The teams with the two best records in the majors begin a series Tuesday night. The Los Angeles Dodgers, with the best record in baseball at 89-38, face off against the Mets 82-47 at Citi Field.
There is a little over a month to go in the regular season, and the Dodgers continue to steamroll everyone, and it is starting to feel like a pretty historic season.
The record for wins is 116. It’s been achieved twice, once by the Cubs in 1906 and again in 2001 by the Mariners. Only six teams in MLB history have won more than 110 games in a season.
It seems like quite the feasible goal for the Dodgers, as there are 35 games left in the regular season. To tie that 116-win mark, the Dodgers would have to win 27 of those 35 remaining games. To eclipse the 116 mark, they’d need to go 28–7. It seems like quite a tough mark, but this team just went 41-9 over a 50-game stretch.
Barring any disaster, the Dodgers will be the first to win 90 games, and once they wrap up this series with the Mets, most of their remaining games are against division opponents. In September, only one series is against a non-divisional opponent, which is a three-game set against the Cardinals.
The Dodgers record against the division is 35-12, so they’ve dominated their division opponents. There are nine games still left against the Padres and eight games against the Diamondbacks before the Dodgers close out the season with the Rockies for six games.
The franchise record in wins for the Dodgers is 106, so it is pretty doable. However, eclipsing or tying the mark would be great, but the main goal remains the same to win the World Series. The famous 2001 Mariners, who won 116, failed to win in the World Series and now have the longest postseason drought in all sports.
This three-game series between the Dodgers and Mets could be a possible NL playoff preview. The two sides split a four-game series in L.A. back at the beginning of June.
The Dodgers also announced a couple of roster moves, sending pitchers Phil Bickford and Michael Grove to Triple-A, while calling up pitcher Jake Reed and also selecting the contract of Heath Hembree. They also designated Eddy Alvarez for assignment.
The first pitch Tuesday’s opener is set for 4:10 p.m Pacific.