the Dodgers' success, but especially their recent rise. 

James Outman

When the season began, James Outman was on fire. For a time, it almost seemed certain that he could win NL Rookie of the Year. That award now seems out of reach as Outman later stumbled and Diamondbacks rookie Corbin Caroll has simply been elite.

Here we are now, though, in the middle of August, and Outman seems to have found what was working for him earlier in the season and reignited that. His post-All-Star batting average is .329 and his on-base percentage actually matches Freeman's at .485. He has filled the role well as Cody Bellinger's replacement. It was always going to be difficult to replace Bellinger's defense, but Outman makes his fair share of excellent plays in center field.

Also, Outman is one of the few base stealing threats the Dodgers have. All these aspects of his game have leveled up recently, and the Dodgers are benefiting heavily from it. 

Mookie Betts

Another name that, not so shockingly, has to be mentioned is Mookie Betts. He's having one of the best seasons of his career, which, for Betts, really says a lot about how well he has been playing. He’s even added position flexibility by playing games at shortstop and second base. Just like Outman and Freeman, it seems that Betts has found yet another level as we get deeper and deeper into the season. The 1-2 combination of Betts and Freeman at the top of the lineup continues to be the best in baseball and is vital to the Dodgers' success.