Dodgers looking up at rest of NL West

Fourteen games into a 162-game season is a relatively small sampling.

But it's still a little unnerving that the Dodgers, reigning National League champions and five consecutive times NL West Division champs, are in last place in the division at 5-9 going into tonight's game in San Diego.

Twelve of the first 14 games have been against divison rivals San Francisco.and Arizona. The Dodgers have split with the Giants but the Diamondbacks had rattled off five straight over the Dodgers before Clayton Kershaw stopped the bleeding yesterday with a seven-inning, two-hit performance in a 7-2 victory.

Kershaw struck out 12 while Arizona's Zack Godley struggled with control, walking six over four innings. Kershaw relied heavily on his slider as an out pitch and was putting up a string of zeroes until Paul Goldschmidt took him deep.

Chris Taylor sparked the offense with a homer, double and three RBI and Yasiel Puig contributed with a two-run single to pace the Dodgers.

The win snapped a three-game losing streak and 11-game regular season skid against Arizona.

Of course, sandwiched in that regular season slump against Arizona was a three-game sweep by the Dodgers in the 2017 NLCS.

LA's path back to the World Series gets more difficult as the days go by. Arizona and Colorado are 11-4 and 9-8 respectively while the Padres, Giants and Dodgers are about five games off the early pace.

On the injury front, Logan Forsythe joined Justin Turner on the DL with shoulder inflammation, which means Chase Utley, Kike Hernandez and Kyle Farmer figure to get more playing time.