LOS ANGELES — It was touted as the biggest series of the month. It was billed as a potential passing of the torch, with the San Diego Padres threatening to win the National League West for the first time in 19 years.
Instead, Sunday’s finale ended in a three-game sweep — and a relatively convincing one, at that.
The Dodgers might be staggered, but until someone knocks them out, they remain the defending division and World Series champions.
Still missing several key contributors, the Dodgers recovered from their worst stretch of the season to play their best series since taking three out of four during a mid-June matchup. Their opponent back then? The Padres, of course.
It remains too early to say the Dodgers have returned to being overwhelming favorites for another NL West title. Yes, they flipped a one-game deficit into a two-game lead. But both teams have close to a quarter of a season left to play. And they will soon meet again, beginning this Friday in San Diego.
In the meantime, here’s what we learned from the weekend:
The Dodgers don’t want there to be an ‘on’ switch. It’s flipped in that direction, though
The Dodgers were playing ugly baseball before the Padres came to town. Their focus was lacking. The types of miscues they pride themselves on taking advantage of, they were committing. Their offense disappeared for prolonged periods with uncompetitive at-bats, and their pitching staff wasn’t able to execute strike one often enough.
Don’t run on Will! pic.twitter.com/eqBtByalnW
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 17, 2025
They remained cautiously optimistic that facing a division foe, and suddenly trailing in the standings, would be enough to ignite a new level of focus. It worked. They reversed roles with a sloppy Padres crew that ran into almost as many outs on the bases (four) as it scored total runs (six).
“I hate saying there’s a switch you can flip on and off,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s a dangerous way to live.”
If there is one, the Dodgers have found the right time to flip it.
The Dodgers are in the Padres’ heads
Even if this isn’t true, it looks like it is. That’s an issue for a team that plays its best baseball with a healthy amount of swagger.
The Padres arrived at Dodger Stadium this weekend after winning 14 of their last 17 games. Fortified by a blockbuster trade deadline, they appeared as complete as they’d been all season. They had excelled in all facets during a convincing, three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants.
Then, they were swept by a short-handed Dodgers team that had just fallen to 0-6 against the Los Angeles Angels. The Padres consistently beat themselves in what was billed as the biggest series of the year. Their failure to execute included a four-walk inning by Dylan Cease, missed catches by Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill, and three unsuccessful stolen-base attempts in the span of two innings. Saturday’s two-way debacle might have been San Diego’s worst performance of the year.
After two strong starts to begin the month, Dylan Cease lasted just 3 1/3 innings against the Dodgers, allowing five runs (three earned). (Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
When the self-combustion was over, at least for this weekend, the Padres had lost the season series, dropping to 2-8 this season against a Dodgers club that still isn’t at full strength. Including the final two games of the 2024 National League Division Series, when they failed to score a single run, the Padres have lost 10 of their last 12 meetings against L.A.
Starting pitching could be a major problem for San Diego, now and in October
Which starters can the Padres trust over the final weeks of a pennant race, let alone in the postseason?
At the moment, it’s certainly not Cease, who has struggled to find consistency since the NLDS. It’s difficult to have much more confidence in Yu Darvish, given his age, ERA and history of elbow trouble. Nick Pivetta has been the rock of the rotation, but he’s made only three career playoff appearances. Michael King, the team’s Opening Day starter, has spent virtually all of this summer on the injured list. Time could soon tell how much the Padres miss rookie starter Ryan Bergert, who, despite his inexperience, continues to impress for the Kansas City Royals.
Having the league’s deepest bullpen helps, but a combination of ineffective starting pitching and intermittent offense — more on this later — tends to keep those high-leverage relievers out of the game. The Padres need King to return to action later this month. Whenever he comes back, they’ll desperately need him to stay on the mound.
Starting pitching is suddenly the biggest strength of this Dodgers team
So much of the Dodgers’ bullpen woes this season can be traced back to one ugly metric: They’ve had to throw more innings than any relief unit in baseball. That ties directly to a starting rotation that struggled to accumulate innings or stay healthy in the early part of the season.
Tyler was cruising. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/64oaFbT4bo
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) August 17, 2025
This weekend, however, reflects a rotation that is finally the group the organization envisioned when spending so lavishly the last couple of offseasons. Tyler Glasnow’s two runs over five innings Sunday gave the Dodgers a total of 17 innings and just three runs allowed from their starters this series. They have their dream postseason rotation intact with Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Glasnow, with Clayton Kershaw continuing to show his vintage form despite a fastball that sits around 89 mph.
This is the biggest separator from this year’s potential Dodgers team to the one that won it all last October. The Dodgers might actually be able to ride their starting pitching, while hoping a reduced workload and renewed health are all it’ll take to get their bullpen back to the formidable unit it was last postseason.
The Padres fell far short of maximizing their offense. They might not be optimizing it, either
Fernando Tatis Jr. hasn’t homered in his past 97 plate appearances, the longest such drought of his career. Luis Arraez’s three-hit Sunday raised his OPS this month to a mere .659. Machado, who’s never finished a calendar month with fewer than five RBIs, has driven in one run in August. These are the top three hitters in a lineup that has mostly remained fixed since the trade deadline.
Meanwhile, since he was acquired at the trade deadline, Ramón Laureano has provided a team-leading 1.082 OPS; he has spent most games batting sixth or seventh. Another newcomer, 2025 All-Star Ryan O’Hearn, has started nine of 15 games. Gavin Sheets has taken only nine at-bats this month, supplying two doubles and a single. Like Arraez, O’Hearn and Sheets are lefty hitters, albeit lefty hitters with significantly more pop. Both of them should probably be playing more. They might in the coming days; Merrill is day to day with a left ankle injury.
You can also make a case that Laureano should move up in the order. After Sunday’s game, manager Mike Shildt did not rule out that possibility, but he did not sound prepared to enact a major shakeup. None of it will matter if Tatis and Machado, the team’s biggest stars, don’t turn it on.
“We need the guys at the top to continue to do what they’re capable of doing,” Shildt said.
The Dodgers’ success against the Padres has already made a season-defining difference
The Dodgers are still, as the late Padres owner Peter Seidler said in 2022, “the dragon up the freeway.”
For as much as the Padres have made up ground in the division, they’ve squandered just about every chance they’ve had against the Dodgers. The Dodgers have played .800 baseball against San Diego this season, already clinching the season series and securing a season-long tiebreaker in the process. The Dodgers’ two-game lead in the division is now effectively a three-game lead as a result, which could be critical if this race remains close in the stretch run.
And for as close as the Padres have come to trying to topple the Dodgers, this is a trend going back to last season, as the Dodgers have taken each of the last five series — regular season and postseason, when the Dodgers overcame a 2-1 NLDS deficit — against their neighbors to the south.
(Photo: Harry How / Getty Images)