Well, That Was a Shocker

Ok, so it turns out that the NLCS will be Dodgers-Phillies, but LA swept (I did correctly call Phillies in 4 for the first round). The coverage of the Dodgers and Cubs seems to say almost entirely not so much that the Dodgers were good as that the Cubs were just awful. After all, they had the better regular season record, they had the better defense, etc. But as Billy Beane can tell you, the postseason is a crapshoot.

To be fair though, the Dodgers were a better team than their record suggests. Furcal replacing Berroa is huge at short, and Brad Penny and Andruw Jones are both not on the postseason roster. Manny was not with the team all year, nor was Casey Blake. DeWitt has shown himself to be a streaky player, and currently he's on a good one. Juan Pierre has been a bench player since Manny's acquisition. Scott Proctor stopped getting the ball in key situations - now that goes to Kuo, Broxton, Wade. To be fair, Chan Ho Park gave up the long ball and should have had a higher ERA, but that's all for that part. The Cubs, on the other hand, had a couple of guys having career years - 21 homers for Mark Derosa, an effective year as a starter for Ryan Dempster, for example.

LA faces what was one of the best offenses during the regular season. But remember, they already took on the best of the regular season. And while the Dodgers pitching will be tough to beat, Philly's staff is no group of slouches. When the two teams met earlier in the season, one team was having a good streak while the other had a poor one, resulting in two four game sweeps by the home team. Let's look head to head:

Starting Pitchers (based on NLDS):

Lowe vs Hamels

Billingsley vs Myers

Moyer vs Kuroda

Blanton vs Maddux (?)


Personally I'd like to see Moyer vs Maddux, a combined 87 years old. Wild cards to start are the two left-handed K men, Kershaw and Kuo. Kuo is a health question mark, but he's got excellent stuff and he could come in and surprise Philadelphia. Kershaw could do the job as well, but it seems like the Dodgers would be foolish not to use at least one left-handed starter against the Phillies. The edge here has to go to LA, though, particularly if we see Kershaw.

One thing that surprised me was that LA didn't use half of their pitching staff. We saw Wade, Broxton, Saito and Maddux out of the bullpen, but no Beimel, no Kershaw, no McDonald, no Park. I would expect to see more of some of the guys who didn't get playing time, so Torre can use some new tricks in the NLCS.

Outfield

Manny vs Burrell

Kemp vs Victorino

Ethier vs Werth

Manny beats Burrell, although Pat the bat is not known for his glove, he is a better hitter than Soriano. Ethier edges Werth, because he can hit for average. Kemp edges Victorino because he's got a bit more pop than the Flyin Hawaiian.

Infield

Loney vs Howard

DeWitt vs Utley

Furcal vs Rollins

Blake vs Feliz

Howard edges Loney because first base defense only matters so much. DeWitt is pretty good, but Chase Utley is one of the best players in baseball. Furcal edges Rollins, who did not deserve a single award he won last year - Furcal is the rangier shortstop that gets on base more. And Casey Blake doesn't have Pedro Feliz's glove, but Pedro Feliz doesn't get to swing his glove at the plate, even though he probably needs to to hit anything.

Carlos Ruiz has nothing on Russell Martin.

If you look at who's playing over their head, a couple players come to mind on each team still. Ethier's got that BABIP thing going, so if he's hot he's good, if not, then, um, ugh. Not much else for LA. Brad Lidge is not as good as he was this year - no way he only gives up 2 homers in 69.3 innings pitched - and only 1 at home.

I'll say Dodgers in 6 on this one.