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LOS ANGELES -- Sunday’s 2-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies began to take on a spring training feel, with starting pitchers piggy-backing each other's outings, with Triple-A players all over the field in the final innings and nobody seeming too worked up about the result.

When you can afford to play like that in Game 162, you’re usually in pretty good shape.

The meaningful action came in the middle of the game, when the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Chicago Cubs to sew up the National League’s top seed, locking in the Dodgers’ first-round playoff opponent: the Atlanta Braves.

The Dodgers went 2-5 against the Braves this season. They got swept in a three-game series in Atlanta and split a four-game series at home, but both of those series came during the Dodgers’ dark days, when they were beset with injuries, and only die-hard Dodger fans had ever heard of Yasiel Puig.

One of the things the Dodgers will begin to find out Thursday, when they open the National League Division Series at Turner Field, will be whether their sluggish September will impact their hopes of playing deep into October.

The season ended with a whimper, with the Dodgers scoring two runs the past two games against the team with the worst ERA in the National League.

That reflected a longer-term slowdown. The Dodgers were the hottest team in baseball until they got swept in a three-game series in Cincinnati. After Sept. 5, the Dodgers went 9-14 to end their season. In many of those games, manager Don Mattingly rested more than one of his everyday position players, cognizant of a big division lead and the fragility of his team’s health.

Hyun-Jin Ryu allowed two runs Sunday, somehow working around eight hits, in four innings and finished his rookie season with an even 3.00 ERA. He will pitch Game 3 of the Dodgers’ first-round playoff series at Dodger Stadium next Sunday.

Much of Sunday was about auditions and brush-up work. Ricky Nolasco, who figures to be the Dodgers' Game 4 starter, if they need one, pitched a scoreless inning. So did Chris Capuano, who is bidding to latch onto a job as a reliever coming off a groin injury.

It was a good season for the Dodgers' box office. Sunday was the 29th sellout, the team announced, the most at Dodger Stadium since 1983. They drew 3,743,527 fans on the season, best in baseball.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Barring some unforeseen circumstances -- or perhaps a misguided decision by the Los Angeles Dodgers to go with Ricky Nolasco -- Hyun-Jin Ryu will pitch Game 3 of the Dodgers' first-round playoff series.

If the Dodgers need that game to advance, or even if they need it to stave off elimination, it would appear they'll have the right guy on the mound. Ryu has certainly not looked overtaken by big moments.

Ryu pitched seven strong innings, giving up only four hits and a run in the Dodgers' 2-1 win over the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park on Tuesday. It was certainly not a playoff atmosphere -- the Giants have been playing out the string since August -- but it was a game the Dodgers had to have if they want to maintain hope of opening the playoffs at home. The Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals both won.

Ryu is 14-7 with a 2.97 ERA. Were it not for Miami phenom Jose Fernandez and the Dodgers' own Yasiel Puig, Ryu would have been a walkaway Rookie of the Year winner.

"I've surpassed my initial expectations," Ryu said through an interpreter. "Not that I thought it was going to be easy, but it's been much better than I thought. That's a good thing."

He had lost four of his previous five starts coming into Tuesday, but all four of those losses were quality starts. In a spotlight game in his native Korea, he pitched brilliantly in a Dodgers' win over the Cincinnati Reds and Korean superstar Shin-Soo Choo back in July. He gave up one earned run in his major league debut.

The Dodgers have gone 11-4 in his past 15 starts. Since the All-Star break, Ryu has walked nine batters in 11 starts while striking out 57. He can even hit a little, though his base running isn't exactly graceful.

"We couldn't have asked, really, for anything more," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said.

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The best pitcher in the Japanese league has already lured both Southern California teams across the Pacific.

The Dodgers, like the Angels, have scouted Japanese right-handed pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, according to a source. Tanaka is 21-0 with a 1.24 ERA for the Rakuten Eagles and he could benefit from what is a mediocre crop of free-agent pitchers on the market this fall.

