Happy Monday, all.
Let's get right to it.
Good morning to everyone but especially to...
THE NL DIVISION LEADERS: THE DODGERS, CARDINALS AND METS
The Padres made a ton of noise at the trade deadline, but the Dodgers let their play do the talking, earning an emphatic sweep of San Diego -- capped off by a 4-0 shutout -- in one of the most highly anticipated series of the season.
The Dodgers are now 8-2 against the Padres, so this was nothing new, writes MLB scribe Matt Snyder.
Snyder: "The Dodgers are... the superior team. No one paying attention would have said otherwise. With the series sweep, they open up a 15 1/2 game lead in the NL West. At 75-33, they have the best record in baseball. They are on pace to win a franchise-record 113 games. On top of all that, yes, they still totally own the Padres. Not that they should have needed to remind everyone, but the weekend series strongly drove the point home. "The Cardinals also produced one of the most impressive sweeps of the season. St. Louis finished a three-game sweep of the Yankees with a dramatic 12-9 win Sunday and became the first team to sweep the Yankees in a series of at least three games this season. Their winning streak is up to a season-high seven games.
In all three games against New York, the hero wasn't even on the roster two weeks ago.
As MLB guru Mike Axisa notes, the hot streak puts St. Louis atop the NL Central. Since the trade deadline, the Cardinals are 6-0 while the Brewers are 1-5. That's turned a two-game deficit in the division into a two-game lead for the Cardinals, who host Milwaukee this coming weekend.
And finally, the Mets didn't quite earn a sweep, but they got the next-best thing, winning four out of five games against the Braves and seeing Jacob deGrom take a perfect game into the sixth inning in just his second appearance this season. He was his typical, filthy self, Matt writes.
Snyder: "His average fourseam fastball was 99.1 miles per hour and he topped 100 on more than a handful of pitches. His top velocity reading? A cool 101.6. Of his 33 sliders, 20 induced swings and a whopping 18 were swing-and-misses. For those unaware, a 90 percent whiff rate on any pitch at the big-league level is unheard of. The league leaders are generally close to 70 percent."
