After walking into Washington to win the opener of their three-game series against the Nats 3-2 Friday night, LA has moved above .500 for the first time since it was 7-6 in mid-April. The Dodgers are 18-5 since hitting rock bottom on June 21, and now find themselves in second in the NL West, just a game and a half back of Arizona, which is spinning its wheels of late, and three games up on the third-place Rockies, who are fading after a nice couple of months.

Losing two of three to the Tribe hurts as Minny has now fallen three games back of the second place Indians, but the Twins have played well enough lately to have extended their lead over the last place Pale Hose.

It’s a big reason why the Twins have gotten off to a better start this season after winning just 10 of their first 36 games last year to bury themselves by May.

All season long we talked about how the O’s were doing it with smoke and mirrors, but today we wanted to highlight one of the team’s real strengths – the bullpen. Without this surprisingly effective collection of relief arms, there’s no way Baltimore would have made the playoffs this year.