Before they flipped the post-season script on the Miami Marlins – who in case you’ve forgotten hadn’t lost a post-season series until last week – the Atlanta Braves needed to put the Marlins in the rear-view mirror during the regular season.
This is 2020 after all, and despite the Marlins being ravaged by COVID-19 (allegedly from a team ‘bonding exercise’ in Atlanta) there they were on Aug. 14: holding down first place in the NL East, two games ahead of the Braves. But the Braves kick-started their season with an inter-league, double-header sweep of the New York Yankees, with Ronald Acuna Jr., leading off the first game with a home run off Gerrit Cole and Ian Anderson tossing six innings in his Major League debut. Those two could write their names in capital letters this week.
And now here they are: three wins from the World Series, a young team that will need both of those young players to have big series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, who somewhat remarkably still find themselves with a wide-open window of opportunity despite a history of squandering resources.
Check the post-season histories of those great Braves teams led by Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine of the late 80s and 90s. Now look at the Dodgers recent history. There are some similarities … but at least those Braves managed to win one World Series. Keep in mind: because of the pandemic, these teams have not played each other this season.
The same will hold true in the American League Championship Series. There will be 11,500 tickets available for fans to attend each NLCS and ALCS game and as of Friday they were going on the secondary market for $500 for a group of four. Each group will be at least six feet apart from each other.
With the NLCS set to begin Monday, these six players could have a significant impact on the outcome of the series.
Jeff Blair’s pick: Dodgers in six games.
Ronald Acuna Jr., CF, Braves
Here’s the thing about the Braves’ sprint to the NLCS: with all due respect to them, beating the Cincinnati Reds and boat racing the Marlins might not necessarily be on the same level as taking care of the Dodgers’ deep lineup in a best-of-seven series.
Both the Reds and Marlins were flawed offensive teams, Miami compromised even further by the absence of Starling Marte with a fractured hand. At the same time, however, both the Reds and Marlins ran out good pitching and the Braves were able to turn on it.
You no doubt know by now that this is a matchup of power: the NLCS will feature the two offences that hit the ball the hardest against the top-two pitching staffs in baseball when it comes to limiting power. But I have a feeling about Acuna in this one. He was relatively quiet in the Miami sweep – he hit a homer and continued to goad the Marlins, but was otherwise 1-for-10 with seven strikeouts – yet at the age of 22, he has a couple of good playoffs under his belt.
I’m not a big fan of matching up positions in series because it doesn’t tell you much since they seldom go head-to-head and pitcher vs. hitter baseball isn’t a game of matchups. But Acuna Jr., vs. Cody Bellinger in a battle of centre-fielders? I think both of them will be front-and-centre. Acuna is one of only eight MLB players with 10 extra-base hits in his first dozen playoff games and he’s the second player in history with a trio of three-hit playoff games before turning 23.
Ian Anderson, RHP, Braves
We had Mike Soroka on Baseball Central, and the Calgary native - who would likely be getting the ball for the Braves in Game 1 were it not for the fact he shredded his Achilles tendon on Aug. 3 – spent a great deal of time talking about rookie Ian Anderson, who in the NLDS joined another Braves pitcher, Steve Avery, as the only pitchers in Major League history to toss five-plus shutout innings and record at least eight strikeouts in each of their first two playoff starts.
The Braves are justly proud of their young rotation but Soroka noted that Anderson, the third pick in the 2016 draft, had to fight his way through the organization after some wobbles. “He was delayed a bit compared to other guys in the draft class,” Soroka said. Fast forward to his MLB debut this season against the Yankees. “He’s throwing 3-1 change-ups to the Yankees in the first inning,” Soroka said, chuckling. “He’s become a guy who’s able to slow things down.”
Anderson will get the ball in Game 2 and he should be able to use spacious Globe Life Park to his benefit: he already had the lowest home-run rate in the majors (0.7 per cent.) If you’re saying “hey, that can’t be many given the small sample size this season,” you’d be right: that’s one homer allowed on 764 pitches, by Luke Voit in the sixth inning of that debut.
