There’s enough concern about health surrounding the four teams in the National League Division Series that you’d think the clubs had played a regular 162-game season as opposed to 60 games.
The Atlanta Braves lost their ace, Mike Soroka, in August to an Achilles tendon injury, while the San Diego Padres are awaiting clearance for their top two starting pitchers, Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet, hoping to have at least one of them ready for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Miami Marlins, meanwhile, have concerns about Starling Marte after he fractured his left hand when hit by a pitch in the first game of their wild-card series against the Chicago Cubs. The Marlins lineup is much harder to pitch to with Marte in it; he’s their most authoritative hitter. So the post-game news conferences will be followed even more closely today.
Oh — as always, a reminder that the Marlins have never lost a playoff series…
Until now.
With both NLDS set to begin Tuesday, these six players could have a significant impact on the outcome of the series.
BLAIR’S PICKS: Braves over Marlins in four games; Dodgers over Padres in five games.
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1. Walker Buehler, RH, Dodgers
For once, the Dodgers post-season pitching drama isn’t all about Clayton Kershaw. I mean, Kershaw will always have his skeptics until he gets a ring and the game is now at the point where it feels sorry for him. But this season, it appears as if Buehler’s blistered right index finger has supplanted Kershaw’s blistered playoff ERA as the major topic of concern. Buehler was limited to four innings in his start against the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card series and pitched a total of 11 2/3 innings in three September starts.
He will get the start in Game 1 of the NLDS and let’s see where it goes: he loves the post-season, with a 2.90 ERA in seven starts, a 0.893 WHIP, 52 strikeouts and 12 walks. The Padres’ starting rotation hasn’t been shredded by bad health. A Game 1 win followed by Kershaw in Game 2 could turn this into a short series…
2. Freddie Freeman, 1B, Braves
He has been considered one of the game’s most gifted players for some time, yet it pays to remember the past two seasons have had their share of disappointment: bone spurs in his elbow that ruined him during the 2019 post-season, contracting COVID-19 in July. Yet protected in the lineup by Marcell Ozuna, Freeman positioned himself for a fine post-season by appearing in all 60 games, hitting fewer ground balls and becoming more selective while hitting the ball harder than at any point in his career. That’s pretty much the holy trinity, no?
He destroyed fastballs – hitting .427 – and he’ll see plenty of those against the Marlins. He hit .341 with a 1.102 OPS and has expressed interest in signing a contract extension with the Braves. His presence will help a team with a young pitching staff.
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3. Clayton Kershaw, LH, Dodgers
Yeah, yeah. Two Dodgers starters is a bit of a copout but it’s tough to leave Kershaw out of any Dodgers post-season discussion. Texas hasn’t been kind to one of its favourite native sons – see: Kershaw/Astros/post-season – but Arlington’s Globe Life Park might offer a little added comfort to a pitcher who has been at times short of that commodity in the playoffs. The Texas Rangers’ new facility ranked dead-last this season in home run factor and it’s where Kershaw, who has allowed 24 post-season round-trippers, gets to pitch the rest of the bubble post-season.
Kershaw is coming off a 13-strikeout performance in a wild-card win over the Brewers in which he hit and maintained his highest post-season velocity since 2017, following a year in which he cut down on his homer and walk rates and lowered his exit velocity to levels not seen in four seasons. I don’t know … it just feels as if something’s happening here, and that we may see some kind of remarkable chapter being written.
4. Eric Hosmer, 1B, Padres
Enough Fernando Tatis, Jr. We can cover off him if his team makes it to the World Series. (Kidding!) Look, the state of the Padres starters sure makes it seem as if the Padres offence is going to need to carry the load in this series against some really good Dodgers pitching — and yes, we are at that point where we start looking at post-season experience, etc.
Hosmer missed 11 of the first 14 games with a stomach illness and fractured a finger in September and that post-season experience? Yeah, that was way back in 2015 when he won a World Series with the Kansas City Royals. But the man has driven in almost a run a game in the post-season and has changed as a hitter: going from a 61.0 ground-ball percentage in 2018 to 56.6 in 2019 and then 46.2 this season. He’s a lefty with nice numbers against Kershaw and Kenley Jansen so, yeah, this is kind of an old-timey, gut-call pick.
5. Pablo Lopez, RH, Marlins
We mentioned the Marlins and their history of young starters shining in the post-season in our advance look at the NL wild-card, focussing on Game 2 starter Sixto Sanchez. We didn’t touch on No. 1 Sandy Alcantara. We just did now as we pivot to Lopez, who will get the ball in Game 2 of this series. Why? He’s made strides this season, pitched more innings than the other two and posted a ground-ball percentage of 52.
When the ball was in the air, his 8.7 home run/fly ball rate was the best of the trio while posting a 1.6 WAR — per Fangraphs — in 11 starts. He will be matched up against Braves rookie Ian Anderson, and a team he has faced three times with differing results: six innings and eight strikeouts in a 2-1 win; seven earned runs, four walks and four hits in 1 2/3 innings in a 4-3 loss; and five innings of two-hit pitching with six strikeouts and a walk in his final start of the regular season, a 4-2 win.
“It seems a lot of playoff games are bullpen games,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly told reporters this weekend. “We’re a little different. We trust our starters … every guy who goes out there usually has better stuff than anybody else we have in the bullpen.”
Not many teams can say that, yet alone live with it.
6. Adrian Morejon, LH/Luis Patino, RH, Padres
Health have left the Padres/Dodgers series positioned to go from what should be one of the best series in the post-season to a mismatch. So the likes of relievers Morejon, 21, and Patino, 20, are charged with a huge task, one in which the entire baseball world has a vested interest: gentlemen, your job is to help your team ensure that Tatis, Jr., hangs around for another series. God knows we need him.
Morejon and Patino will be part of the Padres rotation next season and there is a likelihood one of them gets a start since the division series games are scheduled for consecutive days, but both of them appeared in that nine-pitcher, 4-0 shut-out win over the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League wild-card series. If this series goes long, they will likely play a significant role more than once.
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