LOS ANGELES — We are watching this play out, right before our eyes. there is no need for verification or confirmation. it isn’t subjective, it doesn’t depend on what angle it is viewed from and it isn’t in the eye of any beholder. it is right there in front of us, whether on television, on the radio or in person, and it is right there in the standings, where these Los Angeles Dodgers lay claim to baseball’s best record.

So why, then, shouldn’t we trust it?

Why, after watching the Dodgers complete their three-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates with a 3-2 victory before 28,328 on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, are we still so skeptical about this team, which is off to its best start since 1981, having won six of its first seven games?

And, more important, is that skepticism shared by the very people who have actually gone out and done it?

Well, if it is, they aren’t about to admit that to us.

“We don’t care what other people think about us,” Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp said. “We’re all just going to go out and play the game the way we know we can play it. We had a great second half last year. We were hard to beat. And we know we’re going to be hard to beat all year this year. We’re going to play as hard as we can every night, go out there with confidence and try to get as many wins as we can.”

We can reasonably expect this to continue a little longer. We know this because the schedule tells us so. the San Diego Padres, from whom the Dodgers took three of four last weekend, are coming to town now for three more. All indications are that they aren’t very good. the Pirates, who haven’t had a winning season since 1992, just left. Based on the three games here, they don’t appear to be much of a threat, either.

The road gets a little tougher after that, a three-game series in Milwaukee, and the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals coming to town in a couple of weeks. but looking down the road, the landscape doesn’t really seem threatening until the second week of may or so.

And it isn’t as if the Dodgers are pounding the allegedly overmatched Padres and Pirates into submission. the fact that the Dodgers have six wins and closer Javy Guerra has five saves tells you these are close games, as does the fact that exactly half the Dodgers’ victories this season have been by one run.

So is that a reason we shouldn’t fall for this charade?

“Early in the year, it’s tough to win games,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “It doesn’t matter what people think you’re supposed to be. the Diamondbacks [finished] in last place [in 2010], and they won the division last year. the Padres [in 2010], nobody expected them to compete, and they were in it until the last day. last year, the Pirates were in first place until a little bit after the break, and then they had a rough finish to their season. they have some talent over there.

“You can put things on paper all you want, but you have to go out and play. I am just happy to go out there and get these wins, and it doesn’t matter who they’re coming against.”

On paper, no, it doesn’t matter whom they’re coming against. every win counts the same, and these six wins will mean just as much to the Dodgers in the final weeks of September as they mean now. but perhaps what we really should be looking at, moreso than wins and losses, is what the Dodgers are showing us.

There is no particular facet to this team that is wowing anyone right now. the starting rotation is decent, a 3-1 record and a collective 2.56 ERA, which is solid. the bullpen is almost as good, 3-0 with a 2.88 ERA, with just four of 13 inherited runners having scored. the lineup is OK, but the Dodgers have scored 30 runs through seven games, and they haven’t scored more than four since Saturday. They’re a middle-of-the-pack team in batting average and on-base percentage.

The one area in which they have truly shined, perhaps surprisingly, is team defense. they entered Thursday’s game leading the National League with a .992 fielding percentage, and they have committed just two errors through these seven games. there have been instances when that defense has saved runs, such as that point in the sixth inning when a diving play by second baseman Mark Ellis kept the tying run from scoring and a heads-up force at second after Ellis scrambled to his feet and kept the go-ahead run from getting into scoring position.

That tying run never did score for the Pirates, and the Dodgers wound up with another one-run win. And that, ultimately, is what is defining this team right now, the ability to score just enough runs while keeping the opposing team just enough in check to win. This isn’t a great team. great teams aren’t made up of a couple of power hitters, a bunch of versatile utility guys, and a savvy-beyond-his-years manager with a deft touch for mixing and matching. but that can be the recipe for a good team, and this is a good team.

Is it the best team in baseball? Friday morning’s standings will say yes, but our gut says no, not even close.

However, is it a good team with the potential to achieve great things? That is what our eyes are telling us right now. Whether it is real or just some mirage, well, we aren’t going to know that for a while. So why don’t we all just stop worrying about it and enjoy the ride, however long it lasts.

After all, that’s what the Dodgers are doing already.

