With their dominating 8-1 win over the Houston Astros on Sunday evening at Dodger Stadium now in the books, the Dodgers will open their three-game series with the National League West second-place San Diego Padres on Monday a mere 2.5 games ahead of them in the division standings and only 13 games remaining in the COVID-19-shortened 2020 regular season. As such, you would think that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts would be looking at this three-game series as the single most important series of the season; and he does.

…sort of.

“I think, appreciating where we’re at on the calendar, it is,” Roberts said during his postgame Zoom presser on Sunday. “It’s a team that’s chasing us and been playing great baseball for quite some time, a potential playoff opponent. So, yeah, I would probably say that’s probably the biggest series of the year.”

The Dodgers skipper then tossed in a caveat.

“But regardless, win the series, lose the series, there’s still more games to be played. But our only focus right now is these three games in San Diego,” he added.

The Padres are indeed playing great baseball. Earlier in the day, they completed a doubleheader sweep of the San Francisco Giants at Petco Park to move to within two games of the Dodgers prior to the Dodgers’ win over America’s Most Hated team. With that win, the Dodgers checked into their hotel in San Diego late Sunday night holding onto a precarious 2.5-game lead over the Friars.

Sunday’s 8-1 win came as a result of 12 Dodgers hits that included a solo home run by AJ Pollock in the bottom of the first inning, a two-run blast by Mookie Betts in the fifth, and a crushing three-run shot in the bottom of the eighth inning by a red-hot Chris Taylor to seal the deal.

“I’ve been feeling pretty good,” Taylor said after his 3-for-4 / 3-RBI night. “For the last couple weeks, honestly, I feel like my mechanics are kind of … working on the same things every day, not changing too much. So it’s really just keeping that consistent approach, being disciplined, and swinging at good pitches right now. Not worried too much about my mechanics, which is nice.”

How nice, you ask?

Over his last 10 games, the 30-year-old Virginia Beach, VA native and fifth-round draft pick in 2012 by the Seattle Mariners in 2012 out of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA is 14-for-39 (.359), with four doubles, three home runs, and 14 RBI.

“Tonight it was great to see him get started off with a bunt base hit, then he had a check-swing flair,” Roberts said of Taylor. “But I think in general, I think he shifted the field a little bit more than he has in the past, and I say that as he’s always been a right field, right-center guy, but I like the right-center to left-center approach.

“I think that that, for me, what he’s done, but Chris is a guy who is prepared every day, plays the game the right way, and it’s good to see him have success,” added Roberts.

Should the Dodgers sweep the Padres in this, their final meeting of the season, they will have a much more comfortable 5.5-game lead in their quest to win their eighth consecutine division title.

Then again, should the Padres sweep the Dodgers, it will be they who will be chasing San Diego a half-game back in the standings with 10 games to go.

The Big One indeed,

Play Ball!

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