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MIAMI -- There has been a lot of noise around Yasiel Puig since the Los Angeles Dodgers have been in South Florida, or come to think of it, anywhere else.

But the pitching staff has been making sure everything else stays quiet. Zack Greinke dominated the Miami Marlins in the Dodgers' 4-1 win Wednesday night, and the Marlins have Clayton Kershaw to look forward to Thursday afternoon. The pair is giving the Dodgers a lethal combination at the top of their rotation.

Seems a bit cruel, doesn't it?

Greinke has given up a total of one run in his last three starts. After giving up Giancarlo Stanton's first-inning home run, the Marlins could scarcely touch him. He needed just 99 pitches to get through eight innings, striking out seven batters and giving up six hits. Greinke (12-3) is 6-1 with a 1.40 ERA in his last nine starts.

And closer Kenley Jansen is coming in and giving teams no hope of a rally lately. He pitched another scoreless ninth inning and has saved his last 14 opportunities, piling up 32 strikeouts in his last 21 games.

The Dodgers got their first look this season at the pitcher they had to give up -- Nate Eovaldi -- to get Hanley Ramirez. As good as Ramirez has been for the Dodgers -- arguably the team MVP -- it wasn't a small price to pay.

Eovaldi's fastball was electric, hitting 98 mph in the first inning, and it looks as if he has refined his game since the trade. Eovaldi pitched seven innings despite some shaky defense behind him, giving up three runs (two earned) and six hits.

Ed Lucas made a bad throw to first on Puig's fourth-inning grounder, opening the door for all three of the Dodgers' runs off Eovaldi. Ramirez had an RBI double, ripping a ball into the left-center gap, and Andre Ethier squirted one to left to drive in another run.

Stanton will be an interesting name to keep tabs on in a few years, when he reaches free agency, depending what happens with the Dodgers' other outfielders. He's from the San Fernando Valley (Notre Dame High) and has been critical, at times, of the Marlins' way of doing business.

Oh, and he can hit. In the first three games of this series, Stanton is 7-for-12 with two home runs, both low-flying line drives. He crushed one just inside the left-field foul pole off Greinke.

MIAMI -- In a way, the resurrection of Juan Uribe's career has come out of nowhere.
He batted .204 in 2011, his first year with the Dodgers, and .191 last season.

Now, he's the team's everyday third baseman -- rescuing the Dodgers from the disappointment of Luis Cruz's sudden decline -- and he has responded with his best season since 2009, according to wins above replacement (WAR). Uribe's WAR is 2.5. Evan Longoria's is 3.2.

In a way, maybe it's all perfectly natural.

Uribe is not only batting .283 with a career-high .340 on-base percentage, but his .985 fielding percentage trails only Placido Polanco in the National League. He said the dramatic improvement in his play stems from feeling physically sound again.

Uribe was bothered by a sports hernia throughout 2011, eventually undergoing surgery in September, and it affected his first two seasons with the Dodgers. He said he worked hard on his conditioning over the winter in the Dominican Republic and came to spring training in better shape.

"I'm not making excuses for anything, but I feel good again," Uribe said. "I feel a lot better to be able to help the team."

Uribe, 33, has seen his selectivity increase as his power has declined. Between 2004 and 2010, he hit at least 20 home runs four times. He has just seven in 315 plate appearances this season. Manager Don Mattingly said hitting coach Mark McGwire has worked with Uribe on hitting the ball to the middle of the field.

Uribe once had a reputation as one of the hardest swingers in baseball. He often would go down to one knee when he swung and missed.

"Juan's been good," Mattingly said. "It seems like he's not fouling nearly as many balls back and sometimes that is the byproduct of cutting down your swing just a little bit."

Uribe got Wednesday's game in Miami off, the product of Thursday being a day game, Mattingly said.

* Like Yasiel Puig the day before, Hanley Ramirez -- who also lives in the Miami area -- was nearly 30 minutes late arriving at the ballpark Wednesday. But unlike Puig's, Ramirez's tardiness was excused. He called ahead and informed the Dodgers he had to take his daughter to a medical appointment.

