Leave it to the Los Angeles Dodgers to give off whiffs of instability despite running out a lineup with three future Hall of Famers at the top, including a guy even Mark Shapiro might agree is a generational player.
The Dodgers will open their best-of-five series at Chavez Ravine against the San Diego Padres on Saturday, and right out of the gate in the bottom of the first inning they’ll have Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman – albeit with the latter compromised with a sprained ankle.
But it’s the top of the first that bears watching. Instead of starting Jack Flaherty as was widely expected, the Dodgers will go with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has made all of four starts since returning from a rotator cuff injury and has pitched into the fifth inning only once since June. That was five innings against the Colorado Rockies in his final start. The highest-paid pitcher in baseball history, Yamamoto finished the season 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA. He had 105 strikeouts in 90 innings.
That sets up Yamamoto to start a fifth game if necessary, and while it says something that a team would feel a guy with 90 innings is its best foot (or, arm) forward, the Dodgers are quick to note that using Flaherty in Game 2 keeps open the possibility of him starting in Game 5 on regular rest if necessary, thanks to the two off-days.
As for Yamamoto? Half his starts this season came on six days of rest or more. Starting Game 1 gives him five days off before Game 5 if that’s how the Dodgers want to play it. With Walker Buehler managing just three quality starts in 16 starts since May and Landon Knack the other healthy starter, you can see why the Dodgers rotation is by far the team’s biggest concern.
Even Flaherty isn’t without red flags, having suffered a noticeable velocity drop in his last two outings of the regular season.
The Padres spent the day before Game 1 announcing that Joe Musgrove will need Tommy John surgery, but they still have an edge in starters because of Dylan Cease and Michael King and will run out Yu Darvish in Game 2.
Having said that, the Dodgers did take two out of three games between the teams on the penultimate weekend of the regular season, beating Cease and Musgrove in the process. And, you know, they did manage 98 wins despite those ragged starting arms.
Yamamoto has pitched in pressure games in Japan and international competitions. But as far as the majors are concerned, the Dodgers are hanging a great deal on an outing he had at Yankee Stadium on June 7, when he recorded seven strikeouts and allowed two hits over seven innings in a 2-1 win.
That was the last time he threw 80 pitches in a game. I mean … a $241-million payroll and that’s what you’re hanging your hat on in Game 1?
“The Yankees were probably playing the best baseball of anybody at that time,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “I thought he threw his best baseball game of the year. He’s still seasoned as far as pitching in big ball games. I’m confident in his talent. I think the heartbeat will be fine.”
The tall foreheads with the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies were also changing pitching plans heading into the first game of their best-of-five series Saturday. The Phillies will go with lefty Cristopher Sanchez in Game 2 after Zack Wheeler starts Game 1. Aaron Nola will now start Game 3, in part because Sanchez’s home ERA is less than half his road ERA but mostly because it splits up Sanchez and Ranger Suarez, two lefties. Suarez is scheduled to start Game 4. The Mets, meanwhile, are going way outside the box and activated Kodai Senga, who missed the first half of the season with injuries to his shoulder and triceps and then suffered a calf strain on July 26, his last start. He’ll be used most likely as an opener in Game 1, possibly with David Peterson or Tylor Megill following up.
While this is the third time since 2020 that the Padres and Dodgers will meet in the post-season, it is the first post-season meeting between the NL East rivals.
There’s star power galore in these two series, so it’s not surprising that some of those players are included in our Six To Watch:
• Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets: October is a great equalizer, so there’s a danger in getting carried away with small sample-size matchups. But when a hitter with the pedigree of Alonso has enjoyed considerable success against a team’s best pitchers, sometimes you need to just go with it. Alonso, of course, played the hero in the Mets’ Game 3 wild-card win over the Milwaukee Brewers but you know what we say in baseball: momentum is only as good as the next day’s starter.
And if you’re Alonso, who has homered five times off Nola in 50 at-bats and has a .320 career average against him, has homered three times off Wheeler in 34 at-bats (hitting .294) and has gone deep off Jeff Hoffman and Jose Alvarado – well, it isn’t a stretch to assume a big series from him will make this thing more interesting than at first blush, especially since the Phillies rotation would seem to offer them a breath-taking edge in the series.
In fact, the Mets are 12-3 in games started by Nola and Wheeler, touching them up for 4.25 and 4.79 ERA’s, respectively. I know ERA is not the most predictive of statistics … but this is about who to watch, not who will have guaranteed success.
• Dylan Cease, SP, Padres: He was easy to include on this list even if Musgrove hadn’t blown out his arm, because weird stuff happens in the post-season and with King’s history as a reliever with the New York Yankees, well, I wouldn’t put anything past manager Mike Shildt if he needs to win a game. So, Cease can make life easy for his skipper – and send Dodgers fans into panic mode – if he outduels Yamamoto in Game 1.
