How did the Dodgers open up a 31.5-game lead over the Giants? Let us count the ways…

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LOS ANGELES – The Giants will report to Dodger Stadium on Friday craning their necks at a 31 ½-game deficit in the NL West – the biggest gap between these two archrivals since the end of the miserable 1985 campaign, when fans at Candlestick Park sat through a 100-loss season and wished they could still throw things at a guy in a crab suit.

But that is not the truly frightening part.

Those 1985 Dodgers didn’t stretch their lead to 30-plus games until the final week of the season. These current versions of the Dodgers and Giants have two months of baseball to play, including nine head to head.

This is not a Secretariat runaway. This is Secretariat if he lapped and trampled the slowest nag in the field.

The Giants are 40-63 and as inconsistent as ever. The Dodgers are 71-31 and seemingly gaining momentum despite Clayton Kershaw’s back crying uncle for the next four to six weeks.

Pencil out the rest of the season at this pace and the Dodgers would win 112 games while the Giants would lose 100.

We’ll save you the next bit of math, too. The Giants would finish 50 games out.

Fifty!

Yes, that is a historically deep snowdrift. The Giants would join the 1979 expansion Toronto Blue Jays, the 1998 expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the 1998 Florida Marlins (intentionally dismantled after winning the World Series) as the only major league teams to finish 50 games out since the infamous 1962 Mets went 40-120 in their inaugural season.

Okay, there’s the frightening stuff. Here’s the puzzling part: Believe it or not, on this day one year ago, the Giants led the Dodgers by two games in the NL West. They’ve gone from first on the slalom course to tangled up in the orange safety netting in record time.

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Yet even in the midst of this season, when the sands shifted so dramatically, the Giants somehow are winning the season series with their archrivals. They’ve beaten the Dodgers six times in 10 games. When these two teams have faced each other, the gap hasn’t seemed nearly so perceptible.

How, then, have the Dodgers so suddenly become 31 ½ games better than the Giants in the standings?

Well, you can count the ways. In fact, let’s! There are at least 31 ½ of them. Here goes:

1. Buster Posey and Brandon Belt are the only Giants players with better than an .800 OPS this season.

2. The Dodgers have nine players with an OPS of better than .800: Justin Turner, Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor, Corey Seager, Joc Pederson, Kiké Hernandez, Yasmani Grandal, Yasiel Puig and even backup catcher Austin Barnes.

3. The Giants have seven players who have recorded 300 at-bats this season. Those seven everyday players have combined to hit 48 home runs in 2,261 at-bats.

4. Bellinger, who started the year at Triple-A, has hit 28 home runs in 301 at-bats.

5. Puig is not only back to being a productive player, but his 19 home runs would lead the Giants. Oh yeah. And he hits eighth for the Dodgers.

6. Puig is providing Gold Glove-level defense in right field, too. Meanwhile, Giants right fielder Hunter Pence has fallen off a map in both phases, he hasn’t hit a home run at AT&T Park all season and he leads an outfield that ranks worst in the majors in defensive runs saved by a wide margin.

7. First baseman Adrian Gonzalez, like Pence, became suddenly ineffective. But losing their perennial RBI leader didn’t slow down the Dodgers offense one bit. That’s depth for you.

8. The Dodgers fixed their biggest weakness from last season – an inability to hit left-handed pitching. They are 22-10 against left-handed starters. Part of that improvement is the general brilliance of Bellinger and Seager, but Turner is also hitting an unreal .430 against lefties.

9. The Dodgers front office seldom pencils out one or two alternatives and calls it a winter. For instance, bench bats Franklin Gutierrez and Trayce Thompson didn’t work out as foils against lefties. But last summer, the Dodgers also quietly traded for Taylor, a fringy shortstop from the Mariners, and stuck him in left field. He’s mashing lefties for a .377 average.

10. The Giants opened spring camp with Jarrett Parker and Mac Williamson in left field and hoped one of the two players would claim the job. It didn’t work out. They’ve started 12 different players at the position and their left fielders have combined to hit seven home runs. (Taylor has hit 12.)

11. The Dodgers are 7-2 against the rebuilding Padres and also have a winning record against the Diamondbacks and Rockies. The Giants are 4-9 against the Padres and have a losing record against the Diamondbacks and Rockies.

12. The Dodgers have hit the most home runs in home games in the major leagues. They are 44-13 at Dodger Stadium.

13. The Giants have hit the fewest home runs in home games in the major leagues. They are 22-29 at AT&T Park and on the way to their first losing record at home since 2008.

14. The Dodgers bullpen ranks first in the NL with a 2.86 ERA.

15. The Giants bullpen ranks sixth in the NL with a 4.11 ERA, which believe it or not, is worse than last year’s unit that blew a franchise-record 32 save opportunities.

16. Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen, whom the club re-signed to a five year, $80 million contract over the winter, has a 1.42 ERA and has recorded 25 saves in 26 chances. He also has worked multiple innings in 11 of his 42 appearances. He is striking out a nifty 21.67 batters per walk. His 1.38 FIP is the best of his career since he became a closer. Opponents are batting .163.

