NLDS Showdown: Longtime rivals Dodgers and Giants meet for first time in postseason

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers and Giants didn’t meet for the first time in 2021 until May 21, in both teams’ 45th game of the year. Already, it felt like September, as Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said Thursday, on the eve of the National League Division Series.

Imagine what the next week will feel like. By its end, the two teams will likely have played each other in 20% of their games since that day. So far, the Giants have won 10 of 19 tilts, but the Dodgers have outscored them, 80 runs to 78. The Giants won the NL West by one game. Their seasons could not have been closer.

Now comes a best-of-five series to sort it out.

"For us, it’s one of those things where we’ve had a lot of success in our division, and they had a special year," the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler said. "I guess for us this is kind of the way to settle it."

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No one involved seems surprised that it has come to this.

"You knew it was going to be us two," Giants right-hander Logan Webb said. "It’s been the two best teams in baseball all year, and I'm super excited."

On Friday at Oracle Park, Buehler will start Game 1 against Webb before Julio Urías and Kevin Gausman face off in Game 2. The Dodgers will then turn to Max Scherzer and, likely, Tony Gonsolin before repeating with Buehler if necessary. The Giants are also expected to start Anthony DeSclafani and Alex Wood, a former Dodger.

More than on the field, the front-office and coaching connections between these teams are significant. Giants general manager Farhan Zaidi, of course, is the former Dodgers general manager. Giants manager Gabe Kapler is the former Dodgers director of player development. Zaidi interviewed Dodgers first-base coach Clayton McCullough for the managerial job, too, and interviewed Kapler for the Dodgers’ managerial job that went to Dave Roberts, Kapler’s old teammate on the 2004 Red Sox.

It’s safe to say many of the men who will supervise this series know one another well. They share close friendships or private rivalries with their counterparts. They think similarly. According to the man who started this sort-of coaching tree, that won’t impact how they approach it.

"It’s impossible to want to win a division series more, in any instance," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "There’s no level up."

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For his part, Kapler argued that it is not the ties that bind these two teams but their perspectives.

"I think it’s much more about, coincidentally, some of the better teams around the game right now are approaching it similarly and less about kind of where we’ve been," Kapler said.

In the industry, these two teams are known as the pacesetters in making players better, in turning spare parts into useful contributors. The Dodgers have pivoted some to an NBA-style super-team in recent seasons, converting their prospect depth into superstars Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Scherzer. The Giants still lack that top-end talent and, accordingly, the outsized expectations.

"You can see that nobody talks about them," Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen said. "Everybody talks about the Dodgers and the Padres, and they have that chip on their shoulder, and you can see that."

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The Giants don’t talk much about that chip anymore. Their words now more often attest to a view that they are at least the Dodgers’ equal. They think back on series after series of tight baseball played against the Dodgers and retain the confidence that they can once again edge them.

This is the first time the Dodgers and Giants are meeting in the postseason. It is also the first time that any two teams with this many wins are meeting — in the postseason or regular season. The only way this matchup could be bigger is if it were later.

"It’s what baseball wants," Roberts said. "Giants-Dodgers, one of the great rivalries in sports, and it's happening."

As Scherzer said minutes after this matchup became a reality: "Here we go. Let’s play some baseball."

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.