The Mets and the Dodgers have been the two best teams in the National League this season. They have already played one four-game series in Los Angeles, which the two teams split. Now they play three games at Citi Field that might be a preview of the National League Championship Series. That’s why this feels like a very big deal. Not Rivalry Week in baseball. Because of a first-place team from LA and a first-place team in New York, call it Glitz Week.
I asked Dodgers manager Dave Roberts about it Sunday night. His answer was simple, and to the point:
“I know it’s going to be a fun series.”
Roberts’ Dodgers are loaded, again. They have a better record than the Mets, by a lot. They have a better record than everybody else by a lot, too. Not only are they nine games better than the Mets and the Astros in the loss column, they also are suddenly a dozen games better than the Yankees, who looked like an all-time Yankee powerhouse a couple of months ago, as if they were on their way to being the best team in the world.
But the Mets went toe to toe with the Dodgers before the Mets were whole, which means before they had Jacob deGrom back. But deGrom is back now. The Dodgers face him this week even if they don’t have to face Max Scherzer. Seven years ago, deGrom faced the Dodgers in a Division Series. That was when he beat them twice, pitching 13 innings with 20 strikeouts while limiting the Dodgers to just two runs.
The Mets went to the World Series that year. Now, they have their best chance since then to make it back. Everybody knows what the Dodgers have done since then: Three World Series under Roberts: one win, one Game 7 loss to the Astros in 2017. And twice they were bounced in the National League postseason by the eventual World Series winners in the Nationals and Braves .
This season, the Dodgers have 88 victories already. In so many ways, they are already preparing for the postseason now, that’s how far ahead they are in the NL West. That’s how good they are even having just lost Walker Buehler to Tommy John surgery and only just now about to get Clayton Kershaw off the injured list.
But the Mets got their attention when they played that series in June. They had lost the first two games, and they were about to go down the coast to San Diego on that West Coast trip. But they turned around and won 9-4, and then 5-4. It was a split that felt like a lot more than that to Buck Showalter’s team. Now the Dodgers had seen how tough this Mets team is.
Now the two teams do it again. This is one of those moments during the regular season that has an October feel to them. The two games the Mets played at Yankee Stadium last week felt the same way.
“We know who we are, and we definitely know who they are,” Showalter said of the Dodgers. “But they’re all big games for us the rest of the way.”
So we get Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor on the same field in New York. We get Pete Alonso and Freddie Freeman. And Trea Turner and Jeff McNeil, one of the toughest outs anywhere these days. deGrom is slated to face the Dodgers on Wednesday. And even though nobody is saying it, the Mets might get a look at Kershaw on Thursday afternoon.
The Mets lost a hard 1-0 game to the Rockies on Sunday afternoon, on a day when they were looking for a sweep, even after Scherzer struck out 11 before he left the game. The Dodgers? They just kept scoring runs, this time against the Marlins in Miami. They have Betts, Turner, Freeman at 1-2-3 in their order and nobody in baseball can compare with that. But the Mets have been grinding through the opposition with a top four of Brandon Nimmo, Starling Marte, Lindor and Alonso, making starting pitchers work, working the count on them, from the first inning on.
And behind them comes Mark Canha, who got more big late-inning hits on Friday night as the Mets were coming from behind again. And they have McNeil’s hot bat. McNeil is currently third in the Majors in batting, right behind Freeman and two spots ahead of Turner. You get through the Mets’ batting order, with all those grinders, you’ve done something. The Mets have scored 607 runs so far this season. The Dodgers have scored 76 more, averaging more than six runs a game.
Roberts talks about all the “team-first” guys he has playing on his team. Showalter talks about a team of players who “post up” every single day. The Mets are trying not to get caught by the Braves. The Dodgers don’t have to worry about being caught by anybody.
The Dodgers really won’t officially play their next big game until the postseason, they’re a mile ahead of the Padres. But there’s still going to be a postseason vibe for them when they get to New York. It’s the Mets and Dodgers this week. New York and LA Two best records in the league. Three days of October in August. Let’s do this.
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