World Series predictions,
USA TODAY Sports baseball writers make their picks:
TED BERG
Cubs over Red Sox in six games: Explanation: While predicting the outcomes of short postseason series with any accuracy seems impossible, the Cubs enter October with the deepest and healthiest roster. The sport’s best pitching staff, led by workhorses Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta, will benefit from its durability and the defense behind it. Even if the pitchers falter in the World Series against one of the American League’s high-powered offenses, the Cubs’ lineup has plenty of bats to pick up the slack.
STEVE GARDNER
Cubs over Red Sox in six: Chicago has everything a team needs to navigate the postseason gauntlet successfully. No one else can come close to matching Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks in their rotation. The Cubs have the game’s most dominant closer (Aroldis Chapman). And manager Joe Maddon has a roster deep enough to fit any situation.
average in most general categories, though, like every other NL playoff team, they trail the top-seeded Chicago Cubs.
The Dodgers take pride, for good reason, in the collective contributions that carried them while Kershaw recovered.
First baseman Adrian Gonzalez’s comment that, whereas past Dodgers teams “out-talented” opponents, the 2016 Dodgers “outplayed them,” resonated with manager Dave Roberts.
“That’s the best description of our team, really,” says Roberts, whose team seems to reflect his own resilience.
TEAM HAS CHEMISTRY
The rookie manager, a cancer survivor who was drafted in the 28th round out of UCLA, carved out a 10-year big-league career and earned baseball immortality by stealing a base for the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 postseason, said the Dodgers are less plagued by random whiners who are seemingly part of all walks of human life.
Kershaw, a Dodgers draftee who joined the team in 2008, said togetherness differentiates this squad from many of the other eight. “It can’t hurt,” he said.
Astute baseball observer Tony Gwynn Jr., a former big-league Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta is No. 3 in a deep rotation.
The best reason to pick a team other than the Cubs comes down to either a 108-year-old curse or the unpredictability of the postseason. These 2016 Cubs are too good to be derailed by either.
BOB NIGHTENGALE
Cubs over Red Sox in six: And the Cubs won’t have to wait an-
outfielder who works as a Dodgers radio broadcaster, sees the team’s versatility as a strength that should translate to the playoffs.
“Their depth is something that is really unusual for baseball,” he says, “as is the way they can interchange players, in the infield and the outfield, and not lose anything.”
Sure, the Cubs are the team to beat.
But give the Dodgers their due, says former San Francisco Giants third-base coach Tim Flannery, who played in one World Series and coached in three others.
“They are really good,” he says. “Dave Roberts has to be manager of the year, all he dealt with. His positive light saved them. Their bullpen became the glue that held them together until this rotation got healthy.”
Watch out for Yasiel Puig, says Flannery. “He helps them against lefties,” he says. “And (third baseman) Justin Turner has been so great.”
Roberts says the team’s best regular, shortstop Corey Seager, 22, is the rare young player who plays with poise, intensity and smarts from pitch to pitch.
Then there’s the pathos angle: “Win For Vin.”
Gwynn said the story line of Vin Scully watching the Dodgers
Cubs over Red Sox in five: It’s a rare luxury to have the reigning Cy Young Award winner (Jake Arrieta) as your third-best starter. The Cubs overwhelm opponents with the best pitching staff in the majors, and it’s not even close. They’re also an accomplished defensive team, which not only buoys the pitchers but can prove invaluable in the postseason. And their lineup is balanced, with no less than nine hitters who reached double figures in home runs this season. Forget about billy goats or Bartmans.
win the World Series would beat even the Cubs vanquishing the Billy Goat Curse, because Scully, the recently retired longtime Dodgers play-by-play man, hooked so many Southern Californians on baseball.
Says Kershaw: “We obviously would love to win this year for a lot of reasons. To have it be Vin’s last year, and if we got to do it and to celebrate with him around still, that would be icing on the cake.”
In the past nine trips to the postseason, the Dodgers lost each time in the NL playoffs.
They, unlike the Cubs, ascended to the top several times in recent decades, winning five World Series titles after moving to Los Angeles in 1958.
An NFL doppelganger of the Dodgers is the Dallas Cowboys. Both are revenue giants and former perennial champions who’ve gone decades without going the distance.
Kershaw, a Texan and former prep football center, is a longtime Cowboys fans who can commiserate with longtime Dodgers fans.
“The Cowboys won three Super Bowls in the 1990s, so it hasn’t been that long,” Kershaw says.
“The Dodgers, I think, we need it worse.”
Krasovic reported from San Diego.