The Dodgers signed a 19-year-old Japanese prospect, Takumi Numata, to a minor-league deal Monday. They likely scouted Tanaka while they were there.

The Dodgers will go into 2014 with Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu in their rotation, but they have some uncertainty beyond that. Ricky Nolasco will be a free agent and Chad Billingsley and Josh Beckett are coming off serious injuries.

Speculation is that teams could have to pay $25 million or more to Tanaka’s team just to win the right to negotiate with him. The Dodgers paid Ryu’s Korean team $26 million before signing him to a six-year, $36 million deal in December.

PHOENIX -- Yasiel Puig is back.

Matt Kemp is back, sort of.

Carl Crawford might be back soon. Hanley Ramirez could be days away. Andre Ethier could be right on Ramirez's heels.

But the Los Angeles Dodgers are looking far from healthy as they try to close out the NL West. Kemp pinch hit in the ninth inning -- the only duty he is yet cleared for -- and struck out to end the game in the Dodgers' 2-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field.

That kept the Dodgers' magic number stuck on 4. It was the team's ninth loss in the past 12 games and fourth loss in a row.

The Dodgers have taken beatings from two hitters in the NL West above all others: San Francisco’s Hunter Pence and the Diamondbacks’ Paul Goldschmidt.

Of course, it’s a bit more excusable in Goldschmidt’s case, since he’s a bona-fide MVP candidate. Goldschmidt hit a two-run home run about 420 feet to center field in the first inning to get Hyun-Jin Ryu’s night started poorly.

After that, Ryu -- as he normally does -- stabilized. In fact, he did more than that, pitching seven scoreless innings after that, retiring 19 straight batters and allowing just one more baserunner the rest of the night.

Ryu had lost three of his past four starts going into Monday, but three of those qualify as quality starts, so it has been more a reflection of diminishing run support.

Arizona starter Trevor Cahill was cruising right along until he walked Ryu leading off the sixth inning. That sent his outing cascading, and he was out of the game four batters later. Cahill gave up a double to deep center field to Nick Punto and walked Mark Ellis on four pitches.

Adrian Gonzalez hit a fly ball to medium-deep left field, but with Ryu running, third-base coach Tim Wallach didn’t take a chance. That proved wise because Cahill walked Puig to force in a run.

The Dodgers have been struggling in the clutch lately -- as they did the last time they were depleted by injuries -- and reliever Josh Collmenter got Cahill out of the jam by striking out A.J. Ellis and shattering Skip Schumaker’s bat for a groundout.

It’s still worth noting: Of all Puig’s exploits this season, the most surprising might be his willingness to draw a walk. He left spring training without a single walk, but he has 32 walks in 92 games for the Dodgers.

LOS ANGELES -- The way the Los Angeles Dodgers looked in the first two games of this series (and the way the Arizona Diamondbacks looked), they figured to be popping the corks off champagne bottles at the nearest possible date.

Make no mistake, it's still coming, but the question now is whether it will flow in Los Angeles or somewhere else. The Dodgers lost to the Diamondbacks 4-1 Wednesday night, keeping their magic number stuck at six. The earliest they can celebrate their first division title in four years is now Sunday, the final home game before a 10-game trip.

Yasiel Puig's highlights -- and one diving stop by Nick Punto -- were the only things worth reliving for Dodgers fans. Puig made a diving catch to take a hit away from Chris Owings in the sixth inning and hit a towering home run in the seventh inning, his 16th.

Puig also discarded the bat in an entertaining fashion, as he often does. He flung it aside with his left hand, dropping it dismissively as if it were too hot to hold.

The Dodgers fell in an early hole behind Hyun-Jin Ryu, pitching for the first time this month. He missed his previous start because of back tightness, and his command wasn't sharp. Arizona bunched three straight singles leading off the game and got off to a 2-0 lead. They tacked on a run in the second and, when he wasn't giving up runs, Ryu was working hard to avoid them.

