Dodgers 2024 Thread

[ChickenStu]

[Steve007]

[Cutheon]

[JerryWest_44]

JD Martinez knocks in 2 runs

[SGV-Laker fan]

There is no home field advantage in baseball postseason whatsoever. Looks like home teams always play tight and nervous while road teams play free and lose like they’re playing with house money.

I can even go on and say baseball is the only sport that you play poorly when pressures on.

[aprevo15]

[jonnybravo]

[LongBeachPoly]

[Cutheon]

When did Albies stop switch hitting? Man on first, facing a righty, Ozzie Albies, switch hitter, hit righty...weird.

[DuncanIdaho]

[LakerLanny]

[aprevo15]

[Cutheon]

This Padres team is legit

[JerryWest_44]

[aprevo15]

Hope Flaherty throws like his buddy today. It's like Skubal is Kershaw and Flaherty is Greinke. We got the Greinke. Which is still great. LOL

[ribeye]

[aprevo15]

[Dominic1981]

MLB really should reseed teams after the 1st round. Dodgers getting the Padres while a lower seeded Phillies team gets the lowest seeded Mets team really isn’t fair.

Padres were 93-69
Mets were 89-73.


Dodgers had the best record in the NL. A lot of good that does…Assuming both close it out

[Steve007]

The Mets and Padres both got hot after slow starts. Both of them are major threats (well after an 84 win Arizona team made the World Series probably every team looks like a serious threat).

On June 2 the Mets were 24-35, 11 games under .500.

The Padres were still at .500 (50-50 record) on July 19 (at the time the Mets were just 49-47).

Dodgers should definitely still get the lower seed though. But Mandred probably likes this system and has already made it clear he thinks it’s great if there are a lot of upsets. He wants another March Madness, which is an idea I hate in MLB.

Baseball is becoming more like the NHL where the top team only has around a 12% chance of winning. But I think the NHL system is better, because the top teams need 4 losses to get eliminated instead of 3.

[ChickenStu]

The Phillies probably weren't upset to fall to the 2 seed, I'll say that. There's no question that the Padres are, at worst, the third-best team in the NL. I actually think they should be favored to beat the Dodgers, frankly. Their starting pitching is simply superior, their bullpen is superior, and they have a great lineup too. Now, that's not to say that we can't get to their bullpen, or, hell, even their starters. But the single biggest advantage a team can have is with starting pitching, that's what affects the betting line of a game the most, for example, and you can make a case that each of the Padres' top 3 starters is better than any of our starters right now, although at least Flaherty and Yamamoto should give us a good chance to win every time out if they are throwing well and healthy.

And LBP is definitely right about the postseason favoring teams with a couple of top starters and not necessarily great depth. I think of Arizona's run to the World Series last year. They had Gallen, a legit ace, sure. They had Merrill Kelly, an experienced vet who is probably more of a #3 but was pitching like a #2 last year. After that, their third starter in the postseason was inexperienced rookie Brandon Pfaadt, who was basically in a similar position that Landon Knack is in right now, but with even worse stats last year. Their fourth starter? Oh, they didn't have one. They just went with bullpen games in the final 2 series where the fourth starter's spot came up. So this does give me some hope that our makeshift rotation after Flaherty and Yamamoto can get us to and maybe even win a World Series, but I think two things are going to have to be true. One, our bullpen is going to have to be nails. And two, we're going to need to score a lot of runs and really have our hitting shoes on. Need Shohei to go nuclear like he has been. Or, if he gets the Barry Bonds treatment with a slew of intentional walks, then Mookie and Freddie and Teo have to come through.

The Padres really worry me. They look like a team set up to win in October and they freaking hate us. They are so very motivated to beat us. We've lost 7 of our last 8 postseason games. An early NLDS exit and the temperature is really, really going to get turned up. I know Roberts has survived up to this point, with amazing regular season records. I know that management has been steadfast with saying that the postseason is somewhat of a crapshoot. But say we lose the NLDS in 4 games, which would mean we'd have lost 10 of our last 12 postseason games. The Dodgers?!?! I mean, we aren't the Orioles, who have lost 9 straight dating back to 2014. This is the mighty Dodgers, with crazy payrolls. Does Roberts survive that? Let's hope this is all moot, we get by the Padres (or Braves), and catch fire to, as Tom Berenger's Jake Taylor says in Major League, win the whole fu*king thing.

[LongBeachPoly]

[Steve007]

Fwiw, the 2020 Dodger team had a weak starting rotation in the playoffs. Kershaw and Buehler were the only 2 reliable starters (and Buehler is the only one that’s clutch out of those 2). Urias wasn’t a great starter yet and was sometimes used as a starter and sometimes as a reliever. Gonsolin and May started in games and were awful. They both consistently struggled to make it past the 2nd inning. To make things worse, Jansen blew a World Series game.

But that team still won. It was one of the few Dodger teams that hit really well in the playoffs. When Gonsolin or May struggled, the team still had a reasonable chance to win.

[LongBeachPoly]

Yeah

As crazy as it sounds, San Diego might have won the Soto trade (w/ the Yankees).

Picking up Michael King was a crazy good acquisition.

[Steve007]

[aprevo15]

If Mookie and Freddie show up then we should be having a parade this year.