The Los Angeles Dodgers apparently didn’t get the memo. The one to all major league teams reminding them that as an even-numbered year this one belongs to the San Francisco Giants and everybody stay out of their way. Ignoring reality, the Dodgers have plopped themselves in the Giants’ way in their quest to position themselves for a fourth World Series championship in seven years.

Once eight games ahead of the Dodgers, the Giants plunged three games behind them last week before shaving their deficit to two games by beating the Dodgers in the final game of their three-game series. The teams entered Sunday’s games with two games separating them.

This is supposed to be the Giants’ year to win the World Series because they won it in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Of course, they don’t have to finish ahead of the Dodgers in the National League West to be in position to win the 2016 World Series. They can qualify for the post-season as a wild card, as they did in 2014.

That year the Giants finished six games behind the Dodgers in the division but tied Pittsburgh for the best wild-card record. They beat the Pirates in the wild-card game, then knocked off Washington in the division series, St. Louis in the league championship series and Kansas City in the seven-game World Series.

The Giants began play Sunday two games behind the Dodgers but ahead of the other contenders in the wild-card standings.

The way the first 90 games of the season went it didn’t seem as if the Giants would have difficulty winning the N.L. West title. They reached the All-Star break with the best record in the majors, 57-33, six and a half games ahead of the second-place Dodgers. They had held first place for all but 13 days of that 90-game segment of the season.

However, the Dodgers’ 51-40 record was respectable and kept them close enough to challenge the Giants post-All-Star break. From the resumption of the season through Saturday night, the Dodgers had a 21-17 record. Again, respectable but not good enough to overcome the Giants unless the Giants helped.

The Giants more than helped. Playing as if their “win” switch had been turned off, the Giants lost 25 of their first 36 games after the break, dropping out of first place and falling three games behind the Dodgers. Just in time, though, before their season completely spiraled out of control, Manager Bruce Bochy relocated the “win” switch and the Giants rallied for a pair of victories before the weekend and sliced their deficit to one game.

Because this is 2016, it is not surprising that the Giants are in the playoff race. Nor should it be surprising that the Dodgers are in the race because they have won the N.L. West title the last three years. It is surprising, on the other hand, because of the state of their team.

New York Mets fans are crying because injuries, especially to their pitchers, have undermined the team’s chances of returning to the World Series for a second straight season. But the Mets have a bunch of hang nails compared with the Dodgers’ physical ailments.

The Dodgers have had 27 individual players on the disabled list, matching the most any team has had in the last 30 years. Five of those players have been on the disabled list twice: Hyun-Jin Ryu, Brett Anderson, Brendon McCarthy, Scott Van Slyke, Josh Ravin.

Clayton Kershaw, the world’s best pitcher, has been on the disabled list only once, but it might as well be twice. The Dodgers put him and his herniated disc on the list two months ago, and they don’t know when – or if – they will get him back this season.

With Kershaw the ace, the Dodgers have a better starting rotation on their disabled list than many teams have on their active rosters. Lumping their disabled pitchers and position players together, the Dodgers have a $103.5 million payroll on the disabled list. That’s more than a dozen teams are paying all of their players, disabled and healthy.

Kershaw’s return this season is uncertain because time is running out for him to make a rehab start with a minor league affiliate. The minor league season ends the first week of September. His alternative would be pitching a simulated game, but a live game would be preferable.

Of the 27 players who have served time on the disabled list, seven have been pitchers who have started games for the Dodgers this season: Kershaw, McCarthy, Scott Kazmir, Ryu, Alex Wood, Anderson, Bud Norris. As a result, the Dodgers have used 14 starters. No team has used more.

Two of the starters have been Mike Bolsinger and Nick Tepesch, who will not be confused with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

Tepesch, a 27-year-old right-hander, started one game for the Dodgers, and that game, a loss to Pittsburgh June 24, triggered an itinerary of travel. The day after Tepesch started, the Dodgers designated him for assignment.

Oakland claimed Tepesch on waivers June 27. Two days later the Athletics optioned the pitcher to the minors. Two weeks later they designated him for assignment.

Kansas City claimed Tepesch on waivers July 18, and the next day the Royals’ Omaha minor league team placed him on the temporarily inactive list. On Aug. 12 Tepesch was moved to the 7-day disabled list, and two weeks later he was activated.

Tepesch’s experience was not unusual. Too often players are forced to go from organization to organization. That’s life in the minors. But how about Kenta Maeda’s experience?

The team’s leading starter with a 13-7 record, the 28-year-old Japanese right-hander was “demoted” last week to the Dodgers’ minor league team in the rookie Arizona League.

The demotion, though, was a technicality and a sham move taking advantage of a loophole in the rules.

