division series

Shohei Ohtani has done next to nothing in the National League Championship Series. The Dodgers could sweep their way into the World Series on Friday, with Ohtani as a footnote in the NLCS story, but baseball’s best player has a flair for the dramatic.

Bring on the latest Babe Ruth comparison!

Baseball’s contemporary two-way superstar can do something Friday that baseball’s original two-way superstar never did.

Ruth started three postseason games as a pitcher, never hitting a home run in those games. Ohtani starts his second postseason game as a pitcher Friday, looking for his first postseason home run as a pitcher.

He could hit a home run and be the winning pitcher Friday, because why not?

“I feel like Shohei is a superhero character,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas said.

In the division series, Ohtani had one hit in 18 at-bats, with nine strikeouts. After the Dodgers clinched, this was catcher Will Smith: “He didn’t do much this series. I expect next series for him to come out and hit like five homers. That’s just who he is.”

In this series, Ohtani has two hits in 11 at-bats, with five strikeouts. Over the NLDS and NLCS, he is batting .103 with no home runs, and he has struck out in 48% of his at-bats.

He has not hit five home runs in this series, as Smith had optimistically anticipated.

“I’m hoping he will tomorrow,” Smith said Thursday.

If a player has a rough week or two in June and changes up his routine, you might hear about it for a couple of minutes on the pregame show. Ohtani had a rough week or two in October and decided to take batting practice on the field instead of in the indoor cages Wednesday, and it became MAJOR BREAKING INTERNATIONAL NEWS.

Not just for fans, the ones that have made his jersey baseball’s best seller, and the ones set to flock to the grand opening of a Tokyo pop-up gallery Friday, featuring vinyl albums that pay homage to the walk-up songs and anthems of Ohtani and other major league stars.

Ohtani’s teammates came out to watch that rare outdoor batting practice. The sound guys cranked up an extra dose of Michael Bublé. And, because it was Ohtani, he hit a ball off the roof of the right-field pavilion.

So, no, the Dodgers aren’t worried. And, no, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts isn’t about to move Ohtani down in the lineup.

“Obviously, Shohei’s not performing the way he would like or we expect,” Roberts said. “But I just know how big of a part he is to this thing.

“We’ve got a long way to go. But I just like the work he’s putting in. And I’ll bet on him all day long.”

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani runs the bases on a leadoff triple against the Brewers in the first inning of Game 3 of the NLCS on Thursday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For Ohtani’s hitting, pitching has been his kryptonite this season. In his 15 starts, including the one in the NLDS, he is batting .207, and he has struck out in 43% of his at-bats.

“I don’t necessarily think that the pitching has affected my hitting performance,” Ohtani said Wednesday. “Just on the pitching side, as long as I control what I can control, I feel pretty good about putting up results. On the hitting side, just the stance, the mechanics, that’s something that I do. It’s a constant work in progress.”

There was some progress Thursday, when Ohtani tripled to lead off the first inning. On the next pitch, Mookie Betts doubled him home.

“It’s kind of like the Bulls playing without Michael Jordan sometimes,” Betts told TBS after the game. “So we get him going and then it’s really going to be hard to beat. You see what happens immediately. As soon as he gets a hit, good things happen. But he’s going to be there.

“He’s going to be there when the time is right. We all trust and believe in Shohei.”

Before the NLCS, Roberts was blunt about Ohtani’s offensive struggles.

“We’re not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance,” Roberts said.

That sort of performance has continued, and the Dodgers are undefeated since then. That makes it easier to believe in Ohtani, and in what he might deliver on Friday.

“I’m expecting nothing short of incredible,” infielder Max Muncy said.

“All in all, I’m expecting Shohei to pitch a great game, and whatever he does offensively is just kind of icing on the cake at that point. It’s a tough thing to pitch and hit in the same game, especially in a postseason game. He’s going to be fine.”

The Ruth comparison only goes so far. When he pitched in the postseason, he was primarily a pitcher, twice batting ninth. He made 145 pitches in his first postseason start, a 14-inning complete-game victory.

That is about all we can say Ohtani will not do. The Dodgers are so deep that, Roberts’ fear notwithstanding, they could win the World Series with a slumping Ohtani. They did that last year, in fact.

However, with one mighty swing, Friday’s storyline could be less about what he did not do and more about what Ruth could not do. Champagne showers are in the forecast.

