Jimmy Bramlett

The Dodgers are a big deal now. Over the break, a lot of "experts" have them running away with the second half en route to an NL West title. Even the seedy folks over at Bovada have the Dodgers favored to win the NL West.

It was a whirlwind morning for the Kings. Not only did they fill their front office vacancy, they signed captain Dustin Brown to an eight-year extension that will keep him through the 2021-22 season.

Ricky Nolasco did not have a Zack Greinke outing in his first start at Dodger Stadium as a Dodgers. Just a cursory glance at the 3-1 final score was evidence of that. Besides it's hard to top a two-hit complete game shutout.

On this, the first day of the All Star break, I have a whole slew of odds and ends that didn't really fit anywhere else.

Zack Greinke was impervious to the world. It didn't matter that the Dodgers scored only one run for him. Greinke had a perfect game going through 4 1/3 innings and wound up with a two-pitch shutout striking out nine hitters and walking one. His 110-pitch masterpiece took all of two hours, 17 minutes to complete.

It was a strange night at Dodger Stadium. Never mind the Dodgers lost to the Colorado Rockies 3-0, only the fourth loss in their last 20 games. Never mind they only had four hits, their first single-digit hits over the last five games. But as the game ground to a crawl in the late innings, each pitch taking on more importance on both sides, the scene throughout the stadium began to resemble the opening scene of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" video.

"It's up to us today," catcher A.J. Ellis said hours before the Dodgers defeated the Colorado Rockies 6-1. The Dodgers were coming off of their most impressive victory Wednesday night in Arizona, a 7-5 14-inning victory that took over five hours to complete. It marked their first victory in 30 times they have trailed after six innings.

There has been a lot of ridiculousness going on with Yasiel Puig lately. Puig made his debut on June 3. In 34 games he is batting .407 with an OPS of 1.101. He has eight home runs, 19 runs batted in, seven unintentional walks and five stolen bases. He batting average has never seen the south side of .400. Since he made his debut the Dodgers are 21-13, the best record in the Major Leagues in that span.

With their 6-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Dodgers return to one game under .500 while trailing the D-Backs by only 2 1/2 games for NL West supremacy. The last time the Dodgers were one game under .500 it was May 1 when the Dodgers lost to the Colorado Rockies 7-3 to drop their record to 13-14. Things went downhill from there until the arrival of Yasiel Puig and the return of Hanley Ramirez.

Before the last homestand the Dodgers were a joke, the silly $200 million team that was one of the worst in the majors and 9 1/2 games out in one of the worst divisions in baseball.