When a player is optioned to the minors, he cannot be recalled to the majors for 10 days unless there is an injury or the minor league team’s season ends.

The Dodgers needed a starter for Sunday’s game against the Chicago Cubs, and they used Maeda’s option to create a roster spot for Brock Stewart, who had previously started two games for Los Angeles. They planned to recall Maeda to start Monday’s game at Colorado.

Manager Dave Robert, in his rookie season, has done an admirable job juggling his starters. He has been forced at times to go day-by-day in deciding his starting pitchers.

By starting Stewart Sunday and Maeda Monday, Roberts will be using four rookie starters in five games. The other rookies are Ross Stripling and Julio Urias, a Mexican left-hander, who turned 20 earlier this month.

Who will be Roberts’ starters if the Dodgers reach the post-season? The Dodgers’ doctors probably have a better idea than Roberts.

YANKS HAVE SANCHEZ BUT LOOK AT RED SOX

Before Gary Sanchez gave the New York Yankees credibility in the department of finding and developing young players, they made excuses for their failure to develop prospects by citing their low place in the annual June draft.

The very presence of Sanchez helps undermine that excuse. Sanchez, who hit 11 home runs in his first 80 times at bat in this rookie season, is a native of the Dominican Republic and was not subject to the draft but was signed as an international free agent.

Assuming that Sanchez is the real thing and is not an incarnation of Kevin Maas and Shane Spencer, the Yankees deserve credit for finding and developing the strong-armed catcher.

They signed Sanchez in July 2009 seven weeks before the Boston Red Sox signed a free agent from Aruba, Xander Bogarts. However, under Theo Epstein, the Red Sox found plums in the draft as well. In the 2011 draft, their last with Epstein as general manager, the Red Sox selected outfielders Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts, who is making himself a prime candidate for the most valuable player award.

Betts, Bradley and Bogaerts make up one-third of the Red Sox starting lineup. The Yankees have no one from the 2011 draft on their bench, let alone in their starting lineup. They did choose Greg Bird in the fifth round of that draft, but the first baseman is out this season recovering from shoulder surgery.

The Yankees or anyone could have had Betts because the Red Sox didn’t take him until the fifth round. As their first pick, the 51^st in the draft, the Yankees took third baseman Dante Bichette Jr., son of the former major league slugger. Bichette is playing first base and hitting .234 for Trenton of the Class AA Eastern League.

It’s not that I collect pet peeves; they just appear and join the ones I already have. Take, for example, the sentence I read Tuesday in an otherwise fine article on ESPN.com. It just leaped off the computer screen and slammed me in the face.

Written by Wallace Matthews, the article was about baseball’s increasing use of defensive shifts and their effect on the game. A worthwhile piece, I thought as I read it, and well explained. Then came this paragraph:

“Since 2006, the number of runs scored in Major League Baseball has plummeted from 23,599 to 19,761, and among the insiders” (talk about pet peeves; I deplore that word and what it is intended to mean) “ESPN.com spoke to for this story, there is the belief that it is partly due to base hits being taken away by the shift. In fact, one Yankees executive predicted baseball would never see another .400 hitter because of the shift.”

How could any baseball executive say that, and how could any baseball writer write it without stating the obvious? Do Wallace Matthews and the unnamed Yankees executive know when someone last hit .400? Have they ever heard of Ted Williams? Do they know when he hit .400? Do they know it was 75 years ago, in 1941? Do they know that no one has hit .400 since? Do they think defensive shifts have had anything to do with no one hitting .400 since Williams hit .406?

In fact, as long as Matthews was writing about shifts, he might have mention that Williams was probably the first player against whom a shift was employed. But to say or write that shifts will be the end of the .400 hitter when baseball hasn’t had such an animal for 75 years is ludicrous.

Fortunately, writers do not have as much influence on young readers as sportscasters have on young listeners. That may be because young readers are apparently becoming extinct. Kids of an impressionable age do not read newspapers, and if they are reading the Internet they read little of significance. But I have long believed that sportscasters have the greatest influence on young people’s speech.

That is not good, given the state of sportscasting today. We are not surprised to hear former players turned announcer or analyst trashing the English language. But there are some former players from whom we have reason to expect more. Ron Darling, a Mets’ analyst and former major league pitcher, is an example of this group. However, what we expect is not necessarily what we get.

On a telecast the other day. Darling referred to a St. Louis player (I missed his name) as “one of their clutcher hitters.” Shortly after that gem, he said, “… to see Keith and I.” He also said “that ball would have went between his legs…”

Darling played baseball for three years at Yale University. I don’t know if he took any English classes. I also don’t know if there is a secret Ivy League language with which I am not familiar,

As Yale president, A. Bartlett Giamatti was a Darling fan.

