What a time to be alive and be a baseball fan: Those gritty, underdog New York Mets and their $350-million payroll against the gritty, grinding Los Angeles Dodgers, who have Shohei Ohtani and a $339-million payroll of their own yet according to Enrique Hernandez, “don’t give a (expletive)” about their reputation as… well… chokers and under-achievers.
Can’t wait for the first Dodgers or Mets player to say “nobody expected us to be here,” like they’re the Miami Marlins or something.
Still.
Major League Baseball is this close to a dream World Series: The New York Yankees and Dodgers. Aaron Judge versus Shohei Ohtani. It won’t change the reality of baseball being a largely regional TV sport, but, well, it would be nice to see baseball loved up a bit; to be big in Japan, as it were.
Let’s hope the Yankees — and Mets — cooperate in different ways. Because I’ll let you in on a secret: I can think of nothing that might resonate less nationally than a Subway World Series.
Listen — I covered the 2000 World Series and other than Roger Clemens tossing Mike Piazza’s broken bat back at him and getting to spend more than a week in New York City on an expense account (spend being the operative word), it was one of the least remarkable Series I’ve seen. It was also, at the time, the lowest-rated series for TV by a considerable margin.
Perhaps that was a function of the Yankees chasing their third consecutive World Series title — they’d swept the two previous in four games — and having made four trips to the damned thing in five years. Sports are often well-served when there is a team or athlete easy to hate, but the Yankees were so methodical and generally devoid of jerks that grudging respect was usually the order of the day. You had to be a bad human being to not like Joe Torre, frankly, and owner George Steinbrenner was just kind of part of the furniture. You could move him out of the way if you needed extra room. The Mets? Meh, they were just another franchise.
Now? MLB has competitive parity and the truth is, the World Series has spent more time in recent years in Texas and California than on Broadway. Parity? MLB might have too much of it. The Dodgers have spent, and spent, and spent forever yet still needed a pandemic to win their first and only title since 1988. The Mets have been back to the World Series once since 2000, losing to the Kansas City Royals in 2015. The Yankees haven’t been guaranteed anything for all their profligacy; in fact, the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays have in recent years been just as liable to advance to the Series.
And so here we are: Close to the World Series matchup that deep down we probably already wanted, maybe even needed, and here are six players to watch in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.
• Mookie Betts, RF, Dodgers: Maybe all it took was one to fall. Maybe Betts was right when he said in a post-game interview after homering in Game 3 that: “I felt kind of like Steph Curry a little bit. I just needed to see one go in and then I knew I could do it.” Whatever, Betts’ 4-for-9 performance in Games 3 and 4 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres – and home runs in back-to-back games – has raised hopes that the post-season Betts of 2020 is back. Betts was shut down in the first two games of the NLDS (cruelly, in the case of Jurickson Profar going into the stands) but finally ended an 0-for-22 post-season funk. He’s still not back to being the guy who finished fourth in the Majors in average with runners in scoring position — he’s still talking about “bad habits” he picked up in September — but he looked a great sight more comfortable.
Maybe a dose of the Mets lefty-centric pitching will help …
• Walker Buehler, SP, Dodgers: Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had a helluva NLDS, maneuvering his bullpen through 24 scoreless innings. Former MLB closer Gregg Olson sounded a cautionary note during ESPN radio’s telecast of Game 4 of the series when he talked about the danger of familiarity arising from teams’ frequent use of relievers. They aren’t starters; they aren’t possessed of a starter’s repertoire. Yet Roberts zoned in on Fernando Tatis, Jr., in particular; he saw 10 different Dodgers pitchers during that 24-inning span. Now that the series become best of seven, there is an even greater chance of familiarity coming into play and dialling up the right reliever at the right time becomes even more of a challenge. If there’s a pronounced edge for the Mets, it’s their well-rested rotation. And if Buehler can avoid a repeat of that Game 3 NLDS implosion (it was the first time in 16 post-season games that he didn’t record a strikeout) it makes Roberts’s task a lot easier. Buehler’s post-season pedigree is more comforting than that of Jack Flaherty and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
• Edwin Diaz, RP, Mets: Former Mets assistant general manager Zack Scott thinks the Mets closer will profit from the time off, perhaps more than anyone else. Scott, formerly in the front office of the Boston Red Sox, told us on Blair & Barker that watching Diaz bob and weave in Game 4 of the ALDS reminded him of the dilemma the Red Sox found themselves in back in 2018 when Chris Sale was needed to close out the World Series because closer Craig Kimbrel was on fumes. Considering the Dodgers were among the top two or three in most regular-season categories against lefty pitching and the Mets intentions to carry four lefties — including David Peterson, perhaps the most vital arm in the Mets bullpen but who has spotty career numbers against L.A. — manager Carlos Mendoza will have enough to worry about without wondering about his closer.