Here are the lineups for Wednesday:

Los Angeles
1. Carl Crawford LF
2. Yasiel Puig RF
3. Adrian Gonzalez 1B
4. Hanley Ramirez SS
5. Andre Ethier CF
6. A.J. Ellis C
7. Jerry Hairston Jr. 3B
8. Mark Ellis 2B
9. Zack Greinke RHP

Marlins
1. Christian Yelich LF
2. Donovan Solano 2B
3. Giancarlo Stanton RF
4. Logan Morrison 1B
5. Ed Lucas 3B
6. Adeiny Hechavarria SS
7. Jake Marisnick CF
8. Koyie Hill C
9. Nate Eovaldi RHP

A week ago, we noted the potency of Miguel Cabrera when he made contact on the first pitch of a plate appearance.

But Yasiel Puig might be even better than Cabrera.

On a night when he showed up late and came off the bench, Puig homered on the first pitch of his eighth-inning at-bat Tuesday to give the Los Angeles Dodgers another win, this one against the Miami Marlins.

Since his call-up, Puig is 29-for-46 with five home runs in first-pitch situations. No other player can rival his .630 batting average in those situations, and the only two with better slugging percentages than Puig’s 1.109 are two of the game’s top sluggers: Chris Davis and Evan Longoria.

This was another first-pitch hit against a lefty, Marlins reliever Dan Jennings. Puig is now 8-for-11 with two doubles, a triple and two homers in the first pitch of an at-bat against a left-handed pitcher.

It is admittedly very much an all-or-nothing proposition for Puig, who has missed on 34 percent of his swings in the first pitch of a plate appearance. That rate also was topped by only two players at the time we wrote this -- Pedro Alvarez and Dan Uggla.

The all-or-nothing aspect to Puig’s game seems to be true at bat and in the field. Baseball Info Solutions, which tracks defensive data for major league teams and media, had credited Puig with 25 Good Fielding Plays (think plays that would likely merit a Web Gem nomination) entering Tuesday, the most of any outfielder in the major leagues since Puig’s debut June 3.

Of those 25, 20 came on plays on which Puig either made a difficult catch or got to a ball quickly to prevent a baserunner from taking an extra base.

But Puig also was credited with 22 Defensive Misplays & Errors, also the most in the majors in that span. His most common miscues were six offline or unnecessary throws, allowing a runner to take an extra base, and four instances in which he mishandled a base hit, allowing either the hitter or another runner to advance.

Puig does have eight Defensive Runs Saved this season, the combination of turning batted balls into outs at a high rate and the value of his throwing arm when it comes to deterring baserunner advancement.

Just like with his offense, the bad stats can be frustrating, but they are outweighed by the good ones.

MIAMI -- Maybe Don Mattingly inserted Yasiel Puig into the game in the sixth inning just to get him off the bench.

The most frenetic player in the major leagues had to be bouncing off the dugout walls after being left out of the starting lineup for one of the few times since he arrived in Los Angeles 2½ months ago. Not only was Puig not playing when the game started -- in Miami, where he has made his home since defecting from Cuba -- but he got a stern talking-to in Mattingly's office and received an undisclosed fine after showing up late.

When Mattingly finally called upon him, Puig, as usual, came charging hard and fast. He swung at the first pitch he saw, hammering it on a majestic arc off the top of the outfield wall for the decisive home run in the Los Angeles Dodgers' 6-4 win at Marlins Park.

"He's always antsy. He's always all over the place," Mattingly said. "Like I said, that motor doesn't ever turn off, I don't think, until he sleeps. … If he sleeps."

It almost seemed foreshadowed by the swirl of activity around Puig before the game. The spotlight finds him whether he wants it to or not. He was able to make the storyline generally positive Tuesday. Puig has hit 12 home runs, and seven of them have come in the seventh inning or later.

The first 68 games of Puig's career have put him on a superstar trajectory. He's batting .352 with .567 slugging percentage. The Dodgers are certainly treating him like a superstar. Before anyone could ask him about the earlier events of Tuesday, Puig signaled to a Dodgers spokesman who, with the help of Puig's interpreter, cut short his postgame interview after one final question.

Before that swing, the Cuban-born Puig was 3-for-23 over the previous five games and he had gone 0-for-5 while showcased against the other great young Cuban player in the National League, Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez the night before.

It's impossible to predict where Puig is headed -- on the bases, in his career, even when he leaves the field. His talent, charisma and volatility are so profound.

"He's not really a problem, just a lot of stuff happens," Mattingly said. "He really isn't."