Travis d’Arnaud, C, Braves
The always-excellent Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated lays it out for us in his breakdown of the Braves’ pitching “braintrust,” and yes the word ‘quant’ appears alongside general manager Alex Anthopoulos and how he managed to hire away one of the architects of the Dodgers approach to pitching and – shoot, just read the thing. It’s terrific.
Bottom line, though? d’Arnaud is charged with executing the thing between the lines and this is a cool story for Toronto Blue Jays fans. D’Arnaud, of course, was the guy nobody cried about losing when he and Noah Syndergaard were part of the package traded to the New York Mets in the R.A. Dickey deal. He’d been acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies as part of the Roy Halladay trade and, privately, there were those in the Blue Jays organization who envisioned an eventual shift to first base.
D’Arnaud was released by the Mets and Dodgers before breathing life into his career again with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019 (yes, he played some games at first base) and at 31 years of age, he is having a post-season that has a whiff of history about it. He had seven RBIs in the Braves sweep of the Marlins with three of the biggest hits in the series, compiling a 2.092 OPS. He hits clean-up in one of the game’s best, hardest-hitting lineups and has been behind the plate for all five post-season games so far - four of them shutouts. Baseball has been full of guys who parlay one and two-year deals and reputations for being good teammates into extended careers.
Brusdar Graterol, RHP, Dodgers
Manager Dave Roberts has found himself doing what no manager desires: figuring out a way to ensure his closer isn’t over-burdened with high-leverage situations. The Dodgers bullpen is deep as can be, but the fact remains Jansen’s post-season peculiarities have again shown up – this after a season in which he seemed comfortable, with a 1.04 ERA in his first 17 outings after a late start due to a positive COVID-19 test.
By the time the playoffs rolled around, his cutter was 2 m.p.h. slower and his walk rate was over eight per cent. Roberts’ managing in the playoffs has never passed muster so it will be intriguing to see the extent to which he plays the matchup game against the Braves.
Enter Graterol, a ground-ball machine who helped lead the Dodgers bullpen to an MLB-best 51 per-cent mark in that regard. He has a swagger that Jansen can’t find any more and along with Dustin May could find himself in some pretty funky high-leverage relief situations. I mentioned those great Braves teams under Bobby Cox who managed one World Series win despite going to the playoffs 14 times in 15 years – 11 in a row from 1995-2005 – and one of the reasons they didn’t win more was they always seemed short in the eighth and ninth inning. There are some similarities here.
Will Smith, C, Dodgers
Dodgers catchers have always been a thing, both in good times and bad, and that’s still the case with Smith and Austin Barnes, the latter of whom will continue to catch Clayton Kershaw.
Smith broke out of an 0-for-11 funk in the third and final game of the Padres sweep, going 5-for-6, a Dodgers record, but even in that hitless funk he was making hard contact, something he did this season at a rate that matched the likes of Mike Trout.
He struck out at a 15 per-cent rate that was close to Mookie Betts; his regular-season walk-per-strikeout ratio of 0.91 was best in the National League. If this series turns into a battle of bullpens there is going to be some late-game pressure on the catchers.
Julio Urias, LHP, Dodgers
Roberts has had issues with over-reliance – some would say out-thinking himself – when it comes to using his pitchers going back to 2017, when he brought in a gassed Brandon Morrow in Game 5 of the World Series.
Questions were asked in Game 3 of the Padres sweep when he lifted Dustin May after one start and went with Adam Kolarek for two-thirds of an inning before bringing in Urias – who promptly struck out Fernando Tatis Jr., with the bases loaded and delivered five solid innings of bulk relief, striking out six.
Who knows what will happen in a seven-game series, but Urias has been tough on the Braves in the past and he has been better out of the bullpen in the post-season, holding opponents to a batting average of just over .200 in 71 at-bats. In fact, in his last 11 October outings, he has pitched to a 2.12 ERA with 16 strikeouts and two walks over 17 innings.
Roberts’ issue of May and Urias will be intriguing, especially given Walker Buehler’s blister issues. Urias made an adjustment this season, ditching a short windup and going from the stretch and it seemed to make a difference particularly with his arm speed on the breaking ball. When he’s on, Urias is a master of contact management.
