LOS ANGELES -- In the first meeting for the West Coast rivals in more than two months, the Los Angeles Dodgers showed their visitors from the north that new identity they have been working on.

Fully hatched from the cocoon now, the Dodgers' offense continued to soar in the opener of a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants and their staff ace Madison Bumgarner. The Dodgers got eight hits from the heart of their order -- Corey Seager, Justin Turner and Adrian Gonzalez -- and outpaced the Giants 9-5.

The Dodgers now lead the National League West by two games, their largest lead since they had a 2½-game advantage on April 24.

"It was a big team offensive effort today," Gonzalez said. "Everybody swung the bat great today. We just had good at-bats up and down the lineup so it was a lot of fun for us."

Easily the top slugging team in the NL since the All-Star break, the Dodgers are averaging 5.71 runs a game since the season's midway point, and the traffic on the basepaths is only getting more frequent. Since getting shut out by the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 5, the Dodgers have averaged 7.06 runs over their past 16 games.

The Seager-Turner-Gonzalez combination just meant that it was the usual suspects who produced. Seager has delivered all throughout his rookie season, Turner's emergence about two months ago started the offensive revival, and Gonzalez's production of late is really what has turned the offense dynamic.

"[Those were] very competitive at-bats one through eight [in the lineup], but the 3-4-5 guys really came up huge for us," manager Dave Roberts said. "Bumgarner is one of the elite pitchers in baseball and [our] focus to grind out at-bats and get some key hits and have a lot of traffic and stress him all night, get the pitch count up and get those big hits, was a huge lift."

Others in the Dodgers' offense are starting to get into the act as well. Rob Segedin and Andrew Toles each hit their second career home run Tuesday after going back-to-back on Monday at Cincinnati. Toles finished with two hits and three RBIs, which would have been a busy day under the circumstances, but he didn't even enter the game until the sixth inning as a pinch hitter.

"There is no pressure and [Roberts] throws you in situations where you have a good chance to succeed," Toles said. "I don't see any pressure or anything like that."

Nobody looked pressured in what has been billed as a key late-season series, amid games that figure to weigh large when the division is decided on the first weekend of October. The Dodgers returned home from a productive road trip to deliver 14 hits after pounding out 21 on Monday against the Reds.

It might have been the first game of a showdown series Tuesday, but for the Dodgers it was simply a carbon copy of what they have been doing for some time now, all the way down to the five-inning outing from another starter.

Kenta Maeda was far from efficient in throwing 103 pitches over five innings of work, but it was plenty to outduel Bumgarner, who lasted only five innings himself while giving up five run and nine hits. The Dodgers have now won each of the last five times Bumgarner has pitched against them.

The question remains, how long can the Dodgers keep up their offensive sense of urgency? Their lead is only two games after all, with eight games remaining between these two teams, the last three of which are in San Francisco to end the season.

Can the Dodgers really run away from the competition on the back of a less-than-efficient starting staff? Or at the very least, can the staff, which has endured one injury after another, keep doing just enough until Clayton Kershaw is able to return?

"You know what, I just know that we will be ready to play tomorrow and ready to win a game tomorrow," Roberts said. "That's been our focus, to not try to get too far ahead of ourselves. I think people can ask questions like, 'Can we sustain it?' But I think that we can prepare to win a game tomorrow and after that we will be ready for the next day. That approach has worked up to this point, and that is what we will continue to do."

And as long as Seager is on a 14-game hit streak, Gonzalez is on a 16-gamer and Turner has hit safely in 17 of his last 19, there are plenty of reasons to think the Dodgers' current play is sustainable.

"We struggled early in the year and now we're doing our part," Gonzalez said of the offense. "The season has its ups and downs, and at the end of the season it will come together as a unit. Right now we're swinging the bats pretty well."