Ryu gave up 10 hits, the second-highest total of his season, and struck out only one batter. To his credit, he did the best with what he had, somehow getting through six innings.

Ryu's night could have been worse, but Punto dove and stopped an Owings grounder from leaking into right field, saving a run -- at the time -- and minimizing the damage in the second inning.

The Dodgers were facing Arizona's best starting pitcher in 2012. This time Patrick Corbin (14-6) fared better than he had earlier in the year. The Dodgers scored four runs in five innings off Corbin back in June, but Corbin's slider and command were a bit too much for a lineup missing four regulars.

Manager Don Mattingly took advantage of his team's big lead -- as he had done last week in Colorado -- to rest Mark Ellis, Juan Uribe, Carl Crawford and Andre Ethier versus the lefty.

DENVER – Hyun-Jin Ryu has been scratched from Friday’s scheduled start in Cincinnati because of back stiffness and will be replaced by Chris Capuano, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said.

The Dodgers are hoping Ryu can return to pitch Tuesday or Wednesday of next week against Arizona. Mattingly said he doesn't anticipate the injury being a long-term one.

"We're not really concerned," Mattingly said. "Again, we're just being cautious, but no matter what the separation was [in the standings] right now, he wouldn't be pitching Friday. We would make sure he was right before he went out there."

Ryu slid awkwardly into home plate while scoring a run in Friday's game, which may have contributed to the injury. He threw in the bullpen before Tuesday's game and still felt tightness.

Ryu, a Rookie of the Year candidate who signed with the Dodgers in December after pitching in South Korea, is 13-5 with a 3.02 ERA. Capuano is 4-7 with a 4.50 ERA in 21 games.

* Yasiel Puig was not in the starting lineup for a second straight game because of soreness in his upper right calf. Mattingly says he expects Puig to play Friday night and that he could pinch hit Wednesday.

* Matt Kemp had 13 at-bats in a simulated game in Arizona and Mattingly said he went 5-for-9 with four walks. Then again, there were no fielders, so that's kind of open to interpretation. Kemp is on the disabled list because of a sprained left ankle. He will stay in Arizona through the end of the week and won't re-join the Dodgers until at least Monday.

Here are lineups for Wednesday's game in Colorado, with four more regulars getting a day off:

Dodgers

1. Jerry Hairston Jr. LF
2. Nick Punto 2B
3. Hanley Ramirez SS
4. Michael Young 1B
5. Scott Van Slyke RF
6. A.J. Ellis C
7. Juan Uribe 3B
8. Skip Schumaker CF
9. Edinson Volquez RHP

Rockies

1. Dexter Fowler CF
2. Josh Rutledge 2B
3. Troy Tulowitzki SS
4. Michael Cuddyer RF
5. Wilin Rosario C
6. Todd Helton 1B
7. Nolan Arenado 3B
8. Charlie Blackmon LF
9. Jorge De La Rosa LHP

DENVER -- Just as the Los Angeles Dodgers envisioned when they agreed to pay Zack Greinke all that money back in December, he is leading the league in one category and Clayton Kershaw is leading it in another. The only oddity is that Greinke leads the NL in batting average and Kershaw leads it in RBIs.

OK, so they also are all over the pitching leaderboards, but the hitting part has been the pleasant surprise. They knew both pitchers were good athletes who could handle the bat, but they didn’t expect actual production, sometimes even game-changing production.

After his single (and stolen base) in Sunday’s game, Greinke is batting a league-high .347. Kershaw swatted a pair of singles in the Dodgers’ 10-8 win over the Colorado Rockies on Monday, including a key two-RBI hit, and he has 10 RBIs this season, most in the league, while batting .176.

Hitting has become a theme for Dodgers pitchers this year. Even the new guy, Edinson Volquez -- who will start Wednesday’s game, the team announced -- is among 14 NL pitchers with a home run. Hyun-Jin Ryu is hitting a more-than-respectable .200 (with a triple!).

