LOS ANGELES — For the rest of the National League West, the view is very familiar.
The Dodgers reached this week’s All-Star break with the best record in the National League and a 10-game lead over their division. It’s the seventh time in the past 10 full seasons that they lead the division at the break, and the third time in the past five full seasons when that lead was over seven games.
“They’ve been doing it for 20 years. That’s no surprise,” Manny Machado of the second-place San Diego Padres said at the All-Star Game this week, exaggerating by a decade. “Us, if we want to get to where we want to get to, we’ve got to go through them. There’s no question. No question at all.”