“We’ve had professional athletes before, but no one who’s performed at Ron’s level,” the late baseball commissioner, once said. “I’m always a little sad when a person of his ability doesn’t finish Yale, but I’ve corresponded with Ron and he said he had every intention of finishing.”

Giamatti, an English language perfectionist, died before Darling became a baseball analyst so he never heard him butcher the language.

Besides butchering the English language, some announcers broadcast in the future tense even though what they are saying will happen has already happened. An announcer, for example, says a runner “will score” when television viewers have already seen him cross the plate. The other night an announcer said a player “will get a double” when the runner was standing on second.

I used to think the New York Yankees announcers were the only ones who broadcast in the future tense, but the more games MLB TV carries the more announcers I hear and the more future tense and more mistakes I hear.

I once asked Vin Scully if he ever broadcast in future tense and I think he thought I might be cuckoo. I explained what I was talking about, and he was incredulous.

I, on the other hand, continue to be incredulous at the disappearance of baseball coverage. I thought some of the shrunken space might be restored once the Olympics were over, but I was wrong. The way The New York Times sees baseball today is it is a minor sport, having no standing in comparison with soccer, rugby, tennis, golf, croquet, curling, ping pong, synchronized swimming and cup stacking.

Wednesday’s edition told me all I needed to know (as if I did not already know). The paper carried scores of five games. That means the games were over before that edition was published. But the paper carried nothing on the games, not even a mere sentence the Times had been running on each game.

The only mention of baseball came in a brief report that the Texas Rangers had asked waivers on Josh Hamilton for the purpose of giving him his unconditional release.

Baseball was a Times staple for more than 100 years. However, in the Times’ desperate effort to save itself from extinction, baseball has become irrelevant, and the elderly readers who have supported the newspaper for decades also apparently have become irrelevant.

Some I know of have canceled their subscriptions. I would cancel mine, but my wife wants to keep it because she likes the Sunday magazine, the Book Review and the Style section. She doesn’t read the sports section. Neither do I any more.

In an unusual burst of front-office activity in the past year, major league clubs hired a dozen new general managers and hired or promoted three general managers to positions as heads of their baseball operations.

Some of those newly positioned people have had early success in turning their teams’ fortunes around while others are still struggling to achieve that status.

It should be noted, however, that the best off-season acquisition was made by an assistant general manager, Tony LaCava of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Last Nov. 27, six days before the Blue Jays named Ross Atkins their new general manager, LaCava signed free-agent pitcher J.A. Happ to a 3-year, $36 million contract. The 33-year-old left-hander has turned into a big bargain, enjoying the performance of his career with a 17-3 record, best in the majors.

The Blue Jays left negotiations to LaCava because Alex Anthoupolos had resigned as general manager a month earlier, rejecting a contract extension and an invitation to stay under the new club president, Mark Shapiro.

Several years earlier LaCava had rejected an opportunity to become the Baltimore general manager, preferring to stay with the Blue Jays and continue to live in Pittsburgh. Now he was responsible for doing the general manager’s job with an interim title. Besides Happ, the Blue Jays had targeted their own free-agent pitcher, Marco Estrada, and LaCava signed him, too.

“We made a qualifying offer to him,” LaCava said of the 33-year-old Estrada, “and the day before he was able to talk to other teams we were able to do a two-year ($26 million) deal with Marco, who ended up being an all-star.

“With Jay, we were aggressive early on. We had had him in the past” – 2012-13 – “and were familiar with him. His time in Toronto was disrupted. He was hit by a batted ball off his head. It wasn’t so much his head. When he landed he twisted his knee and that wound up taking time to heal. We felt he never hit his stride with us. We knew what was in there.”

When Atkins arrived as general manager, the Blue Jays had their off-season plan well underway.

“It started with what our goals were in the off-season,” LaCava said by telephone last Friday. “We were bringing back the best offense in baseball. We had traded a lot of prospects in trying to put that team together last year. We got Tulowitzki and David Price and the others. Alex did a nice job with brining in players.”

Before this season, LaCava added, “we didn’t want to give up any prospects to bring pitching in and we wanted to hold onto our draft picks. We felt we could do that holding onto Marco and getting Jay and go with shorter term deals and try to get the guys we liked and let the offense do what they did the year before.”

As of game time Saturday, the Blue Jays were in the same place they were when last season ended, leading the American League East. Boston, on the other hand, was in a very different place. With Dave Dombrowski and Mike Hazen in charge of the front office as president of baseball operations and general manager, respectively, the Red Sox were in second place half a game behind the Blue Jays, compared to last place and 15 games behind at the end of last season.

Of the teams that made front-office changes, the Red Sox had made the greatest improvement, just a shade ahead of the Cleveland Indians, who hadn’t made a change as much as an addition. They promoted Chris Antonetti from general manager to president of baseball operations and named Mike Chernoff general manager.

