Young Dodgers star was on the bench for some playoff games last year but has emerged as front-runner this season for the National League MVP

In hindsight, it seems insane: On the night of Oct. 28, 2018, facing elimination in Game 5 of the World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers sent out a lineup that did not include a healthy Cody Bellinger — a player who, some nine months later, is a front-runner for the National League MVP.

The Dodgers had done the same thing — bench Bellinger, by choice — in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series, Games 2 and 4 of the NL Championship Series and 12 of their 28 games in the final month of the regular season.

Which brings us to the pertinent question of whether the 2019 Dodgers, who visit Nationals Park this weekend for a three-game series, are a demonstrably better team than the one that lost to the Boston Red Sox last fall, their second straight defeat in the World Series. And the quick and obvious answer is: yes, so long as they don't suddenly decide once again to begin divesting themselves of Bellinger's bat.

The (presumed) daily presence of Bellinger, whose father Clay played briefly for the Rochester Red Wings, down the stretch is not the only reason to think, as the regular season heads into its final two months, that the Dodgers are the team to beat in the NL, beginning with the 67-37 record (entering Thursday) that equates to a 104-win pace — leaving them 6 1/2 games clear of their closest NL pursuer, the Atlanta Braves — and the 14 1/2-game lead in the NL West, the largest of any first-place team in the game.

There is also the deepened lineup that leads the NL with an .816 OPS (on-base plus slugging), a 42-point improvement over 2018; the trio of No. 1-type starters in their rotation, with All-Star Game starter Hyun-Jin Ryu and first-time all-star Walker Buehler joining veteran ace Clayton Kershaw; and the subtraction of Yasiel Puig, the polarizing right fielder whose act had worn thin in the Dodgers clubhouse by last fall.

"It's definitely a deeper team, and for me, it's a better team," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said last week, before a game at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park. "And I say that knowing our goal every year is to win a championship. But the reason I say it is the talent - but more so, the experience. Because it's a lot of the same group of players who have been through high stakes baseball for three straight years. That experience is valuable."

In contrast to the topsy-turvy 2017 squad - who endured an out-of-nowhere 1-16 stretch in late August and early September during an otherwise dazzling 104-win season, before falling to the Houston Astros in the World Series - the 2019 Dodgers have been a model of consistency, going 20-12 in March/April, 19-7 in May, 18-10 in June and 10-8 so far in July. They have held a double-digit lead in the West every day since June 16.

And their list of major contributors ranges from some of their oldest players — 36-year-old first baseman David Freese is producing at the best clip of his career (a slash line of .300/.399/.579) — to some of their youngest: in a June series at home against the Colorado Rockies, the Dodgers produced three straight wins on walk-off homers, with each game-winning blast coming from a rookie (Matt Beaty, Alex Verdugo and Will Smith).

Like many contenders, the Dodgers have had trouble with the back end of their bullpen, which has blown 19 saves this season, second-most in the majors behind the New York Mets' 21. But the Dodgers have two opportunities to reinforce their 'pen — the first at next Wednesday's trade deadline, and the second in October, when, recent history would suggest, they will shift starter Kenta Maeda to relief.

"Every team in contention is having the same conversation right now," Roberts said.

But nothing exemplifies the difference, at least on paper, between the last few Dodgers teams and this one quite like the emergence of Bellinger, 24, as baseball's most unstoppable force this side of Mike Trout. Bellinger entered Thursday leading the majors with 6.7 wins above replacement (baseball-reference.com version), percentage points ahead of Trout, and second to Milwaukee's Christian Yelich with a 1.122 OPS (on-base plus slugging). Second in the NL in homers, tied for fourth in RBIs and third in batting average, he has an outside shot at winning the league's first Triple Crown since Joe Medwick in 1937.

And all this from a player who followed up his 2017 rookie of the year campaign with a 2018 regression that saw his slugging percentage (.470) fall by more than 100 points and that saw the Dodgers almost uniformly benching him against lefties, even in the season's most critical moments.

If it seems incredulous that the Dodgers would willingly take a hitter such as Bellinger — the version we know now — out of their lineup last fall, well, they really didn't. In fairness to the Dodgers (for whom lineup construction is largely a collaborative function between the front office and the field staff), 2018 Bellinger and 2019 Bellinger are far different hitters, particularly when it comes to facing lefties — against whom he hit just .226/.305/.376 last year, but is bashing to the tune of .314/.427/.627 this year.

"It's a different year. He's a different guy," Roberts said of Bellinger. "He's performed completely different. I know we're a better team with him in the lineup . . . When he wasn't playing against lefties [down the stretch] last year, no one said anything. But when you get on the biggest stage, the World Series, and you don't win - people are always going to poke holes. He did not perform against left-handed pitching last year."

Bellinger's transformation wasn't an accident or a fluke, but the result of an exhaustive offseason program designed by first-year Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, a 32-year-old with no professional playing experience who rose to prominence as a private instructor who helped turn J.D. Martinez into a perennial all-star.

Using an approach heavily rooted in data and video analysis, Van Scoyoc and hitting strategist Brant Brown managed to boost Bellinger's power - his .683 slugging percentage would be the highest in Dodgers history - without sacrificing contact or producing excessive strikeouts, as other hitters have in this era. Bellinger's contact rate this season, 77.7% of all swings, is a career-high, and his strikeout rate has fallen from 23.9% of all plate appearances in 2018 to 15.7% this year.

"I don't think if you're going to be a more complete hitter and increase your power that you have to sacrifice making contact and concede the strikeout," Van Scoyoc said. "Obviously across the game in general, that's true. But on a micro level, it's not necessarily true. He's incredibly talented. Not everyone can do what he's doing."

Asked if he could have imagined acquiring so much additional power while also striking out at a far lower rate, Bellinger said, "Our goal was to do that. I felt really good in spring training. But I didn't expect to do this, no."

Roberts, too, acknowledged some surprise with Bellinger's massive surge in production. "It's hard to put a ceiling on the talent Cody has, but could I have foreseen him being the best player, arguably in the conversation with Mike Trout? Probably not. But because of his mindfulness and his commitment to swinging at strikes and taking balls, and valuing a walk and slugging balls in the strike zone, this is the result."

It is Bellinger above all who makes the 2019 Dodgers scary-good — the type of highly feared, pitch-around-at-all-costs, don't-let-him-beat-you presence they have lacked in previous postseasons. If you're facing the Dodgers this fall, you'll have to account for Bellinger — and this time, you're unlikely to be bailed out by questionable lineup choices.