The Giants square off this weekend against the Dodgers in a battle for first place in San Francisco in a series that I whole heartily believe the Giants will win. While the Dodgers have made a move by adding the struggling Hanley Ramirez and reliever, Randy Choate, is an improvement over Juan Uribe at third it’s not a game changer.

Ramirez is only batting .251 this year with 14 homers and 49 RBIs. Over their last 10 starts Ramirez and Uribe have similar numbers; each has 5 RBIs and Ramirez has two homers to Uribe’s one. Anyway you look at it not good.

To open the series the Giants send Mr. Perfect, Matt Cain, to the mound against Barney Fife, I mean Stephen Fife. Fife looked good in his outing against Philly this year, but then again most pitchers have. He allowed one run over six innings while walking three and striking out one. Not too terribly concerned about tonight, I think the Giants will win easily. I think the Dodgers expected to have made a starting pitching move by now, since their starter was TBD until earlier today. The spot was vacated due to the trade for Ramirez and Choate when Nathan Eovaldi went to the Marlins.

The Giants are firing on all cylinders and will be hard to slow down by the Dodgers pitching staff, which seemed to be a more important move than adding a third baseman and reliever.

While the Dodgers believe they are building a “scary line-up” according to their team President, at the moment I feel it looks about as scary as it did on opening day; Rated G scary. They’ve played above their talent all season and eventually an extended slide will begin, and it will probably begin this weekend. The Cardinals knocked around Chris Capuano, a notoriously bad second-half pitcher, last night getting 11 hits and six runs in 4-1/3 innings. Expect more performances like this in the second half.

It will be interesting to see whom the Dodgers add to their starting staff before Tuesday, no matter, it will not be enough to stop the Giants. A sweep will seal the Dodgers fate this weekend and I think it’s highly likely with Cain and Vogelsong bookends in the series.

One thing’s for certain, the Giants will have a larger lead in the NL West when this series ends, because they are a better team.