When the Puig sprinted out to right field as part of a double switch in the sixth, the crowd -- more than 25,000 people were in attendance -- cheered wildly. Not that he felt any more jittery, or more energetic, playing in a city with the largest concentration of Cubans north of Havana.

"I don't really feel pressure. If I don't feel it in Los Angeles, I'm not going to feel it here," Puig said.

MIAMI -- Maybe you think Yasiel Puig is the most dynamic player in baseball. Perhaps you think he's an immature young player headed for a dive.

But if you're a baseball fan, there's a pretty good chance you're paying attention. Puig's neon-lights summer took another wild turn with Tuesday's 6-4 Los Angeles Dodgers win over the Miami Marlins.

Puig, fined before the game for showing up late and left out of the starting lineup, hit a majestic home run in the eighth inning to break a 4-all tie and send the Dodgers on their way to snapping a two-game losing streak.

Puig has proved to be a nice draw here, about 250 miles from where he grew up in Cuba, even when he wasn't pitted against fellow Cuban phenom Jose Fernandez. On Tuesday, the Marlins drew 25,690 fans -- about 7,000 more than their per-game average this season -- and, when Puig finally ran out to right field during a sixth-inning double switch, the fans cheered loudly.

His blast on the first pitch of the eighth inning, off reliever Dan Jennings, soared nearly to the level of the bank of lights above left field and clanged loudly off the top of the wall.

The Marlins have looked a little scrappier than their 47-75 record coming into this series would have suggested. The Dodgers have looked a little sleepier than their 72-51 record coming into the series would have suggested.

Most of Tuesday was a frustrating grind for the Dodgers, who minimized the damage their 16 hits could do by leaving 12 runners on base.

On Monday they ran into the Fernandez buzz saw. On Tuesday they could have easily knocked Jacob Turner from the game in the first few innings, but Skip Schumaker hit into rally-killing double plays in his first two at-bats.

The Dodgers nonetheless built a 4-1 lead with three straight two-out singles in the fourth, but Chris Capuano gave back two the following half-inning. And reliever Brandon League just can't settle into a role in which he seems comfortable.

The demoted closer -- signed to a three-year, $22.5 million deal last October -- had gotten on a nice roll, with a 2.13 ERA and .167 opponents' batting average in his previous 12 games going into Tuesday. But once again, he struggled to protect a slim lead. Pitching the sixth inning, League allowed a pair of sharply hit singles and a walk to allow Miami to tie it 4-all.

The Dodgers eventually gained some traction against Miami's leaky bullpen and shaky defense, adding a key extra run for closer Kenley Jansen, who shut the door for his 20th save. Jansen has saved his past 13 opportunities. Hanley Ramirez, who had gone hitless in the first two games while listening to relentless booing at his former home stadium, had a leadoff double and scored in the ninth.

MIAMI -- The first time Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly was asked who Yasiel Puig reminded him of, he immediately came up with Bo Jackson.

That was back in the early days of spring training, before Puig had ever played a meaningful game above Class-A ball. He was comparing him to a football player because of his rare combination of size and speed. What he’s found out since is that Puig also plays baseball with an emotional intensity usually confined to the NFL.

Is that approach sustainable over a career? Is it sustainable even over the course of one season, which has more than 10 times as many games as an NFL season?

Neither of those questions has been answered definitively, but it’s fair to say the Dodgers are grappling with those themes as they get a handle on how to handle Puig. Do they risk tampering with his brilliant start if they ask him to tone it down?

The question is similar to the one about what to do about his lapses in fundamentals. Are they simply things you have to accept -- the bad with the good -- or if they correct them now, could they make him an even better player? Several Dodgers have admitted that the message simply isn't getting through.

Mattingly clearly is walking a fine -- and probably uncomfortable -- line. During Monday night’s 6-2 loss to the Miami Marlins, Mattingly had to walk out and make peace with an umpire after Puig inexplicably erupted at John Hirschbeck after a three-pitch strikeout in the fifth inning. Only one of those pitches was a called strike, the last was Puig swinging wildly at 97 mph fastballs.

Mattingly said he had to assuage an umpire in Philadelphia just a day or two earlier. Monday’s dispute started with Puig glaring at Hirschbeck and ended with his teammates having to hustle him out of the dugout before he was ejected. Puig has already alienated opponents with his flamboyant style. Of course, you could argue, who cares? It's a little bit riskier to get on the wrong side of umpires.

