MLB Playoffs: Surprising Mets set for NLCS clash with the Dodgers

The Mets are hoping to ride their momentum into an NLCS clash with the top seeded Dodgers

It’s hard to imagine MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred could be any happier with the results of the National League playoffs thus far.

Starting Sunday, two of the biggest fan bases from its two biggest markets will renew their postseason rivalry and face off in the National League Championship Series in a best-of-seven match-up for a trip to the Fall Classic.

The New York Mets.

The Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yes, Commissioner Rob is humming a happy tune.

For baseball fans, this should be a great series (although we say that heading into pretty much every postseason series, don’t we?), with the upstart Mets, the No. 6 seed in the postseason, taking on the top-seeded behemoths of baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers were supposed to be here. The Mets are a surprise.

Of course, it’s not as if the Mets are a small-market, scrappy, “can-do” operation. In fact, New York has the largest payroll in baseball, $317.7 million in 2024. The “miserly” Dodgers are only fifth, at $241.0 million. Brother, can you spare a dime?

The Dodgers will have home field advantage, hungry for their first non-shortened-season title since 1988 (they won the pandemic World Series in 2020), while the Mets have gone without a parade since 1986.

Ronald Reagan was in the middle of his second term. Germany was still two countries. People watched music videos on television.

These two teams have met three previous times in the postseason. In 2015, New York ousted the Dodgers in a five-game divisional victory that sent them to the NLCS, eventually falling to the Kansas City Royals in the World Series. In ‘06, the Mets routed L.A. in three games in the NLDS before falling to the Cardinals in the Championship Series. And in 1988, Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershisher outlasted the Mets in seven taut games before knocking off the heavily favored Athletics in a legendary World Series.

How will this match-up go? These two teams have not played each other since the end of May, so we can probably throw most of those regular season results out the window.

Let’s take a look at where things stand now.

Los Angeles Dodgers

How they got here:
Record 98-64, 1st Place NL West
Defeated San Diego Padres 3-2 in the NLDS

For the first time since Major League Baseball introduced the best-of-three NL Wild Card Series in 2022, a National League team with a first-round bye has won a divisional round series. For the last two seasons, the Dodgers were upset in the previous round, first by the Padres and then the Diamondbacks last season. San Diego appeared on the verge of making that a three-peat after jumping out to a 2-1 series lead, but two consecutive shutouts by a Dodgers pitching staff that contained many question marks leading into Games 4 and 5 eliminated a dangerous Padres lineup.

(Seriously though, can we pour one out for the San Diego fanbase for a moment? With a chance to win Game 4 at home, and then Game 5 on the road, the uber-talented and highly productive Padres lineup went scoreless for the final 24 innings of the series. Their last run scored was a six-spot in the second inning of Game 3, last Tuesday.)

Los Angeles obviously is paced by the greatest player the sport has perhaps ever seen, Shohei Ohtani, who authored perhaps the best season we’ve ever seen – 54 home runs, 59 stolen bases, 130 RBIs and 139 runs while hitting .310. He almost won the Triple Crown and became baseball’s first, and probably only, 50/50 man. If that weren’t enough, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts are there to add some punch, with Teoscar Hernandez one of the most underrated sluggers in the game

The lineup is long and lean. We’ll get to the pitching in a moment.

New York Mets

How they got here:
Record 89-73, 3rd Place NL East
Defeated Milwaukee Brewers 2-1 in NLWCS
Defeated Philadelphia Phillies 3-1 in NLDS

The Mets arrive at the 2024 NLCS by following the path of the 2022 Phillies, almost to the letter. After struggling through a lackluster first half that saw them fall to 11 games under .500 on June 2 and 17 ½ games out of first place on June 11, the Mets rallied thanks to a 49-33 record after June 1 that was fourth-best in baseball (Padres, Tigers and Diamondbacks). They survived a game Milwaukee club in three tense wild card round outings, then upset their hated division rivals in thrilling fashion, capped off by their own “Bedlam at the Bank” moment.

They’re led by all-world shortstop Francisco Lindor, who in any other season would be a surefire MVP. Unfortunately, Lindor lives in a Shohei Ohtani world, and he’s not getting that hardware this year. The lineup is cooking heading into the NLCS, with third baseman Mark Vientos catching fire through the first two series (1.181 OPS, 2 HRs, 7 RBIs in 7 games), Pete Alonso has crushed three big home runs in the first two rounds, and guys like Brandon Nimmo, Jesse Winker, Jose Iglesias, Starling Marte, J.D. Martinez and Tyrone Taylor seemingly grinding out quality at-bats on the regular.

Mets Key To Victory: Slow down Ohtani, Freeman & Betts

There has simply been no better starting rotation in the National League in the second half than New York’s. Their 3.46 ERA trails only four AL teams (Houston, Detroit, Tampa and Seattle) since the All Star break, pitching an MLB-best 379.2 innings in that time frame.

Right-hander Luis Severino will have his hands full with the combination of Ohtani, Freeman and Betts, but New York may be the team best suited to face this lineup, given three of their top four starters, the rejuvenated Sean Manaea, Jose Quintana and David Peterson, are all left-handed, a platoon favorability against the Dodgers’ two best bats, Ohtani and Freeman.

But can they really shut down Ohtani? He went 6-for-20 against the Mets this year with two dingers and six RBIs in five games, although he is just 4-for-19 in the playoffs thus far. The Dodgers won despite Ohtani not having a large impact in the final four games of the series. Down-ballot players Kike Hernandez, Max Muncy, and Will Smith must be accounted for, too.

The bullpen is New York’s biggest area of weakness, and they were not called on to do much against two struggling offenses in the Brewers and Phillies thus far, but with Edwin Diaz closing, the Mets have a true lock-down 9th inning guy they like.

Dodgers Key To Victory: Propping up the starting rotation

The Dodgers’ rotation was running on fumes by the end of the season, and in Game 4 of the NLDS against San Diego, they somehow managed to win a bullpen game, on the road, in an elimination game, against All Star Dylan Cease. Not only did they win that game, they won it 8-0.

Five relievers – Michael Kopech, Anthony Banda, Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, and Alex Vesia, combined to throw 17.1 innings in the NLDS, allowed 7 hits, strike out 25 batters and walked six. Oh, they also gave up no runs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a brilliant Game 5, but it wouldn’t have happened without the outstanding work done by the Dodgers’ brilliant relief core.

They may need to repeat that effort against a Mets lineup that is doing everything right. Los Angeles has to hope Walker Buehler (6 ER, 5 IP) and Jack Flaherty (4 ER, 5.1 IP) give them more than they did in the previous round, but we’ve all seen teams ride a hot bullpen to the World Series, and manager Dave Roberts will have to be shrewd and make all the right calls in order to get them there.

Based on the 162-game regular season, the Dodgers were the better team, as evidenced by piling up nine more wins during the course of the season, and now that they’ve broken through that mythical “first round bye curse” Atlanta fans made popular after two early-playoff ousters, it’s reasonable to think they’re going to push through and get back to the Fall Classic against the last team into the dance.

Of course, we’ve seen those last teams (2022 Phillies, ‘23 Diamondbacks) ride their hot streaks all the way to the end, too. The Mets are playing with house money. They are loose. They are talented. They have that “vibe” you often see with teams that go all the way. And yes, they’re playing really confident, relaxed, sound, fundamental baseball, with the appropriate pop and a starting rotation that is simply not making any mistakes.