Dodgers pitchers collectively are batting .177. Outfielder Roger Berardina of the Philadelphia Phillies has managed to get 197 at-bats this year while hitting .173.

They spend most of their time consulting pitching coach Rick Honeycutt, but apparently they’ve spent a little time in the cage with Mark McGwire as well.

“Ryu and Greinke rake, so I’m just trying to keep up,” Kershaw said. “Obviously, Greinke’s in another world right now. As long as guys are on base and we’re getting some runs in and moving that lineup over, just keep going. Who knows how long it’ll last.”

Kershaw was feeling pretty good after he gave the Dodgers a 5-3 lead in the fifth inning, but it was an uncharacteristically poor day for him on the mound. He gave it right back the next half-inning. He allowed a career-high 11 hits though he picked up his 14th win.

In his previous start, Kershaw was pulled in the sixth inning and, even in his start before that, when he pitched eight scoreless innings in Miami, manager Don Mattingly thought he was a little antsy and on edge.

Kershaw (14-8) said he hasn’t felt any different lately and he was probably due to be bailed out by the offense for once, given the nearly criminal lack of run support he has gotten all season. He still leads the majors with a 1.89 ERA. And this is Coors Field we’re talking about.

“It’s always good to get some hits, especially if you’re not going to pitch good,” Kershaw said.

LOS ANGELES -- Somebody asked Yasiel Puig how he had received the message from two days earlier.

"Which message?" Puig said in Spanish.

Good point. Was it the text message from his mom, the voice mail from his friend or the 45 new email messages in his inbox? You must admit, there are a lot of messages nowadays.

One of the beautiful things about the entire Puig experience is that, no matter how much drama swirls around him, how much attention he gets on TV, the Web, the Twitter-verse, the newspapers, radio, telegraph, messages in a bottle and word on the street, he doesn't seem to care.

He had a bemused smile when he described his approach to Friday.

"I just came to play baseball, like I always do," Puig said.

And he's going to play it, essentially, his way. That's pretty clear by now. Should we all just get out of the way and watch where it goes?

The Dodgers took early batting practice Friday afternoon. Among the participants was 10-year veteran Adrian Gonzalez, but not Puig, who has yet to polish off his third month in the major leagues.

It's easy to find fault with that. Puig had been pulled after four innings in the previous game for loafing in right field following a bad at-bat. Showing up for early work Friday might have shown that he was properly chastened. But Puig doesn't seem the type to be deferential, and once again he had the perfect response. He produced.

The last time Don Mattingly benched him, Puig hit the decisive home run after entering as a defensive replacement. This time, he went 4-for-5 with an RBI, a double and two stolen bases in the Dodgers' 9-2 win over the San Diego Padres. He was in the middle of two of the Dodgers' three scoring rallies. This was a more complete answer to his critics, more impressive than one swing on a first pitch in Miami.

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LOS ANGELES -- During the Los Angeles Dodgers' incredible summer, which has seen them go from nearly the worst record in baseball to nearly the best record in baseball, Vin Scully has started calling Dodger Stadium the "Magic Castle."

No opponent lead has been safe against the Dodgers at home, as they have won in walk-off fashion time after time, including erasing a six-run deficit and scoring four runs in the ninth inning to beat the Tampa Bay Rays two weeks ago.

On Saturday afternoon, the Boston Red Sox finally put a dent into the recent magic, beating the Dodgers 4-2 despite a late push by L.A. to make another magical comeback.

The Dodgers came into the game having not given up a run in their past 26 innings dating to the first inning Wednesday against Miami. But on Saturday, they gave up four to start the game. Mike Napoli started things off when he singled to center and brought home Shane Victorino. Then Jonny Gomes hit a three-run homer to give Boston all the scoring they would need to win their first game at Dodger Stadium.