Cease’s slider is one of the game’s most unhittable pitches – he’s garnered a 44 per-cent whiff percentage on it (the best of any slider) and allowed opponents to hit just .157 off it. He’s a beast, one of only five pitchers to have made 30 starts in the last four seasons, joining Nola, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman and Patrick Corbin.
But Cease has made the most total starts of the group and nobody in the majors can match his 891 strikeouts. This year, according to fWAR, only Chris Sale, Tarik Skubal, Wheeler and Cole Ragans were more valuable.
• Carlos Estevez, RP, Phillies: General manager David Dombrowski has had months to get stuff lined up for the post-season – indeed, there were concerns that the Phillies became a little too comfy a little too quickly – and he pretty much told us all what his biggest concern is/was with the acquisition of Estevez from the Los Angeles Angels and the dispensing of leverage options Gregory Soto and Seranthony Dominguez.
Lowering his walk rate by half in 2024 allowed Estevez to establish himself as an elite closer, and at one point this season before his trade he went just slightly less than three months without allowing an earned run – on a bad team. Estevez, who had pitched to a 0.40 ERA in his last 22 outings when Dombrowski acquired him, picked up six saves and had an ERA of 2.57 over 21 innings with the Phillies but he’s had limited post-season experience.
He’s really the finishing piece to a bullpen with four high-leverage relievers with ERA’s under 3.00 and given the pixie dust that seems to have been sprinkled on the Mets recently, you get the sense there could be more leverage opportunities than might otherwise be expected.
• Tommy Edman, CF/SS, Dodgers: It’s always fun – in a foolish, nobody-remembers-if-it-doesn’t happen kind of way – to figure out which ‘support’ player comes through in the post-season. It’s not just a matter of one moment, either. Steve Pearce and David Eckstein have World Series MVP awards. Eddie Rosario, Howie Kendrick, Chris Taylor and old friend Marco Scutaro have Championship Series MVP Awards. You can keep scrolling down the list, too.
Edman, who was acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals at the trade deadline despite having yet to play due to off-season wrist surgery, has turned into a trusted part of the Dodgers’ deep lineup as a centre-fielder/shortstop despite the fact he was at second base where he won a Gold Glove for the Cardinals. Being a switch-hitter who offers above average defence at the two most important defensive positions on the diamond – and with a successful track record of stolen bases – makes him someone to watch.
• Manny Machado, 3B, Padres: My god, but the Padres are a franchise that needs some post-season history, no? When Machado stroked a two-run double off Max Fried in Game 2 against Atlanta, it moved him into a tie with Tony Gwynn for the franchise record with (checks notes) uh, 11 RBIs. Yikes.
It was the only hit in seven at bats for Machado, whose post-season record is spotty: a career .218 average in 43 games. But Machado had a decent 2022 post-season, hitting five homers, driving in seven runs and hitting .271.
We all saw the triple play he started in the game that clinched a post-season berth. And we saw that bounce throw from the seat of his pants to second against the Braves. Machado’s defensive metrics were down markedly after last season’s elbow surgery – he had a negative UZR/150 and was 0zeroouts above average and Baseball Savant has him as average to a shade below average – and he pretty much slumbered offensively through the first six weeks of the regular season.
But he hit his stride in late May and hit 13 of his 29 homers and 26 of his 59 extra-base hits in the final two months of the regular season. Former major leaguer Adam Jones, who keeps tabs on the Padres as his hometown team, says of Machado: “It’s like he’s hit a different switch. Like he’s on a different wavelength.” Jones described the Padres-Dodgers rivalry – and this series – as being “personal” for Machado.
• Shohei Ohtani, DH, Dodgers: The best for last, eh? It feels cheap – almost dirty, in fact – to point out that Ohtani’s 869 regular-season games without a playoff appearance are second only to Nick Ahmed’s 957 among active players, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. But here we are. You’ve got access to the internet, obviously. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. So, I’ll let you do the heavy lifting, and gorge yourself on the statistical feast that has been Ohtani’s 2024.
I kind of like this: the Dodgers went wire to wire en route to finishing first in the NL West but after a 4-2 loss to the Padres in Game 157 they saw their lead drop to two games. Ohtani drove in two runs the next night in a 4-3 win over Cease, then went 3-for-5 in a 7-2 win in the third game to snuff out any unnecessary excitement. In fact, Ohtani finished the year on a 12-game hitting streak with seven homers, 22 RBIs and a 1.057 OPS. Now if only he could pitch … nah, let’s not go there.
JEFF BLAIR’S PREDICTIONS
• Phillies def. Mets 3-1
• Padres def. Dodgers 3-2