(Read full post)

MIAMI -- Yasiel Puig’s first trip to play in Miami didn’t exactly have a storybook beginning.

His name (along with those of several teammates) surfaced in an Internet report about alleged partying in South Beach into the wee hours on Monday, he sniped at some members of the media in the clubhouse and then went out and lost the battle of Cuban phenoms to the Miami Marlins’ Jose Fernandez.

Puig was 0-for-5 in the Los Angeles Dodgers' 6-2 loss to the Marlins on Monday. He's batting .171 with 10 strikeouts and one RBI in his past nine games.

After striking out on a 97-mph Fernandez fastball in the fifth inning, Puig turned and had some words with umpire John Hirschbeck. The conversation continued when Puig got back to the dugout, with several Dodgers escorting Puig up the tunnel.

You could understand if his emotions were a bit amped up. The Marlins had a big crowd, by their standards -- 27,127 fans -- for the Puig-Fernandez matchup. Miami has the largest population of Cuban expatriates in the United States.

Not that Puig had anything to be embarrassed about. Fernandez has been as dominant as any pitcher in baseball for two months. In fact, since June 1, his ERA (1.65) has been better than Clayton Kershaw’s, or any other pitcher’s, for that matter.

The Dodgers didn’t hit him, but they did gradually wear him down, driving up his pitch count so that, by the end of the sixth inning, he had thrown 109. The Marlins are concerned about the 21-year-old’s workload and the sixth was his final inning. But the Dodgers couldn’t make headway against a shaky Marlins bullpen.

(Read full post)

Mark Saxon talks about the return of Brian Wilson, why there is cause for concern with Yasiel Puig, and why Mike Trout's season has been overshadowed.

The funny thing about Wednesday’s thrilling comeback -- in which Andre Ethier tied it in the ninth with a pinch-hit, two-run home run and Yasiel Puig and Adrian Gonzalez won it in the 12th with a couple of doubles -- is how far-from-extraordinary it felt.

You can tell that the Dodgers now expect to win every game, no matter how improbable the circumstances. When the stadium is nearly full that late in a game, you know the fans have caught on.

And beating Matt Harvey and Cliff Lee in one week qualifies as improbable all by itself.

But there was a twist this week. The Dodgers stayed hot, winning five of the six games they played, but they didn’t gain any ground. The Arizona Diamondbacks showed some signs of trying to make this thing a race after all.

SCORING

Hanley Ramirez was just easing his way back into competition after missing more than a week with a jammed shoulder, Puig (.200, .472 OPS) had a rough week and Gonzalez and Carl Crawford had one extra-base between them.

So, what happens? Which unlikely hero will emerge to somehow take up the slack. The names change, but the story seems to stay the same.

This time, it was Juan Uribe, who batted .500 and had a 1.352 OPS for the week. Ethier, of course, did more than his share just with that strange home run (pinch-hit home runs are rare and he never goes to the opposite field).

Oh yeah, and Nick Punto, had some nice moments early, though his playing time figures to shrink dramatically with Ramirez back and manager Don Mattingly likely to ride his everyday players for most of the pennant race.

Grade: B-

DEFENSE

The heart of this team became apparent in the past week if it wasn’t before. It’s about pitching, particularly the Dodgers’ top three starters and their suddenly dominant bullpen. Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu pitched 22 innings between them and allowed just 11 hits and one run.

At times, the Dodgers are surviving -- rather than thriving with -- the back of the rotation, with Chris Capuano a bit wobbly -- but Ricky Nolasco has generally held his own.

The dominance of the Dodgers’ big three has eased the load on the bullpen, which is a key development, but when the relievers pitch, they continue to get the job done. L.A. relievers pitched 16 innings and only allowed one run.

Even reclamation project Carlos Marmol (two scoreless innings) and youngster Chris Withrow (ditto) have chipped in, which could make the activation of veteran Brian Wilson a somewhat difficult roster move.

Grade: A

DECISION-MAKING

Earlier this season, there seemed to be at least a tiny bit of friction pitting manager Don Mattingly and Hanley Ramirez on one side and the team’s medical staff on the other. In Pittsburgh, Mattingly put his foot down and decided Ramirez was just going to play every day though the trainers recommended he spot him a day off here and there. After all, the shortstop had been begging to get back on the field for a few days.

