There’s a pretty good chance that you will never get anyone in the Dodgers front office to openly admit that any one series during the course of a 162-game season is “the biggest series of the year.” However, you’d have a very difficult time trying to convince anyone that they aren’t at least thinking that this weekend’s three-game series against the San Francisco Giants at unfriendly AT&T Park is anything but.

Consider this. The Dodgers enter this weekend’s series trailing the Giants by four games in the National League West. This means that if the Dodgers pull off a sweep of the Giants they will leave the City by the Bay only one game back of The Hated Ones. If they take two of the three from the Giants they will be three games back. If they can muster only one win this weekend they will fall to five games back. And, Lord forbid, should the unthinkable happen and the Giants sweep the Dodgers they would find themselves a full seven games behind the division leaders and, in all likelihood, in third place – depending on how the Rockies fair against the lowly San Diego Padres in Colorado this weekend. And say what you will, being seven games back with the All-Star break less than a month away is not where Stan Kasten, Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi and the rest of the Dodgers front office want to be.

The Dodgers once again look to Clayton Kershaw to get back on the winning track.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

With first pitch less than an hour away and Clayton Kershaw on the mound for the Dodgers, you’ve got to like the Dodgers chances – at least for game-1 of the three-game series. That said, the 8-1, 1.46 ERA Dodgers ace will be up against the Giants top hurler – Johnny Cueto – and his 9-1 record and 2.16 ERA.

Things begin to get a little uncomfortable after that with Scott Kazmir (5-3, 4.46 ERA) squaring off against Jeff Samardzija (7-4, 3.33 ERA) on Saturday and Dodgers rookie Julio Urias (0-1, 6.94 ERA) against Jake Peavy (2-6, 6.41 ERA) in the series finale on Sunday.

Any way you slice it and whether you want to admit it or not, this is absolutely positively the biggest series of the 2016 season for the Dodgers.

…for now, that is.

Play ball!