Playoff Time, Baby: Dodgers Open October at Home
The Dodgers roll into the playoffs as the NL West champs, and Big Sal is already picturing the Dodger Stadium parking lot at sunset.
Alright, my people, this is the moment we wait 162 games for. The Dodgers finish it out at 100-62, 51-30 right here at home, first place in the NL West, and now the real season starts. Doesn't matter who's walking off that plane to face us (opponent's still TBD as of this writing, and honestly? I don't even care yet — we've got our own house to worry about).
Let's talk about who's carrying us. Freddie Freeman is hitting .288 on the year, which is just Freddie being Freddie — the guy is a metronome, steady as the 405 at rush hour (unfortunately also that reliable). Shohei Ohtani leads the club with 30 home runs, and every one of those still gets me out of my chair like it's the first one. Andy Pages has quietly driven in 85 runs this year, and I love that for him — the kid doesn't get the headlines but he's out there doing the dirty work, like the guy who always volunteers to flip the burgers at the family barbecue.
And on the mound? Yoshinobu Yamamoto is our horse: 14 wins, a 2.53 ERA, 182 strikeouts. That's an ace stat line, folks, that's a Game 1 stat line, and if he's dealing in October I like our chances against anybody.
The worry list
Here's the part that keeps a Dodger dad up at night (besides the 10 PM Bay Area road trips): the bullpen has taken a beating. Will Klein, Gavin Stone, Jake Cousins, Ben Casparius and Brusdar Graterol are all on the 60-day IL — elbow soreness, shoulder inflammation, elbow surgery, more shoulder inflammation, and back surgery. That's five arms gone. FIVE. That's not a bullpen, that's a MASH unit. Whoever's left back there is going to have to be perfect, because the margin for error just got a lot thinner.
And the finish wasn't exactly a coronation — we dropped the last two at home to San Diego, 5-1 and 4-2, before closing the regular season with three straight wins at San Francisco (2-0, 4-3, and a 5-1 extra-innings grinder). So: some rust to shake off, but also some fight in there, especially that 10-inning win. I'll take grinders over style points any day of the week.
How to watch: Saturday, Dodger Stadium, first pitch at 12:00 AM ET, on FOX and FS1.
Our take
Look, I'm a homer and proud of it, but even squinting hard at this like a guy trying to find parking on Sunset, the top of this roster is scary good. The bullpen questions are real and I won't pretend otherwise — that's the thing that could bite us in a short series. But Freeman, Ohtani, Pages and Yamamoto are the kind of core that can carry a club through October. Dodgers win the opener. That's my take and I'm sticking to it until they give me a reason not to.