17. Giants closer Mark Melancon, whom the club signed to a four-year, $62 million contract over the winter, has a 4.35 ERA with 11 saves in 15 chances and is on the disabled list for the second time this season with right elbow tendinitis. He is striking out 6.33 batters per walk. His 3.64 FIP is the worst of his career since he became a closer. Opponents are batting .298.

18. The Dodgers rotation ranks first in the NL with a 3.28 ERA.

19. The Giants rotation ranks 12th in the NL with a 4.93 ERA.

20. Clayton Kershaw is the greatest pitcher of his generation. He not only has a career peak that rivals the most dominant pitchers in history, but he continues to add to it. He was drafted the same year as Tim Lincecum, who had his own elite peak. Now Lincecum is out of the game and Kershaw, his current back ailment aside, is still going. When you have an elite peak plus longevity, you are an inner-circle Hall of Famer. One day soon, Kershaw will be.

21. Kershaw doesn’t ride dirt bikes on his days off.

22. Dodgers starters Alex Wood, Rich Hill and Brandon McCarthy rank 1-2-3 in the majors in lowest hard-hit rate, according to Inside Edge. They are giving up hard contact 7.9 percent, 9.5 percent and 9.8 percent of the time, respectively. That Kershaw guy? He’s 17th in the majors, at 13.2 percent. (Of course, some hitters view any kind of contact as a moral victory against Kershaw.)

23. On Inside Edge’s lowest hard-hit rate list, the Giants don’t have a single pitcher in the top 50.

24. Giants manager Bruce Bochy might be going to the Hall of Fame, and he’s won three more World Series titles than the Dodgers have since 1988. But Dave Roberts should be a unanimous choice for NL Manager of the Year, with his blend of energy, optimism and the ability to advocate for both his players and the organization at the same time – perhaps the toughest balancing act in this game. Roberts even found a way to bring Puig on board while forging a sunnier clubhouse culture.

25. The Dodgers have used the disabled list more than any team in the majors, and while that is usually the mark of a losing team that has veered from its path, in this case it’s an organizational strategy. Whether it’s bullpen arms or tailoring their bench for a specific opponent, the Dodgers essentially operate with their own taxi squad.

26. Frank and Jamie McCourt are gone. We tend to think of “championship windows” in terms of talent or expiring contracts, but opportunity arrives in a broader context. The Giants took advantage of a period when the Dodgers had owners who were disgusting, human leeches who used one of the game’s most storied franchises as their personal ATM before getting run out of town. (Now Jamie McCourt, a Trump donor and supporter, is being nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Belgium. We can only hope that beer gives her explosive flatulence.)

27. The Dodgers’ new owners didn’t need baseball’s version of a Countrywide home loan to buy the club. They are deep-pocketed, and they used their Guggenheim bucks to make it rain as soon as they gained control in 2012, knowing full well that they would make expensive mistakes while trying to horde all the talent they could. Take on a quarter of a billion in mostly dead salary from the Boston Red Sox to get Adrian Gonzalez? Sure! Throw $62 million at a Cuban free agent (Hector Olivera) who ended up playing 30 big league games? Okay! The Dodgers timed their spending spree shrewdly before rule changes came along that capped international spending. They’re more disciplined with their spending these days. But that initial rash of moves helped to close the talent gap, rebuild their system and give the new front office assets that could be traded for other useful pieces.

28. President Andrew Friedman, who came from Tampa Bay, hasn’t lost his touch for doing more with less. GM Farhan Zaidi honed those same skills as one of Billy Beane’s top lieutenants with the A’s. They are using the greater resources at their disposal to leverage their philosophies, not to abandon them.

29. The Dodgers front office doesn’t make panic trades, and for this one, you have to include former GM Ned Colletti when you dole out credit. The Dodgers haven’t won a World Series since 1988 and should feel enormous pressure to end that dry spell. But they refused to give up Seager to add Cole Hamels or David Price in previous years, and now they have a shortstop who finished third in the NL MVP balloting last year as a 22-year-old rookie and is having a demonstrably better follow-up season.

30. The Dodgers haven’t lost their amateur scouting touch. They’ve always been good at finding impact beyond the third round, whether it’s Matt Kemp or Russell Martin or Bellinger – a fourth-round pick out of a Chandler, Ariz., high school who hit just one home run in his senior year. (Again, credit due to Colletti and former longtime scouting director Logan White, now with the Padres.)

And a half: The Dodgers farm system remains loaded and ready to supply a steady pipeline of talent that should leave them with fewer needs to address through the expense of free agency. They lost prized left-hander Julio Urias to shoulder capsule surgery – an injury that would cripple many farm systems. But the Dodgers dusted themselves off and watched right-hander Walker Buehler, who already has blown through three levels of their system this season and is likely to be a September addition as a relief swingman. One veteran observer saw Buehler pitch against Single-A San Jose and said he was the most impressive pitcher he’d seen in the Cal League in more than a decade.

Good times ahead, then.

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