Young Braves ready for big stage
ARLINGTON — Those Baby Braves that faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the playoffs two years ago have grown up a little bit, and have even won a couple of postseason series.
The Dodgers have been here before, in the NL championship series for the fourth time in five years and settling in at the new AL ballpark where last week they won their NL division series and would like to stay for the World Series.
Atlanta is in its first NLCS since 2001 and, like Los Angeles, has won all five games so far this postseason.
“We’re really, really strong. 2018, I think we were just excited to make it, we completely flipped the script of our record from 72-90 to 90-72 in a year, so were just thrilled,” said Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman. “This is a completely different story. … We like our chances. We’ve been playing really well.”
Game 1 of the best-of-seven NLCS is Monday night. It is a matchup of the highest-scoring teams in the majors during the regular season, with fans in the stands for the first time in this pandemicaffected season.
Both teams plan to go with the same Games 1 and 2 starters they used in the wild-card round and the NLDS.
Walker Bueher, troublesome finger blister and all, will start the opener for the Dodgers, and lefty Clayton Kershaw, pitching near his home, goes in Game 2. While Buehler (0-0, 3.38 ERA) has been limited to eight innings in two starts, the righthander has 16 strikeouts. Three-time NL Cy Young Award winner Kershaw (2-0, 1.93) struck out 13 in eight scoreless innings in the series clincher against Milwaukee.
Lefty Max Fried (0-0, 3.27) goes in Game 1 for Atlanta, before rookie righthander Ian Anderson (2-0, 0.00), who has 17 strikeouts over 112⁄3 scoreless innings.
Fellow rookie Kyle Wright is set to go for the Braves in Game 3, while Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is keeping his “optionality” for Games 3-5.
After 118 homers in 60 regularseason games, the Dodgers have only two in the playoffs. They’ve hit one in the spacious new Texas Rangers’ ballpark where they swept the San Diego Padres in the NL division series last week, but scored 23 runs in those three games.
“We’re not a one-track offense,” Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner said. “We can score runs in a ton of different ways. And if the ball happens to go over the fence, we’ll take that too.”
Los Angeles won the 2018 NLDS over Atlanta in four games on way to its second consecutive World
Series, though the Dodgers are more than three decades removed from their last title in 1988. That was part of 10 consecutive postseason series losses before the Braves swept Cincinnati and Miami this year.
“When we faced them the last time, I said afterwards we we weren’t as strong as they were,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “We’ve made a lot of progress in that regard. We’re a stronger team than we were two years ago, our offense, just the total, the bullpen. And what we’ve seen out of the young starters is pretty good, too.”
While young 20-something standouts Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies have now been part of three consecutive NL East titles, Braves pitchers have thrown four shutouts in these playoffs.
“There’s a lot of young athleticism on both sides,” Roberts said. “It’s going to be a fun series.”