National League Championship Series Preview: Dodgers vs. Mets

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: Jose Iglesias has issued an appeal to the gods. Iglesias, a pop singer who performs as Candelita and sometime infielder for the New York Mets, has seen his song, “OMG,” become something of a victory anthem. It’s been on signs and shirts and — above all — on repeat, as Iglesias’ club charged from fourth place in June all the way to the NLCS in October.

Now, “OMG” has been given the remix treatment by the Florida-based musician Armando Christian Pérez, aka Mr. 305, aka Mr. Worldwide, aka Pitbull. In his pre-NLCS media availability on Saturday morning, Iglesias said he put Pitbull in contact with the Mets, with an eye toward a potential ceremonial first pitch. For one day only, Mr. 305 would become Mr. 718.

Pitbull is a karmic force of unfathomable strength, and his intercession in this series would be decisive. It should be treated like the Greek and Trojan heroes’ prayers to Zeus or Apollo in The Iliad. So in the interest of filing a series preview of more than 200 words, let’s operate under the assumption that Pitbull will not place his finger on the scale here. (He might have more important things to do, or other places to be. He is, after all, Mr. Worldwide.) What if this contest is decided by mortals?

Both the Mets and Dodgers got to this point on the strength of their pitching. The Mets held the Phillies to two or fewer runs in all three of their NLDS victories. The Dodgers got their teeth kicked in over the first two games and change of their postseason run — they allowed 21 earned runs over their first 20 defensive innings — before flipping the switch and going lights out until the end of the series. Los Angeles is currently on a run of 24 consecutive scoreless innings, and ramped things up in Game 5; the Padres had just one at-bat with a runner in scoring position all night, and that at-bat resulted in a double play to end the third inning. After that, the Padres didn’t even have another baserunner.

The Dodgers’ bullpen has been, if not literally unhittable, then at least un-score-on-able. Or at least their big arms have been. This regular season, the six Dodgers relievers with the highest gmLI — leverage index when entering the game — were Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech, Edgardo Henriquez, Daniel Hudson, and Alex Vesia. Let’s take Henriquez out, because he threw just 3 1/3 innings in the regular season. The remaining five Dodgers relievers combined for 16 2/3 scoreless innings in five games against the Padres, striking out 19 while allowing only 11 total baserunners. The injury that knocked Vesia out of Game 5 of the NLDS, initially thought to be a cramp, turned out to be serious enough to take him out of consideration for the series against the Mets. Nevertheless, the Dodgers still have Kopech, and Phillips, and Treinen, and so on.

Dodger starters, however, were quite hittable against San Diego. Yoshinobu Yamamoto got knocked around in Game 1, then danced between the raindrops over five scoreless innings in Game 5. Jack Flaherty, the presumptive Game 1 NLCS starter, allowed four runs in Game 2 of the NLDS. Walker Buehler got tagged for six runs in the second inning of Game 3, and that’s as far as the rotation goes for the Dodgers; they went with a bullpen game in Game 4.

Given how their relievers pitched this series, wouldn’t you have done the same?

The Mets, it seems, will have to jump on the Dodgers early, which was not how things went against the Phillies. Philadelphia’s starters pitched well, ranging from tricky to historically unhittable. Philadelphia’s bullpen, even the high-leverage guys, was — by contrast — historically inept.

The contrast between rotation and bullpen wasn’t as extreme for the Mets, but the contours were the same. Jose Quintana was untouched in his two playoff starts thus far; in fact, Quintana’s currently on a 16 1/3 inning postseason scoreless streak. He hasn’t given up a run in a playoff game since the 2017 NLCS, which is incidentally the last time he faced the Dodgers in the playoffs. Sean Manaea turned in one of the best starts of the postseason in Game 3 at Citi Field. Luis Severino strung together five scoreless innings in Game 2 before Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos got to him; by that point, the Mets’ bullpen was running on fumes, so he might not have been extended so far under different circumstances.

Even Kodai Senga pitched well after starting Game 1 of the NLDS on two months’ rest. New York sports fans have one historical reference point for a surprising return from injury in the playoffs — Willis Reed in the 1970 NBA Finals — but it was apt. If anything, Senga was even better. He should be clear for as many as 50 pitches in his forthcoming start, after which manager Carlos Mendoza will either go to David Peterson as a bulk guy, or hand things over to his one-inning relievers.

With that said, the Mets’ one-inning relievers have not been good this October. Well, Reed Garrett’s been great; he’s allowed two baserunners in three postseason appearances. But Edwin Díaz looks worn out after being extended to (or even past) his limits down the stretch. He’s walked five of the 17 batters he’s faced this postseason, and thrown just 44 of 87 pitches for strikes. In the NLDS it only got worse; Díaz blew a save in the Mets’ only loss that series, Game 2. His next appearance was on two days’ rest in Game 4, with a three-run lead in the ninth inning against a Phillies offense that looked so lost it was practically begging for a mercy killing. And the first thing Díaz did was walk the Phillies’ no. 6 and no. 7 hitters on a total of 10 pitches to bring the tying run to the plate with nobody out.

Here’s how both team’s high-leverage relievers fared in the divisional round. Garrett notwithstanding, the contrast has been stark.