Dodgers should enjoy their fast start

Alyssa Milano has been out of the spotlight for a while now, but that may all change this summer. the Charmed actress is returning to television with a role on ABC’s Mistresses.the drama is based off of a British show that follows four women with turbulent romantic lives and will be written by Gossip [...]

Alyssa Milano Is Returning To Television In Mistresses

An Apple TV set is on the way, possibly as soon as the end of the year. so says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who has issued a note to investors, identifying the next big Apple iProduct as a branded television set, capable of playing a range of streaming and live content. 

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"We recently spoke to a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components," Munster wrote to investors today, according to CNET. "We see this as continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television." 

In his estimation, it seems unlikely that Apple, which has already revolutionized the smartphone and MP3 player markets, would be content to simply abide by the current market rules. Instead, Munster predicted, would likely seek to change the way content is delivered. "without a revamped TV content solution, we do not think Apple enters the TV market," Munster wrote. 

So is this for real? as CNET notes, Munster has been beating the Apple TV drum since 2009, without much validation. Still, there are plenty of clues to indicate that Munster is onto something. Among them: An October article by Bloomberg News staff, indicating that the Apple TV product was being overseen by Jeff Robbin, the same guy who helped build both the iPod and the iTunes store. 

Meanwhile, the Steve Jobs biography published last year by Walter Isaacson contained an interesting snippet about Apple’s approach to the TV market. "I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," Jobs told Isaacson. "it would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. it will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Still, not everyone is convinced. 

"[W]here’s the market for these overpriced Apple TVs?" writes Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet. "There seems to be an incredible amount of rabid Apple fanboyism surrounding these rumors that assumes that people will buy anything that Apple makes, at whatever price point that Apple decides. In which case, why isn’t the iPad an $800 device, and how come Apple is having a hard time penetrating into the living room with the existing Apple TV set-top box?" 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut. and don’t forget to sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter.

Fresh Apple TV rumors emerge. Should we believe them?

Apple's Apple TV set-top box.

(Credit:Apple)

Apple can set its much-expected television set apart from those of competitors–and shake up the TV industry to boot–if it can figure a way to introduce a la carte pricing for shows and channels on Apple TV, a new analyst report suggests.

In a note today to investors, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu asserts that Apple’s strength lies less in the hardware innovation it might bring to the TV market than in letting customers subscribe to particular channels or shows of their choosing.

Such a model would run counter to traditional TV packages offered by cable providers that sell channels to subscribers in pre-packaged bundles.

Apple already offers a number of TV programs as subscriptions through its online store, giving buyers a way to purchase both single episodes and entire seasons. The difference, of course, being that customers must wait for the show to be broadcast before it’s available to download. (In some cases, shows aren’t available until the entire season has aired.) Wu is suggesting that Apple would rather move to live streaming of the programming, just like what customers get through their cable provider.

“This is obviously much more complicated from a licensing standpoint, and in our view, would change the game for television and give AAPL a big leg-up against the competition,” Wu wrote in the note picked up by Apple Insider.

This is not the first such suggestion that Apple is planning to adopt a subscription model for video content. A Wall Street Journal story from 2009 suggested Apple was in talks with CBS and Walt Disney to provide TV programming for a monthly fee. The closest that vision came to be was with Apple’s season pass feature, which lets customers buy an entire season of a given TV show, even before some of the episodes have aired.

Interest in Apple’s prospective television boomed in October with the release of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Isaacson noted Jobs’ work on making an easy-to-use TV set that is integrated with the company’s various products and services.

“I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,” Jobs was quoted as saying in Isaacson’s book. “It would be seamlessly synched with all of your devices and with iCloud. it will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”

Adding to that, a report yesterday from Taiwanese publication DigiTimes cited sources saying that Apple was already in the process of ordering components for 32-inch and 37-inch TV sets that would be ready for sale in the second half of 2012, suggesting that Apple is relatively far along in the process of bringing the set to market.

In the interim, Apple has made two significant adjustments to its sales of TV shows in the past few months. first, it killed off its TV show rental service, a decision the company attributed to consumer purchasing behavior “overwhelmingly” falling in favor of buying programming outright. it also introduced a new season-completion program that lets buyers pick up the rest of a show’s season at a discounted rate if they’ve already purchased an episode.

Disclosure: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.

How Apple could shake up TV: A la carte channels