• Teoscar Hernandez, LF, Dodgers: Come home, Teoscar. All is forgiven. In the two years since he’s left, the Toronto Blue Jays have become less enjoyable to watch and less successful on the field. The Seattle Mariners didn’t think they needed Teoscar this season, either. How’d that work out for them? I will admit I didn’t worry much when the Blue Jays tied the can to Teoscar because I bought into management spin on his negatives and didn’t think he’d re-sign anyhow. (In my defence: I never imagined Brandon Belt would be his replacement in the middle of the order.) Now? God, but I miss Teoscar! And my guess is other than seeing Alex Anthopoulos win another World Series — or Gibby (John Gibbons) winning the World Series as Mets bench coach — nothing would make heads explode in this market more than Teoscar and that million-megawatt smile winning a ring. Teoscar had two homers in the NLDS, and while Ohtani, Betts and Freddie Freeman will be front and centre once again, in Toronto we’ll be waiting for Teoscar and that one, big swing.
“For me, it’s more not running away from the big moments,” Teoscar said after the NLDS. “I know I’m not going to have success every time those big moments come. But not running away from it, it’s what makes me get better in every situation.” Teoscar came into the post-season after a solid September, hitting .329 with five homers and 12 RBIs, including seven multi-hit games. If Freeman is compromised by his injured ankle, Teoscar’s bat becomes even more important against the Mets lefty pitchers: Hernandez’s slugging percentage against lefties was the eighth-best in the Majors during the regular season and the best on the Dodgers. Might want to keep that in mind considering Betts’ issues … and the fact that after Ohtani’s three-run homer, Ohtani went 2-for-15 in Games 2-5, whiffing eight times.
• Michael Kopech, RP, Dodgers: Truth is you could pretty much select any Dodgers reliever given the state of the team’s rotation, but Kopech kind of represents them all because like the rest of them he just “out-stuffs” hitters. Literally. Kopech carried a ‘stuff-plus’ rating of 140 coming out of the regular season, one of 15 relievers on the team who rated above the league average. (Stuff plus is an analytical model that rates the effectiveness of a pitch based on its physical aspects.) What Roberts has in hand is a bunch of guys with closer stuff, including Kopech who allowed just three earned runs over 24 innings in 24 games after joining the team at the trade deadline in a three-team deal. Roberts has done a nice job managing Kopech’s reverse splits – made easier, of course, with a fastball that can hit 102 miles per hour paired with a 91 MPH cutter. The Dodgers have urged him to increase use of his cutter (added in the spring at the behest of the Chicago White Sox) and slider to help his fastball play up even more …
• Francisco Lindor, SS, Mets: Funny. After the Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals to win their American League Division Series, Judge told the YES Network that it was fitting they were celebrating at Kauffman Stadium because it was there that the 2023 regular season wrapped up with the Yankees missing the post-season — finishing in fourth place in the AL East, in fact. Nineteen games out. They pledged it wouldn’t happen in 2024. For the Mets, seeing the Dodgers in the NLCS must also carry a little significance, because it was a three-game sweep at the hands of the Dodgers at Citi Field in late May that was a come-to-Jesus moment for Lindor and his teammates. They were outscored 18-5, reliever Jorge Lopez tossed his glove into the stands and had harsh words for the organization. The Mets were 16 games out of the NL East and 11 games under .500 and Lindor decided it was time to talk. The Mets haven’t looked back since, and Mendoza freely acknowledges: “That’s when the guys got together. We started turning the corner.” This right now is why Lindor joined the Mets. It hasn’t always been smooth — remember the infamous “raccoon” fight with teammate Jeff McNeil in 2021? — but Lindor’s NLDS grand slam has cemented his place in the sports-crazed market.
David Adler of MLB.com wrote this piece on how a move into the lead-off spot coincided with better quality of contact to turn around Lindor’s season. He won’t beat Ohtani in NL MVP voting, but after what we’ve seen so far, seeing his team beat Ohtani’s could not be a total shock, right? Actually, yeah, it would be …
JEFF BLAIR’S PREDICTION
Dodgers def. Mets 4-2.