Hyun-Jin Ryu, who came into the game with a 1.78 ERA at home, gave up those four runs in the first inning, which are more than in any home game for him this season. Boston's first inning stands out as an aberration two games into the series, but it was all the Red Sox needed to win the game. In the first inning, the Sox hit .500 with a home run and four runs. During the rest of the series so far, they are hitting worse than .100 with 20 strikeouts.

Sunday is the one-year anniversary of the nine-player blockbuster deal that brought Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto to Los Angeles, and Gonzalez and Crawford nearly teamed up to help the Dodgers claim another comeback win at home. Gonzalez doubled to deep center in the eighth inning with two outs to score Crawford and Yasiel Puig. Gonazlez, who is now hitting an incredible .435 with runners in scoring position and two outs this season, and Hanley Ramirez, however, were left stranded after A.J. Ellis struck out swinging to end the inning and the Dodgers' last best chance to win the game.

The hit broke up a 0-for-6 drought for Gonzalez in the series against his former team. Crawford sat out the game but was brought in to pinch-hit and now has two runs in the series.

Despite the loss, the Dodgers still have won 46 of their past 57 games and have a 10-game lead atop the NL West.

MIAMI -- The Cincinnati Reds had to endure the one-two punch, as did the St. Louis Cardinals, Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Next up, the Miami Marlins, the team that has scored the fewest runs in the National League (by a fairly healthy margin). Good luck, Miami. They get to experience the joys of dealing with Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw in back-to-back games.

Of all the dazzling positives the Dodgers have shown during this stretch of .811 baseball that has now lasted exactly two months, the one that figures to have the most direct impact on their October hopes is the quite distinct, quite competent pairing at the top of their rotation.

Greinke toys with an opposing lineup and then Kershaw simply attacks it. The Dodgers and Cardinals are the only teams in the National League with two starting pitchers who have sub-3.00 ERAs. The Dodgers are the only team in baseball with three.

Greinke (12-3) lowered his ERA to 2.91 with eight dominant innings in the Dodgers' 4-1 win at Marlins Park on Wednesday night. Kershaw gets the Thursday afternoon game. What makes the Marlins' task even harder is that they have to try to get their bats going with different people swinging them.

The combination of a power right-hander like Greinke and a power left-hander like Kershaw forces opposing managers to shuffle their lineups to try to get better -- or, perhaps, the term is "less-unfavorable" -- matchups.

When Greinke stood at a podium at Dodger Stadium last Dec. 11 for his introductory news conference, this is the kind of synergy everyone envisioned.

"Kershaw is on such another level that, if you try to do better than him, you get your feelings hurt pretty much," Greinke said. "I just try to be consistent, make good pitches. I've had some breaks really."

When someone suggested Greinke has been on a better run lately than in his 2009 Cy Young season, he said, "I think that's bad information." By the same token, to attribute his pitching to "breaks" is probably overly humble. In his last three starts, he has given up one run. In those starts, hitters are batting .190 against him.

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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.

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LOS ANGELES -- Somebody asked Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly after Tuesday night's 4-2 win over the New York Mets how tough it will be to take Nick Punto out of his lineup Wednesday.

"It's pretty easy, honestly," Mattingly said.

Punto might be batting .458 in his last nine games -- including his big two-run double off Matt Harvey on Tuesday -- but he was just keeping the spot warm for Hanley Ramirez, who might have been the most dangerous hitter alive for about a month before he jammed his shoulder chasing a foul popup.

Those words, spoken about a different player, at a different time, could have furrowed some brows, maybe even stirred a bit of tension between the manager and a player. Punto's not that guy, and this is not that moment.

And Punto's used to the grief. A few days ago, he had to hear about teammate Skip Schumaker comparing him to actor Danny DeVito because of his squat build. Then, the Dodgers took it to another level when they arranged for an on-field meeting between DeVito and Punto before Monday's game.

After Punto's home run, the video board showed DeVito, who turned around and pointed to his No. 7 Punto jersey.