The Dodgers are not here for conventional wisdom. The Dodgers are here to win the World Series.

So what if an unforeseen hurdle appeared in front of their October path? The Dodgers are on the verge of turning that hurdle into an unexpected but well-planned advantage on their quest to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions in 25 years.

Conventional wisdom says the odds favor a team with a bye, because that team can set up its pitching rotation for the division series just the way it wants while its opponent burns through its best arms in the wild-card series. The Dodgers are one win away from storming through the wild-card series and setting up their pitching rotation for the division series just fine, thank you very much.

That, it turns out, is what you can do when your star-studded starting rotation is healthy and effective for the first time all season, at precisely the right time.

The Dodgers thoroughly outclassed the Cincinnati Reds, 10-5, in Tuesday’s opener of the best-of-three wild-card series. If the Dodgers win Wednesday, or if they win Thursday, they would advance to what would be the premier matchup in all the National League playoffs: the Dodgers vs. the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I think the biggest downside of playing in a wild-card series, obviously, if you’re able to advance, is what your pitching looks like after that,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “That’s the cost.

“And I think, with our depth, that’s really mitigated.”

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. If the Angels could go 6-0 against the Dodgers this season, the Reds could win the next two games.

However, the Reds used their best pitcher, Hunter Greene, in Game 1. The Dodgers have their best pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, ready to deploy in Game 2.

And, since the best-of-three wild card format was introduced in 2022, all 12 teams that have won Game 1 have gone on to win the series.

So let’s plan this out. If the Dodgers win Wednesday, Shohei Ohtani could start Game 1 of the division series Saturday. If the Reds force a decisive third game Thursday, Ohtani is the scheduled starter — and, if the Dodgers win, Tyler Glasnow, Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw all could be options for Game 1 of the division series.

Kershaw would be available for sure, as he is not on the wild-card roster and he would be pitching on regular rest.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw would be available to pitch Game 1 of the NLDS if the Dodgers advance.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“To have Clayton Kershaw standing there ready, no matter how we deploy our pitching this week, gets at the cost (of playing in the wild-card round) not being as great,” Friedman said.

And the division series includes an off day after each of the first two games, which would enable the Dodgers to use Snell on five days’ rest for Game 2 and Yamamoto on six days’ rest for Game 3.

The Dodgers have so much flexibility, in fact, that manager Dave Roberts declined to say that Ohtani would start Game 1 of the division series if the Dodgers close out the wild-card series Wednesday.

“You’re getting ahead,” Roberts said, “but one of the first two games, probably.”

It is important that Snell held the Reds to two runs in Tuesday’s victory, but it is more important that he pitched seven innings. The Dodgers asked their relievers to cover two innings with an eight-run lead, and it took four of them to do it.

The Dodgers’ road to success is clear: more of the starters, less of the erratic relievers, and less need to lean on Glasnow and Sheehan in an unfamiliar role.

“The deeper that the starters go in the game — one, it means that we’re pitching good; but, two, you’re giving the bullpen a break and a breather, and they get to be 100% every time they come out,” Snell said.

“That makes for a different game that favors us.”

The Dodgers improvised their way to a title last October, with three starting pitchers and four bullpen games. That was not conventional wisdom, either.

This time of year, however, most postseason teams have three or four reliable starters. The Dodgers have six. If they have to play in an extra round, well, what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger.

SAN FRANCISCO — This is the time to bring on the rivals. The Dodgers are used to taking on challengers down the pennant stretch: the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres — and, in a previous version of the National League West, the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds.

The final two weeks of the regular season are upon us. The Dodgers have one remaining head-to-head matchup that really matters — and that series starts Monday at Dodger Stadium, against the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies?

The Phillies have not been realigned into the NL West. However, although the three division champions automatically qualify for the playoffs, the two with the best records earn a bye into the division series. The division champion with the third-best record — right now, that would be the Dodgers — must play in the first round.

The Milwaukee Brewers, the presumed champions of the NL Central, boast the best record in baseball. The Phillies, the presumed champions of the NL East, lead the Dodgers by 4 ½ games. The Dodgers have 13 games to play.

The Dodgers got a bye and lost in the division series in 2022. They got a bye and lost in the division series in 2023. They got a bye and came within one game of elimination in the division series in 2024. Would they be better off not getting a bye and playing in the first round?

