I know. I said Dodgers in six before the National League Championship Series began. Can I get a do-over – say, one that ends this series a little quicker?
And yes, I also know a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven baseball series is not foolproof, just very good odds. Of the 93 previous instances in which a team won the first two, 78 of those went on to win. That means 15 teams blew a 2-0 lead.
The Dodgers themselves have been part of seven of those 15 comebacks, winning four of them. That includes the first one, the 1955 Brooklyn championship over the Yankees that was the first of the club’s eight titles. They’ve also come back from 0-2 to win World Series in 1965 against Minnesota and 1981 against the Yankees and the NLCS against Atlanta in 2020, the COVID season, and lost with a 2-0 lead in two World Series (to the Yankees in 1956 and ’78) and one NLCS (to St. Louis in 1985, no thanks to Jack Clark.)
But there is also this sobering thought for any Milwaukee fan: Only three times in 209 previous best-of-seven series, encompassing 131 World Series and 78 League Championship Series since 1985, has a team lost the first two at home and come back to win the series. Those would be the 1985 World Series (Kansas City over St. Louis), the 1986 World Series (New York Mets over Boston) and the 1996 World Series (Yankees over Atlanta).
I suppose the 2020 Dodgers would technically fall into that category as well, coming back from losing the first two as the home team – and a 3-1 deficit overall – to beat Atlanta in that year’s NLCS … except there were no home games after the Wild Card round that October because of the COVID bubble. The NL postseason and World Series were played in Arlington, Texas.
So, what to make of this year’s League Championship Series, in which both road teams – the Dodgers in Milwaukee and the Seattle Mariners in Toronto – took 2-0 leads?
Well, as Dodgers manager Dave Roberts noted during the Wild Card Series against Cincinnati, he believes in momentum in October, though he noted that while it’s real, it’s “not everything. I think that whether it’s the (2023 Texas) Rangers (finding) their way into the postseason to then win the World Series or some team finishing hot and remaining hot or in a particular game, I do believe (that) in a postseason game, momentum is real in how you kind of manage it to not let it spiral.
“I do love being at home because a lot of times that’s what perpetuates it, the home crowd, the energy and how you manage it, how the players manage it.”
And, he added, it helps to have experienced players who are used to navigating the postseason environment. That trait has been evident through each round of the postseason, and it helps explain why the Dodgers are 4-0 on the road thus far.
It also helps when your starting pitchers have a 1.53 ERA through eight games.
Consider: The bullpen was dominant in last year’s run to the title because the rotation was decimated, and in fact it was a bullpen game in Division Series Game 4 in San Diego last year that kept the Dodgers’ season alive. This year, if you had to pick four or five Dodger relievers to put together a bullpen game, who could you really trust?
Instead, you have Blake Snell going eight innings and 103 pitches in Game 1 in Milwaukee, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto going nine innings and 111 pitches in Game 2, the first complete game in baseball’s postseason in eight years and the first for a Dodger since Jose Lima’s complete game shutout of St. Louis in a 2004 NLDS.
Who knows? Maybe the Dodgers’ dominant rotation and leaky bullpen could somehow lead to another baseball revolution in the way players are deployed. As journalist/author Joe Posnanski noted in his daily “JoeBlogs” newsletter on Wednesday:
“(This) postseason has been utterly filled with amazing starting pitching performances – Blake Snell, Cam Schlittler, Tarik Skubal a couple of times, Garrett Crochet, Trey Yesavage, Tyler Glasnow, Logan Gilbert, Gavin Williams, Max Fried. What if, and I’m just spitballing here, teams could find those kinds of starting pitchers, BUT they didn’t have to take them out of the game? Like they would pitch all nine innings? Think about how that would free up roster spots! Think about how much better the flow of the game would be! Think about how much more entertaining that would be for fans!
“It could be the new Moneyball.”
Then again, maybe not.
But if you’re of a certain age that you remember Sandy Koufax’s World Series Game 7 complete game victory over the Minnesota Twins 60 years ago – achieved on two days’ rest, with an arthritic elbow and without benefit of an effective curveball that day – and then you watch Yamamoto’s mastery of the Brewers on Tuesday night … is it at least worth considering?
Consider, too, that Roberts got his customary heat from the fan base for taking Snell out after eight innings Monday night. There are a lot of issues involved, of course, one of the largest involving the attempt to keep pitchers healthy.
The emphasis of max effort and the pursuit of spin make pitching a more grueling, stressful activity than it ever was in those days of frequent complete games – or, for that matter, frequent quality starts (six innings or more, three runs or less). Garrett Crochet, Cristopher Sánchez and Logan Webb shared the major league lead with 22 apiece; Yamamoto had 18 in 30 starts to lead the Dodgers, and no one else on the staff was in double figures.
But in the postseason, Snell (three) and Yamamoto (two) have thrown nothing but quality starts.
“I just think that right now each one of these guys (in the Dodgers’ rotation) is throwing the ball incredibly well,” Roberts said Tuesday night in Milwaukee. “And obviously there’s been things with the bullpen, but (I’m) just trying to find the right spots for those guys. … Whoever is behind them has got to be a better option given where those guys (starters) are at.”
Right now, they aren’t.
“I believe in all of our pitchers,” Roberts continued. “But I think in each moment, I’ve got to evaluate each game and how they’re throwing the baseball. And the last two nights, and even this postseason, I just feel really confident in the way the starters are attacking hitters, the efficiency, the way they’re able to mix and give hitters different looks.”
The Brewers aren’t out of it yet, but they do have to win at least once in L.A. to stay alive, and they’ll likely have to do so against Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani and Snell again. At this point the odds are steep.
So I’m taking that do-over. Dodgers in five.
jalexander@scng.com