Punto and fellow veteran Juan Uribe seem to come in for the most grief around these guys. The Dodgers have been letting Uribe have it ever since Evan Longoria got him with the hidden-ball trick Saturday. Somebody with the Dodgers talked the kid who ran onto the field with Uribe before Tuesday's game into tagging him with his autographed ball.

"There are a lot of characters in this clubhouse," Punto said. "There's a lot of ribbing that goes on, all day long."

If the Dodgers were still losing the way they were back in April, May and June, "characters" might not have been the first word on the tip of everybody's tongues. Goofballs? Screw-ups? It's a lot easier to get away with all this slapstick stuff when you play .830 baseball for nearly two months.

No Dodgers team has ever stayed on a roll quite this long. The last team in baseball to be this hot for as long as 47 games was the 1951 New York Giants. Those Giants probably had a good time, too, even without the joys of Twitter.

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LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Dodgers are on one of those rolls in which nothing -- not even simple logic -- can slow them down.

With an injury-riddled lineup playing against one of the most intimidating pitchers in baseball, the Dodgers beat the New York Mets 4-2 Tuesday night for their seventh straight win.

The numbers are becoming staggering. The Dodgers are undefeated in their past 16 series. They have won 39 of their past 47 games. They're the first team since the 1951 New York Giants to win at such a high percentage over a 47-game stretch.

And the how is becoming as interesting as the what.

There aren't many mismatches more glaring than Matt Harvey versus Nick Punto, the National League's second-most dominant starting pitcher against the 5-foot-9 career utility guy, who turns 36 in November.

The way the Dodgers are going, they win the unfavorable matchups as frequently as they win those in their favor.

The Dodgers weren't making much headway against Harvey, but he also wasn't dominating them by the time Punto came up with runners on in the fifth inning. Aside from the first inning, they were hitting balls hard, just to the wrong places. Harvey got double plays to escape trouble in the second, third and fourth innings.

The Dodgers finally made something stick in that fifth, after A.J. Ellis walked and Juan Uribe singled. Punto slapped a ball into the left-field corner, scoring Ellis easily and, after Eric Young Jr. had to retrieve it deep in the corner, Uribe lumbered home.

Punto has been filling in for slugging shortstop Hanley Ramirez (and batting .450 in his stead) for the past nine games, over which the Dodgers have gone 8-1. They also played Tuesday without Andre Ethier, who met with a doctor about his tight left calf.

Ellis, who ranks second on the Dodgers with 42 RBIs, later singled up the middle to drive in two more runs against Harvey.

It wouldn't have mattered if Hyun-Jin Ryu hadn't pitched as well as he did. Things started off slowly. Juan Lagares homered and Daniel Murphy lined a single to left. But Ryu got rolling after that. His only real challenge was a two-on, one-out jam in the fourth, but he got Justin Turner to pop up and John Buck to ground out to end it.

ST. LOUIS -- As much as the Los Angeles Dodgers want to pretend this series was just another series, and the end of a long two-city, eight-game trip, it was more than that.

The St. Louis Cardinals are not just any other team, and Busch Stadium has not been just any other ballpark for the Dodgers.

Thursday's 5-1 win gave the Dodgers only their second series win at Busch Stadium over the past decade. In fact, before Wednesday's 13-4 blowout win, the Dodgers were just 9-24 over the past 10 seasons in St. Louis.

The Dodgers know they're a good team, but nothing drove home the fact that they are a legitimate World Series contender now more than their 3-1 series win over St. Louis this week.

"This is a good team," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said before the game. "We came into St. Louis knowing this is a good club over there. That's a team that's won a world championship a couple years ago and was one game away from getting there last year. We see their lineup. They're a team that hits with men in scoring position, they score runs and they have good, young position players. You don't come here and mess around or you get your butt beat."

Hyun-Jin Ryu claimed his 11th win of the season, pitching seven innings and giving up five hits and one run, while striking out seven. Ryu now has 22 strikeouts and one walk in his past three starts. Ryu made the start Thursday night with five days rest and is now 6-0 on the season with five days rest.