When teams change managers or general managers, they expect to improve. They can’t expect instant success; new general managers need time to turn around a poor team. But a team doesn’t expect to get worse under a new general manager. That, however, is what has happened with the Angels of Anaheim.

Billy Eppler, who had been assistant general manager with the New York Yankees, replaced Jerry Dipoto, who left his role as general manager in a power struggled with long-time manager Mike Scioscia.

The Angels finished last season with a .525 winning percentage and only a game behind Houston for the second A.L. wild-card spot. As of the weekend they had a .418 winning percentage (51-71), were 20 games under .500 for the first time since 1999 and were in last place in the A.L. West, 16 ½ games from the second wild-card spot.

Eppler did not return a telephone call to discuss his first-year problems.

Dipoto, meanwhile, went to Seattle, where the Mariners have a .537 winning percentage compared with .469 with which they finished last season. At the start of play Saturday the Mariners were two games from the A.L.’s second wild-card spot.

I asked Dipoto if the new general manager gets the credit when a team shows such improvement.

“I would say some of the credit is probably fair but not an overwhelming amount,” said Dipoto, one of two former major league pitchers who are general managers (Dave Stewart the other). “We’re here to put pieces together. If you do it right and you build a team environment and create a culture in the clubhouse, it goes to the players first, then to the managing staff for creating and nurturing that environment. It goes to the front office and scouting and development groups for making sure it’s consistent day to day.”

When he left the Angels, Dipoto was a popular candidate for other jobs. Why the Mariners?

“You try to balance the team built on talent and character,” he said. “Talent shockingly enough is a little easier to identify. Character you figure out when the doors close. This opportunity for me, the talent was evident with Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz and Felix Hernandez and Kyle Seager. There was a great core of players to build around.

“The job that Scott Service and the major league staff have done to create a culture, the job our players have done to adapt and to embrace a new culture has resulted in a positive season to this point. I’m proud of them. I don’t think any one of us is more responsible than another. We all do our part.”

Detroit’s dismissal of Dombrowski last August was unexpected and surprising. The owner, Mike Ilitch, was 86 years old at the time, and the speculation was he wanted a chance to win the World Series and had given Dombrowski enough time.

Ilitch replaced the highly regarded Dombrowski with his assistant, Al Avila, and now, at the age of 87, is watching Dombrowski’s Red Sox in better post-season shape than his Tigers even though the Tigers’ current winning percentage of .525 is far better than their season-ending .460.

Dombrowski has fared even better with the Red Sox, whose .562 winning percentage is well ahead of last season’s .481. The improvement prompted a question: How long does it take a new general manager to turn around a losing team?

“I can’t answer that” Dombrowski said. “Every circumstance is different. It depends on what job you take, what direction your organization is going, what you’ve inherited, what moves you can make based on contractual situations, financial restrictions, rules. There’s just so much involved.”

Did his have an advantage being named general manager in August rather than in the off-season?

“It was an advantage for me,” Dombrowski said. “You get a first-hand pulse on some of your players, the front office. To me it was a lot of help for me to be there. I don’t know how I could’ve got prepared at that point. Having the ability to have a regular off-season, knowing who the personnel was, knowing what the needs were on a first-hand basis.”

In recent years the title of president of baseball operations has superseded general manager. I asked Dombrowski to explain the general manager’s role when a club also has a president of baseball operations. I told him one official told me in that case the general manager is, in effect, an assistant general manager since the president of baseball operations is the top man.

“When we established president of baseball operations,” Dombrowski said in a telephone interview, “it was important for me—and I think most organizations are like this— to have the finaI say on hiring and trades. They were my responsibility. But Mike Hazen has more authority to act than a traditional assistant general manager.

“Clubs are set up differently. We made a trade with Arizona and I never spoke to Tony. I spoke to Dave. I don’t know what he had to do.”

Tony La Russa is the Arizona Diamondbacks’ chief baseball officer. Dave Stewart is their general manager.

“We’ve made trades where Mike has worked it all the way through,” Dombrowski said. “He has kept me informed and I say great; go ahead and make it.”

Given the cost, the signing of David Price, the free-agent pitcher, was Dombrowski’s responsibility. The price: $217 million for 7 years. At an average of $31 million a year, Price has an 11-8 record and 4.19 earned run average. At an average of $25 million a year, Hapop and Estrada have a combined 24-8 record and a 3.12 e.r.a. Not bad for an assistant general manager.

I had wanted to talk to one or two new young general managers who don’t work under a president of baseball operations, but Matt Klentak of Philadelphia and David Stearns of Milwaukee didn’t return telephone calls.