It’s a happy Monday morning for Dodger fans—so many of us still on a high from the epic Justin Turner walk off home run to put the Dodgers up 2-0 on the Cubs in the NLCS.
One day after rallying to defeat the Cubs in the opener of the 2017 NLCS, the Dodgers have elected to employ the same lineup they used in Game 1 to face Jon Lester and the Cubs in Game 2.
Despite a slow start offensively on Saturday evening, the Dodgers rallied with two runs in the bottom of the fifth inning to tie the contest, and eventually went ahead to stay in the sixth en route to capturing the opener of the 2017 NLCS with a 5-2 victory over visiting Chicago.
It’s very early in the postseason, but the Dodgers seem to have it together. All that worry about whether they would be able to get hot at the right time, if they feared the Diamondbacks, was all for naught. The bats look good, the pitching looks decent, and the Dodgers take a commanding 2-0 lead into Arizona.
It’s been three days of watching other teams play, and now it’s finally the Dodgers‘ chance to get their postseason started. MLB was kind and gave the Dodgers the late time slot, making their game the last contest on Friday evening. Whether that will help or hurt them remains to be seen.
There are but three games left in the regular season, so I can’t help but look ahead to the impending playoffs and the World Series. It’s no secret that the Dodgers have not made the World Series in way too long, and years of just simply making it to the playoffs aren’t cutting it anymore. The last four years have seen the season end in heartbreak, so is this finally the year that the Dodgers make it to the World Series?
It’s difficult to even know where to begin when writing an article on the Dodgers these days. Last Monday, I was flippant. Friday, I was morose and somewhat at a loss for what to say, and now….really, what does one say?
While there’s been very heavy speculation lately about the effectiveness of the Dodgers‘ most common batting orders, there’s little guarantee that moving around several regular pieces will make a huge difference in the overall potency of the offense. The same can be said about moving up right fielder Yasiel Puig in the lineup—he’s definitely thrived in the lower part of the order, but when given the chance to hit in the middle, hasn’t made much of a notable difference at all.
(Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson/USA TODAY Sports)
Without question, there’s no one particular area of the team that can take the brunt of the blame for the Dodgers‘ current losing skid. It was only less than a week ago that the starting pitching was borderline horrendous, yet once that particular problem began fixing itself, a major epidemic of ineffectiveness started to lurk over the majority of the bullpen. All this while the offense, which was once shouldering a huge load of the club’s success, has become nearly dormant.