Trav's Thoughts

My Dodgers won in the 13th inning last night on an Andre Ethier 2-run homer to push their NL West lead to 5 games over Colorado. Thanks again to the Giants for beating the Rockies.

And the magic number to win the division is 12. For those of you who don't understand the terminology, a magic number is the combination of wins and losses it takes for a team to win its division. In this case, it's a combination of Dodger wins and/or Colorado losses. Some standings have it noted in a column next to wins and losses as "E#", which stands for elimination number.

Not much of a magic number you say, with 16 games to play?

Well, consider that 12 is also the magic number for the Yankees and Phillies to win their divisions. Detroit's is 14, the Angels' is 13, and the Cardinals' is 10.

So there is still quite a bit of work to do. All I know is that today, the Dodgers are up 5 and that means that if they maintain that lead, or even just a 4 game lead, then the Rockies can't catch them even with a sweep in the last 3 game series of the regular season.

I'm not ready for a victory dance yet, but I'm getting close!