The Dodgers’ lineup flows better when Ramirez is batting cleanup and Puig is in the No. 2 hole, with rare left-right balance that can make it challenging to manage against the Dodgers.

It was otherwise a quiet week for Mattingly, who -- when everyone’s healthy -- can just sit back and watch the engine purr. There will be some challenges in the next couple of weeks with Wilson coming back and Matt Kemp not too far behind.

At long last, we may get to see how the Dodgers manage the four-outfielder conundrum.

Grade: A-

CHEMISTRY QUIZ

We’ve decided to retire the “Grit-Meter.” It just doesn’t seem as relevant now that the Dodgers’ talent has fully blossomed. They’ll need to summon it when they get tested -- and it’s hard to believe they won’t between now and the playoffs -- but right now it doesn’t seem like a central theme.

If you ask most players about teams that function well, they’ll tell you they have fun together in the clubhouse. When it’s quiet and uptight before games, it seems to carry over into the games.

The Dodgers are having fun, with Uribe and Punto, for some reason, the most frequent target of pranks and punch lines.

Brandon Belt was right, of course. You can’t buy team chemistry. But if you wait long enough, sometimes it falls in your lap free of charge.

Grade: A-

STATE OF CONTENTION

At this point, any week that goes by without the Dodgers losing ground is a huge gain. It’s the Diamondbacks who need to force the action, but that’s hard to do when the team ahead of you loses only one game.

The troubling part for Arizona is that 10 of the Dodgers’ next 13 games are against the Miami Marlins, Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. Arizona has to get through four games with the better-than-solid Cincinnati Reds this week before they hit divisional play.

Of course, there are other races for lesser prizes. The Dodgers trail the Atlanta Braves by 3 1/2 games for home-field advantage throughout the NL playoffs. Atlanta’s not showing any signs of giving it up, but if the Dodgers keep playing like this, they might just track them down anyway.

Grade: A-

The Dodgers win at home. They win on the road.

They beat Cy Young winners, up-and-coming aces and back-of-the-rotation starters. They beat National League teams and American League teams, contenders and teams playing out the string.

They beat veteran managers and guys making their debuts (in this case, Ryne Sandberg managing his first game in place of fired Charlie Manuel).

They just keep winning, at a ridiculous rate. After Friday's 4-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies -- spearheaded by Zack Greinke and Hanley Ramirez and at the expense of Cliff Lee -- at Citizens Bank Park, they have gone 24-3 since the All-Star break, 41-8 since June 22 and have won nine straight games. Pick a sample size. They're all impressive.

Since 1900, only one other team -- the 1944 St. Louis Cardinals -- has played this well for this long. The Dodgers have been the best team in baseball for nearly one-third of the season. Unless the Dodgers have a dramatic change of course, their October trajectory is looking surer and surer. They gained a game from the Arizona Diamondbacks and now lead the NL West by a commanding 8½ games.

Greinke hasn't reached the heights of Clayton Kershaw, but he's looking like one of the best No. 2 starters in baseball. He gave up only three hits in a game that suggested his stuff was far from dominant -- he walked four batters and had only three strikeouts. Greinke is 8-1 since June 16.

No matter how many times his season is disrupted, Ramirez just keeps on putting up monster numbers. Manager Don Mattingly has marveled at Ramirez's ability to return from a lengthy layoff and still hit major league pitching with such authority.

Of course, there's major league pitching and then there's Lee. Ramirez has consistently gotten the better of the Phillies' ace. His two-run home run in the fourth inning made him 8-for-15 with three home runs against Lee.

As good as the Dodgers' pitching has been, it could get even better with the addition of veteran reliever Brian Wilson, who threw a simulated game in Philadelphia and could come off the disabled list as soon as Sunday. It certainly will get more colorful.

Wilson plans to wear No. 00. That will be a Dodgers first.

"Every other number was taken," Wilson told reporters.

PHILADELPHIA -- The Los Angeles Dodgers recalled outfielder Scott Van Slyke from Triple-A Albuquerque and optioned shortstop Dee Gordon to Albuquerque before Friday's game against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Van Slyke has batted .242 with six homers and 15 RBIs in 36 games this season. It is his fourth call-up of the season.

Gordon has batted .208 in 25 games this season with Los Angeles.

Yasiel Puig has been the epitome of a five-tool player in his brief two-and-a-half months in the big leagues, displaying home run power, a rocket arm and speed to force the issue on the basepaths.

