By: Jeremy Durham, TriStar Daily Sports Columnist
Every boxing fan knows the rule. You don’t take the belt on points. If you want to beat the champ, you put him on the canvas.
The Dodgers are the two-time defending champs, chasing only the fifth three-peat in World Series history and the first since the 1998-2000 Yankees. They won 100 games and spent the week resting. Atlanta, after going three rounds with Philadelphia, now has to fly across the country and win three of five against the best team in baseball.
The Braves’ case
Atlanta isn’t a pushover. The Braves went 5-1 against the Dodgers this season, won the NL East and held off the Phillies in the Wild Card round. Ronald Acuña Jr. is healthy, Austin Riley and Matt Olson anchor the middle, and Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II make it a deep order. Walt Weiss’ team grinds out late wins, and the bullpen has been a strength all year.
In a series of slugfests, Atlanta would have a real shot.
But it won’t be one, and the reason is lefties
Every fighter has a weakness, and good corners find it. Dave Roberts found Atlanta’s.
The Braves don’t hit left-handed pitching. They had a .730 OPS against righties this season and only .696 against lefties. That’s the difference between a dangerous lineup and an ordinary one.
So the Dodgers are reportedly doing something that would have sounded crazy a week ago. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the reigning World Series MVP, isn’t starting Game 1. According to MLB.com, the ball goes to Tarik Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner LA got from Detroit at the deadline. He’s 5-2 with a 2.61 ERA as a Dodger and has a 2.04 ERA in six career playoff starts. Blake Snell, another lefty and another two-time Cy Young winner, is likely to follow in Game 2.
Put yourself in Atlanta’s shoes. That’s two straight days at Dodger Stadium against elite left-handers, the exact kind of pitcher this lineup has struggled with all year. Olson and Harris lose the platoon edge. If the Braves leave LA down 0-2, they go home to face Yamamoto in Game 3.
That isn’t a rotation. It’s a combination: left, left, then the right hand you never saw coming.
Atlanta can’t counter
The Braves’ own staff makes it worse. The spring rotation of Chris Sale, Spencer Schwellenbach, Spencer Strider, Reynaldo López and Bryce Elder has been gutted by injuries, and the Wild Card round took what was left. Sale started the opener Tuesday and came back out of the bullpen for four outs in Thursday’s clincher. Tyler Mahle started Wednesday. Neither one is available in Los Angeles, so Atlanta goes into Dodger Stadium against Skubal and Snell with its third and fourth options.
Sale is still their one real weapon, and he should be ready for Game 3 at home. That sets up the best pitching matchup of the series: Sale against Yamamoto. If Atlanta is going to win a game, that’s the one.
The stars are cold, and it doesn’t matter
The Dodgers’ two biggest bats are slumping. Shohei Ohtani went 6-for-49 without a homer from mid-August into September, shut down pitching for the year and then landed on the IL. Freddie Freeman has one home run since the Fourth of July.
LA still went 18-7 in September, because the supporting cast took over. Kyle Tucker, a $240 million disappointment through August, finally came alive with six homers in 18 games and a near-cycle in the division clincher. Mookie Betts got hot. Teoscar Hernández put together a career-best seven-game RBI streak. Max Muncy and Tommy Edman kept delivering big hits, Will Smith returned from the IL, and now it’s October, which means Kiké Hernández is about to turn into a superstar again. The Braves can’t pitch around one guy, because there isn’t one guy.
The Freddie factor
Then there’s Freeman. Atlanta drafted him in 2007, and he won an MVP and a ring there. Then the Braves let him walk, and he’s won two more titles in Dodger blue, ending World Series games with walk-off home runs in back-to-back years.
He’s 37, banged up and slumping. But we’ve seen this before. Last year he came out of the worst power drought of his career and hit 13 homers in the final two months. The year before, he limped through two playoff rounds on a bad ankle and ended up World Series MVP.
How it plays out
Atlanta will land punches. Sale against Yamamoto at Truist could go either way, with the crowd behind the Braves. But the Dodgers built this series around Atlanta’s weakness before the first pitch. To beat the champ, you have to knock him out, and that’s hard to do when you can’t handle the southpaw.
The pick: Dodgers in 4.
The bet: Don’t lay -210 on the series. Take the exact result: Dodgers 3-1 at +260.
