Dodgers-Braves: Why baseball fans should embrace this wild, unpredictable NLCS
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
We know the Los Angeles Dodgers can climb out of a postseason hole, even one that might appear impossibly deep. We know they can do it from this kind of deficit, at this point of the season, against this exact opponent — the Atlanta Braves — because it happened last year.
The Dodgers' 11-2 victory Thursday narrowed the National League Championship Series gap and elicited all kinds of positive vibes while serving as a timely reminder for Los Angeles.
After all, this was a 106-win team, the second-best record in baseball. And this team already knocked off the team that owned the season’s best record, the San Francisco Giants, in the divisional round.
This is what champions — defending champions, in this case — do.
The problem is this is how it has been going for the Dodgers over the past week or so since they ran into the Braves once more: gloom and seemingly certain elimination one day, buoyant positivity and an apparently seismic shift in momentum the next.
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With Chris Taylor hitting three homers, the Dodgers got a much-needed power surge in an 11-2 victory over the Braves in Game 5 of the NLCS.
"It seems the whole series we’ve been switching off games," Atlanta first baseman Freddie Freeman told reporters.
It has been a heck of a series, and it has also been an undeniably strange one, filled with unpredictable developments from unlikely contributors. As soon as it tilts one way, it hurriedly shuffles back the other.
It seemed all but over just a few days ago, when the Braves led 2-0 and muscled their way to a solid lead in Game 3, only for Cody Bellinger to provide a rescue homer to perhaps save a season in which he has looked nothing like a former National League MVP.
But then the Braves bustled back into control, with Game 4 dominated by the hot hands of a bunch of relievers that no one had tabbed as difference-makers coming in. Once Jesse Chavez, Drew Smyly, A.J. Minter and Tyler Matzek had done their thing, the Dodgers were on the ropes once more.
The most recent to-and-fro came Thursday. Heading into the postseason, L.A.’s Chris Taylor was not in the starting lineup, but he blasted three home runs on the night, as Braves pitching stud Max Fried stumbled.
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"The night of his life!" Chris Taylor has a performance for the ages.
With the comeback underway, the Dodgers are listed at +195 to turn the whole thing around and move on to the World Series (per FOX Bet), while the Braves sit at -250 to hold on and book their place in the Fall Classic for the first time since 1999.
Here is where, in theory, it should be more difficult for Los Angeles than last time. There is no more uniqueness of a neutral site this season, meaning back-to-back wins at Truist Park, where Atlanta will be backed by vociferous support, are now a requisite. The visitors’ rotation, however, is set up nicely.
"It makes sense to think that the Dodgers’ show of power and bullpen strength Thursday puts them in good position to win behind a rested Max Scherzer in Game 6, but not very much has made sense in this series," Helene Elliott wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Saturday’s matchup will actually see Walker Buehler going up against youngster Ian Anderson and will be the eighth time in the past two postseasons that the Dodgers have found themselves one defeat away from the start of winter. In each of the previous seven, they have prevailed.
"We definitely don’t prefer elimination games," Dodgers outfielder AJ Pollock said. "We want to eliminate other teams. I wish we put ourselves in a little better position."
If Buehler can get his team to a Game 7, Scherzer will presumably be up. Manager Dave Roberts says he likes the guys he will be running out there. Why wouldn’t he?
Local excitement in Atlanta is tempered by some trepidation. It was just five years ago that the Atlanta Falcons squandered a 28-3 Super Bowl lead to Tom Brady’s New England Patriots. Fans in the area suffered through Georgia’s heartbreaking national championship defeat to Alabama, then the Braves’ lost lead last year.
"I think it’s something we know about, but it’s something that we’re definitely on a mission to kind of dispel," Anderson said. "We’re still in a good spot. The vibes are still good, and we’re going to hop on a flight, head home and be ready to play Saturday."
As this roller coaster of a series rumbles on, the only predictable thing is that there will be more unpredictability. But when there have been as many twists as this, who even knows what to predict anymore.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.