The most impressive part of his game, though, may be a tool that isn't physical, but mental -- his ability to adjust. Let's take a look at his season so far in segments.

The Explosive Start: June 3–July 2 (.443 BA, .473 OBP in 27 games)

From the day he made his debut, Puig seemingly set some sort of record every night. In his first 27 games he had 15 multihit games, including eight in which he had at least three hits. Both of those marks were the best in baseball during that stretch.

A big reason for his success was that he crushed anything that was in the strike zone, with the exception of anything on the low outside corner, hitting .515 on would-be strikes.

Puig's one weak spot came in his desire to swing at nearly everything, as he chased 38 percent of pitches that were out of the strike zone. He did manage to hit an impressive .316 on those pitches because of his ability to spin on inside pitches. However, opposing pitching coaches definitely took note of the fact that he was willing to fish and that he missed on 44 percent of those swings.

The Slump: July 3–July 22 (.220 BA, .266 OBP in 15 games)

Puig got even more aggressive in his next 15 games, chasing 40 percent of pitches outside of the zone and missing on 60 percent of those swings as he went into a three-week funk.

His problem wasn't just this lack of plate discipline, it was that he went ice cold against pitches in the strike zone, hitting .206. That is more than 300 points lower than what he hit against pitches in the zone in his first month in the majors. One of the low points came when he struck out in all four of his at-bats in a game against the San Francisco Giants.

Part of the drop-off during this stretch was merely standard regression as the BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) Puig had in his first month of .513 was unsustainable. But he also tried to do too much against opposing fastballs.

In Puig's first 27 games, his swing was more compact, allowing him to hit line drives on 15 percent of swings against fastballs in the zone while swinging and missing 15 percent of the time. During his slump, his line-drive rate went down to 5 percent while his miss rate went up to 53 percent.

The Adjustments: Since July 23 (.377 BA, .490 OBP in 21 games)

The past three weeks for Puig have been arguably his most impressive. He might not have numbers as high as he put up in his first month, but that came when there wasn't a book on him yet.

Puig is back to smoking pitches in the strike zone, hitting .458 in his past 21 games. He has also become much more patient at the plate, racking up 16 walks in his past 96 plate appearances after having only seven in the first 176 plate appearances of his career.

His .500 OBP since the start of August is the sixth-highest in baseball. Dodgers fans have plenty to smile about as they have to like their chances to watch their team play well into October.

Do the Dodgers ever lose? Seriously.

They've lost only eight times in eight weeks. They've gained 17 games in the standings in eight weeks. They've gone from 12 games under .500 to 20 games over .500 in eight weeks.

There's a word for that, you know: Impossible.

Well, just about. So let's take a look at how impossible (or close) it really is:

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LOS ANGELES – “It has to be destiny,” Skip Schumaker said. “There’s no other way to explain it.”

You would think the Los Angeles Dodgers’ utility man would have blurted that out after one of the Dodgers’ startling comebacks this past week. The improbable became routine for the Dodgers this past week, prompting Vin Scully to rename the team’s stadium “The Magic Castle.”

In fact, Schumaker made that comment to ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark a few minutes after his former team, the St. Louis Cardinals, won the 2011 World Series.

The three Dodgers who were a part of that Cardinals run -- Schumaker, Nick Punto and hitting coach Mark McGwire -- talk about it these days. They’re getting an eerily similar feeling with their current team.

Two teams with high expectations were battered by injuries and in the process of running themselves into the ground when suddenly they lurched back to life and became unstoppable forces.

As we know, the Dodgers looked out of the race in June, 9½ games out of first place and 12 games under .500. Two years ago, the Cardinals became the first team to win a World Series after being 10½ games out of a playoff spot on Aug. 25 or later.

“We were in disarray for most of the year, we had major injuries for most of the year, we made a trade and, all of a sudden, things blended in, that clubhouse came together,” McGwire said. “Everybody’s roles were defined and it just sort of took off.

“It’s more than a feeling. You see it happening.”

On the Dodgers, McGwire thinks, it took three months for players to feel comfortable in their roles, to be at home with each other in the clubhouse. He includes himself. His popularity among Dodgers fans was low and sinking when the Dodgers were one of the most anemic teams in baseball three months ago.