The Mets won their Division Series, and relatively easily, because for as good as the Phillies’ starters were, the Mets’ starters were at the very least able to keep their team in the game. I want to focus on three left-handed Mets pitchers — two starters and a bulk guy — because I think this is where the series is going to be decided.

These three lefties all work in the low 90s, have three-quarters arm slots or lower, and rely heavily on a sinker. And they collectively just carved up the Phillies. Peterson, Manaea, and Quintana combined to allow a single earned run in 22 1/3 innings of work in the NLDS. They held the top six hitters in a typical Phillies lineup — Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Harper, Alec Bohm, Castellanos, and J.T. Realmuto — to a combined batting average of .120. Those six hitters had a combined whiff rate of 44.4% against those three lefties’ offspeed and breaking pitches.

The Phillies have a reputation for being a free-swinging team. It’s deserved, but a little simplistic. It ignores the selectivity of certain hitters (Schwarber and Bryson Stott), and doesn’t fit narratively with the fact that the freest swinger of the bunch, Castellanos, was one of the few Phillies hitters who didn’t embarrass himself against the Mets.

Nevertheless, the Phillies were sixth in the league in chase rate this year and the Dodgers were 29th. The only team with more selective hitters than the Dodgers had Juan Soto and Aaron Judge at the top of its lineup. So this is a bit of a different challenge.

The top six Dodgers hitters didn’t see a lot of lefty sinkers this year — a little under 800, or 19.7% of their total pitches faced against left-handed pitchers. The results were mixed, but a few Dodgers, namely Shohei Ohtani and the righties, teed off.

Manaea, Peterson, and Quintana threw 36.1% sinkers this year, and held opponents to a collective wOBA of .306. The top six Dodgers posted a collective wOBA of .379 and a collective xwOBA of .437 against left-handed sinkers in the regular season. Those sinkers were probably not as good on the whole as the pitches they’ll see in the NLCS, but either way, something’s gotta give.

The Mets’ offense has built a reputation for getting timely hits late in games. Those will be harder to come by if the Dodgers’ leverage guys keep throwing up zeroes, and if the Mets remain as dependent as they have been on the top of their lineup. Francisco Lindor has looked downright heroic this postseason, and Mark Vientos has gotten his bat on everything that’s moved. Some of that is happenstance — he has a .625 BABIP this postseason — but Vientos has simply been locked in at the plate.

I think it’s fair to say that the Mets depend on Lindor continuing to put the team on his back, if only because that’s been the cause of most of the good things that have happened to this team this year. (Pitbull notwithstanding.) Even beyond the presumptive MVP runner-up, the Mets have been incredibly reliant on the top four hitters in their lineup this postseason: Lindor, Vientos, Brandon Nimmo, and Pete Alonso.

News flash: Best hitters on team outperform worse hitters against tough competition. Stop the presses. But the Mets either need all four of these guys to keep raking, or they need the rest of the lineup to start hitting like superstars.

I’ll finish by focusing on one particular Mets hitter, and it’s not Lindor or Vientos. Alonso is in a bit of an awkward situation: Since he arrived in the majors, he’s been either solely or jointly the face of a big-market team. And now, each series he plays could be his last in New York.

Well, the Polar Bear is making the most of it. In seven games, he has three home runs and seven walks. Alonso usually ends up with a walk rate around 10%, mostly because while other bears are hibernating he’s hitting the squat rack, and therefore pitchers stay away from him if they can avoid it. But he’s not ordinarily a particularly selective hitter, certainly not on the level of a Schwarber or Muncy.

And yet, so far this postseason, Alonso is swinging at just 36.5% of the pitches he sees and 57.6% of pitches in the zone. Those numbers are the lowest and third-lowest, respectively, among hitters with at least 20 plate appearances this postseason. He’s swung at just 13 pitches outside the zone all postseason, and just four of those were more than 3 1/3 inches wide of the strike zone and/or four inches out of the zone vertically.

Alonso had a bit of an odd five at-bat stretch earlier this postseason. Against Nick Mears in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series and Zack Wheeler in Game of the NLDS, Alonso struck out four times and swung and missed at seven fastballs. The fifth at-bat in that stretch, of course, was his series-winning three-run homer off Devin Williams. But that run of five plate appearances accounts for half of Alonso’s postseason strikeouts and seven of his nine swings and misses on fastballs. Alonso whiffed on roughly one in six fastballs during the regular season; since his last matchup with Wheeler, he’s hit 12 in a row, including a home run, a double, and a sacrifice fly.

ZiPS has the Dodgers as nearly a two-to-one favorite in this series; the three most common simulated outcomes are Dodgers in seven, Dodgers in six, and Dodgers in five. My fallible human gut says Dodgers in six sounds reasonable. (Take that for what it’s worth; the same gut thought both of these teams would be on vacation by now.) The Mets’ top hitters have been great, but the Dodgers’ top hitters are somehow even more talented. I don’t really trust the Mets’ bullpen at this point; just watching Díaz warm up in the bullpen makes my shoulder hurt.

But the Mets have gotten this far on guile and timely hitting. Analytically, their luck is bound to run out sooner or later. With that said, their rotation is much better than the names on the schedule would lead you to believe, and the baseball looks as big as a honeydew to Alonso right now. That, plus a little metaphysical assist from Mr. Worldwide, is a good foundation for upsetting the projections once more.