Adrian Gonzalez got things started in the third inning with a sacrifice fly to left that scored Carl Crawford. A.J. Ellis then homered to left to score Gonzalez and Andre Ethier. Jerry Hairston Jr. put the finishing touches on the win when he singled to center to score Ellis.

No one has benefited more from the trip than Crawford, who started the game 2-for-2 and was 13-for-31 (.419) with six singles and two doubles in the eight games.

Yasiel Puig, who batted .480 on the trip, was 3-for-5 and now has 26 multihit games this season, which places him second on the team despite playing in just 57 games.

Before the game, Hanley Ramirez and Matt Kemp were working out and eyeing their returns, with Ramirez slated to come back next week and Kemp projected to come back this month. The question now is, Where will Kemp play if Puig, Crawford and Ethier are playing well and the Dodgers are winning with that trio in the outfield?

The Dodgers have now won 34 of their past 42 games, their best 42-game stretch since 1953, and have won 17 of their past 18 road games. They now head home for a three-game series at home against the Tampa Bay Rays with a 5½-game lead atop the NL West. Not bad for a team that was 12 games under .500 and in last place in their division on June 21.

"I don't think it's that complicated," Mattingly said. "We're getting good pitching. Our defense has been shored up. We were a bad defensive club for a while, which had a lot to do with playing guys all over the diamond, but we were able to put guys where they were supposed to be, our utility guys become utility guys and the extra guys become guys that play now and then. We just kind of got solid."

In 1924, the Brooklyn Robins' longest road trip took them from New York to St. Louis, less than half as far as their descendants, the Los Angeles Dodgers, often have to venture. Then again, they had to get there by train.

Like that 1924 team, led by Hall of Fame manager Wilbert Robinson, these Dodgers are in a hurry to do some damage on the road. The Dodgers equaled the 89-year-old franchise record by winning their 12th straight road game, this one a 6-2 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.

These days, the Dodgers can win while apparently running at 50 percent capacity.

Pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu labored through his 5 1/3 innings, giving up 11 hits, including four doubles. And the offense -- without Hanley Ramirez and Carl Crawford, who got routine days off -- wasn't exactly explosive. It mostly relied on sloppy Chicago fielding and a bout of wildness by its starting pitcher.

It didn't matter. Ryu is 10-3 and the Dodgers have come out of nowhere to take control of the NL West. Their lead in the division was four games pending the outcome of Friday's Arizona game in Boston. The Dodgers have gone 29-7 since June 21.

The Dodgers wore down Chicago's best starting pitcher, Travis Wood, in a 41-pitch third inning. Wood, who normally has good control, walked four straight batters as the Dodgers took a 3-1 lead. A.J. Ellis, who sees more pitchers per at-bat than all but two hitters in the National League, fell behind 0-and-2 but still worked a bases-loaded walk.

The Dodgers made increasing their on-base percentage an emphasis in the spring and, lately, they have been among the most patient teams in the league. The Dodgers' .327 on-base percentage was fourth in the NL (after St. Louis, Atlanta and Cincinnati) going into Friday's game.

Ryu hasn't just pitched well this season. He also has hit, a shocking development given that the other part of his career was in Korea, which has the designated hitter. Ryu, who pitches with his left hand and hits right-handed, had a leadoff single in the fourth inning and, after some awkward base running, scored a run on Adrian Gonzalez's bloop hit. That was Ryu's ninth hit, putting him second among Dodgers pitchers behind Zack Greinke, who is batting .400.

Mark Ellis, of all people, was ejected from the game in the fourth inning for arguing a pitch around the outside corner with plate umpire Alan Porter. TV replays showed Ellis apparently saying, "That's so bad." Porter also tossed manager Don Mattingly, who has been thrown out of two of the Dodgers' past three games for arguing with umpires.

Ellis had doubled over David DeJesus' head earlier in the game, so his hitting streak remains intact at 13 games.