“I had anxiety,” McGwire said. “You want everyone to get off to a great start, but it was like we were playing with the deck that wasn’t dealt to us, with a bunch of injuries and then guys coming back from injuries who were trying to find it.”

Like manager Don Mattingly, McGwire has looked a lot smarter since June 22, with the Dodgers playing .833 baseball since that time.

The most tangible explanation for the instant change of direction was generated around the batter’s box and on the bases. Their offensive improvement has followed a steady path.

In April, they scored the second-fewest runs in the National League. In May, they moved up to ninth. By June, they slipped into eighth. July, they were third. This month, they’re second.

While going 23-3 since the All-Star break, the Dodgers have had the most potent offense in the NL, having scored 130 runs in 26 games. That’s without Hanley Ramirez for nine games and without Matt Kemp for all but one game.

“When we get those two back, we definitely feel like the sky’s the limit for us,” Carl Crawford said. “Those are impact players.”

When you lose a guy like Ramirez -- who returned to the lineup Wednesday -- and a guy nicknamed “The Little Pony” (Punto) fills in seamlessly, you know you’re going good. With Ramirez out, Punto batted .450 with six RBIs.

When you lose a guy like Kemp and can replace him with a player like Yasiel Puig, you might just be better than people thought.

The Dodgers are so confident these days, they feel these historic accomplishments they’ve been rattling off lately -- becoming the first team in 71 years to win 40 of 48 games -- could be only the warm-up act.

“We haven’t even played with the team we were supposed to be and that’s what’s really the exciting thing,” McGwire said. “Matt’s going to be fresh, Andre [Ethier] is getting rest, Hanley’s been getting rest. We’ve been winning because the guys know their roles. It’s a comfort factor.”

The word “roles” may not adequately capture what many of the Dodgers were searching for back in April, May and June. Identity might be more like it. Puig must have wondered what the organization thought about him after it sent him to Double-A Chattanooga after he’d hit .517 in spring training. Punto probably had some self-doubts after a dreadful season in Boston. Crawford was coming off a serious injury and also had a lot to prove after a miserable stay with the Red Sox.

Kemp and Ethier seemed to feel the pressure of living up to big contracts and being the holdover hitting stars from the previous regime.

Once Puig and Ramirez got the offense moving in the right direction, everyone else seemed to relax into their places. McGwire said that’s exactly what happened in St. Louis after the Cardinals traded Colby Rasmus for pitchers Edwin Jackson, Marc Rzepczynski and Octavio Dotel.

The Dodgers settled in two months earlier than the Cardinals, which either leaves more time to gain steam or opens them up to peaking too soon.

“At first, everybody’s trying to feel each other out,” McGwire said. “That clubhouse now is united.”

And a united and powerful front is difficult to beat.

LOS ANGELES -- The entire dugout erupted, players throwing up their arms and jumping in the air.

Matt Kemp has barely played in this stretch, but he was as loud as anybody. He screamed and ran the length of the dugout to where manager Don Mattingly was standing. Clayton Kershaw yelled and jumped off the top dugout step toward the bench.

Yasiel Puig ran onto the field to get a quick hug from Andre Ethier, who nearly took off Mattingly's hand with his high-five.

And that was just the tying run.

Ethier's dramatic pinch-hit blast tied it in the ninth, and then the Dodgers beat the New York Mets 5-4 in the 12th for their eighth straight victory.

Puig threw up his arms again about an hour later, after his grounder up the middle glanced off diving shortstop Omar Quintanilla and trickled into center field. Puig kept running, beating a bad throw from Juan Lagares, then getting to his knees and thrusting his arms skyward in joy.

Adrian Gonzalez doubled him home, squibbing the ball inside the third-base line.

The Dodgers' energy is practically impossible to resist right now, coming at teams in waves. They did it again, wiping away a bunch of listless innings with a couple of magical ones to win their eighth straight game.

Since July 10, the Dodgers are 4-4 when trailing entering the ninth. Before that, they were 0-37.

"Here, nothing is impossible," Puig said in Spanish.

As dozens of reporters poured into the Dodgers' clubhouse, veteran utility man Jerry Hairston Jr. urged them to talk to the team's relievers. The bullpen once again shut down an opponent, pitching seven scoreless innings to set the stage for those late jolts of life.

The Dodgers have been taking their 70-and-up-year-old fans on a trip down memory lane with their hot play. They are the first team since the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals to win as many as 40 games in a 48-game stretch.

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