“There is not a question in my mind that that does not make sense,” Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, told me last week. “It is better for your World Series odds to not play those three games.”

The five days off that come with a bye can disrupt the timing of hitters. They also can allow time for injured and weary players to recover — that could be critical for Dodgers catcher Will Smith, in particular — and for the Dodgers to arrange their starting rotation just the way they might like it. And, of course, you can’t be eliminated in the first round if you don’t play in it.

“We have made our life more difficult to this point,” Friedman said, “but I still think we have a really good run in us, and we’ll make it competitive. So obviously these three games against Philly are really important in that.”

What if the three games against the Phillies go poorly?

Even if they don’t, the Dodgers might not win the division. The Padres are closer to the Dodgers than the Dodgers are to the Phillies.

San Diego trails the Dodgers by 2½ games in the NL West.

If the Padres win the NL West, how much would that hurt the Dodgers’ chances of a lengthy postseason run?

Not much, if at all. Both teams almost certainly would end up in the wild-card round.

The NL West champion would play the last team into the NL field, most likely the Giants or New York Mets and maybe even the Reds or Arizona Diamondbacks, with the chance the opponent exhausted its pitching just to get into the playoffs. The other team would play the Chicago Cubs, and would avoid the possibility of facing the surging Phillies until the NLCS.

If the NL West comes down to the last day or two, the Dodgers would have to determine whether to use their best starters on that final weekend or line them up for the wild-card series.

In that scenario, what might be the decisive factor in the Dodgers’ calculus?

The NL West champion would play all three games of the wild-card round at home; the runner-up likely would play all three games on the road. The Dodgers are 48-26 at home, 36-39 on the road. (The Padres are 47-28 at home, 35-40 on the road.)

Would there be any precedent for the Dodgers not minding if the Padres won the NL West?

In 1996, the Dodgers and Padres were tied for the NL West lead heading into the final day of the regular season, with the two teams facing one another. Both teams were guaranteed a playoff spot.

In Game 162, the Dodgers started Ramon Martinez — undefeated in his previous nine starts — then removed him after one inning.

The Padres won the game, and with it the division. The Dodgers started Martinez in their playoff opener three days later. They lost that game, and they were swept in the series by the Braves. The winning pitchers in that series, in order: John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine.

How many games are the Dodgers on pace to win?

Ninety-one.

In Friedman’s previous 10 seasons running the Dodgers, what is the fewest number of games they have won?

Ninety-one, in 2016.

How did the Dodgers do that October?

They earned a bye into the division series, in which they beat the Washington Nationals. They lost to the Chicago Cubs in the league championship series.

The World Series could end in November this year. Major League Baseball can do without all the “Mr. November” jokes, so the league took a creative step last year: a flexible start date for the World Series.

It’s not easy to cram a four-round postseason in a month. But it’s even less ideal if the World Series teams roll through the league championship series, then sit around for close to a week before the World Series starts.

MLB unveiled this creative reform last year: If both World Series teams complete the league championship series in no more than five games, the start of the World Series would move up three days. Nothing kills interest in an everyday sport like a week off before the most important games of the season.

The reform did not come into play last season. Although the New York Yankees won the American League Championship Series in five games, the Dodgers needed six games to complete the NLCS.

When MLB announced its postseason schedule Tuesday, the flexible start date for the World Series was gone. With the Dodgers coming within one victory of making that happen last season, league officials and television partners had the chance to prepare for two possibilities for the start of the World Series. The uncertainty of what date to promote, and the need for alternate travel plans and hotel blocks, left the parties with the thought that a fixed date for the World Series remained a better plan.

The World Series this year is set to start on Friday, Oct. 24, with a possible Game 7 on Saturday, Nov. 1.

The wild-card round starts Tuesday, Sept. 30, with the division series round starting Saturday, Oct. 4. The teams with the top two records in each league earn a bye in the first round and advance directly to the division series.

If the postseason started Tuesday, the Dodgers (68-51) would be the No. 3 seed in the NL, behind the Milwaukee Brewers (74-44) and the Philadelphia Phillies (69-49). The wild card teams, in order of seed, would be the Chicago Cubs (67-50), San Diego Padres (67-52) and the New York Mets (63-55).

In that scenario, the Dodgers and Mets — the NLCS combatants last season — would meet in the wild-card round this season.