
Lucas Stevenson/MLB.com
The moment the final out of the Dodgers’ fourth consecutive victory came Wednesday, I posted a tweet comparing their record this year to last year: 8-9 after 17 games, with only the slightest difference in the standings.
I had a bit of wiggle room. The 2017 Dodgers also began the season 8-10, 9-11 and 10-12. So there was a decent shot that the 2018 Dodgers, even after their 4-9 stumble out of the gate, would match up with their ancestral counterparts from 365 days of yore.
Of course, after the 10-12 opening, the 2017 Dodgers not only won 10 of their next 12 games but ultimately went on a historic 71-24 run that no Dodger team may ever match again, finishing with a 108-54 record and a trip to the seventh game of the World Series. So there was no further editorializing for me in the tweet. No analysis of how the 2017 and 2018 teams got to 8-9, no projection of whether this year’s bunch would any way match last year’s. People who read me or follow me on Twitter know I tend to be an optimist about the Dodgers, but I’m aware of where that can go wrong, as this tweet earlier this week about the 2005 Dodgers shows.
In case you’ve forgotten: 12-2 at the start of the ’05 season, 71-91 at the finish.
Anyway, that made the responses to Wednesday’s 8-9 tweet interesting, and kind of a window into the diverse sensibilities of Dodger fans.
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