Manny Being Manny? Dodgers schedule favorable without him

Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension brings up an interesting point for teams attempting to catch the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.

After the San Francisco Giants play a three-game series this weekend in LA, remaining NL Worst teams won’t be able to beat (or lose) to the Dodgers for quite awhile head-to-head.

The Dodgers have 12 straight games out of the division before a three-game series at Colorado, then it’s four games at the Chicago Cubs before LA comes back home to host the Arizona Diamondbacks in a three-game series.

In all, the Dodgers will play only 14 of their 50 games sans Manny vs. the NL West.

So, how’s that for scheduling? (Could be tough on the Dodgers, since they seem to play much better vs. the NL West.)

Even before the Manny situation, the MLB schedule was once again quite bizarre.

After all, the Giants play six games in LA the first five weeks of the season vs. their fierce rivals. In the final 21 weeks, the Giants only come to Dodgers Stadium once again on Sept. 11-13.

In fact, after the teams play Sept. 18-20 in San Francisco, they don’t even meet again during the final two weeks of the season. How’s that for head-to-head competition between arguably the two best teams in the NL West?

Last season, the Dodgers played nine September games against the weak San Diego Padres … winning seven.

Any wonder why the Dodgers won the NL West?

This time, western division teams will still be seeing Manny a vast majority of the time that they play the Dodgers.

And that may not be good for anybody trying to catch the runaway Dodgers without Manny until he returns July 3 in … of all places … San Diego.

Padres aren't even best of the worst

Remember back when we all thought the NL West might be Major League Baseball’s strongest division?

Come to find out, it is actually the weakest division in MLB.

Sure, the Arizona Diamondbacks got off to a great start; but that was only because they were playing fellow NL West teams.

As the season has progressed, the division could just as well change its name to the NL Worst.

That being said, consider the records of each NL West team going into this weekend in games played outside of the division:

Arizona 10-16
Los Angeles 15-18
San Francisco 10-22
Colorado 13-12
Padres 13-19

Overall, that’s a cumulative record of just 61-87 in games outside of the NL West.

This is such a reminder of 2005, when the Padres won the West with an 82-80 record. They lost 12 of 13 games at one point that season but hardly lost any ground because everybody else in the division was losing, too. Ditto the Diamondbacks in 2008.

May the best of the worst win the division!