In what will hopefully be the next to last installment of "Advancing the..." for the season, BS&S.com turns to Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts, one of the longest running blogs in the baseball blogosphere. Jon is also a writer and editor for Variety magazine and a contributor to SI.com. His thoughts [what else?] on the series are below.
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As an East Coaster, my sense is that the Dodgers team that takes the field on Thursday is significantly different from the one that played most of the year. Manny came over in August, the younger players such as Andre Ethier, James Loney, and Matt Kemp seemed to have raised their game as of late... In other words, it seems like the team as it is currently functioning now is much better than the 84 wins that they ended up with. Is that true?
The long story short is that the Dodgers haven't had their two best offensive players this year, Rafael Furcal and Manny Ramirez, in the same starting lineup for more than a handful of games. Given that it took half a season for the underperforming Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones to be sidelined, and that Derek Lowe has been at his best since August 1, yeah, the October bunch is better than its 2008 record indicates. I wouldn't say Loney and Kemp raised their games of late, and Ethier has also had hot streaks in the past. The point is that the best guys are playing, and playing without having to look over their shoulder. (That being said, it wouldn't be a shock to see Nomar Garciaparra or Jeff Kent get a spot start over Loney once in this series.)
How will Rafael Furcal factor into the series? Will he start in every game?
He'll start as long as his back holds up. His play in the Chicago series was quite encouraging, but with that part of the body, you're always holding your breath.
Does Tommy Lasorda really hate the Phillie Phanatic or is he just having fun with it?
Both?
Will we see left-hander Clayton Kershaw start a game for the Dodgers? How has the 20-year old adjusted to the playoffs?
I think it depends how the first three games go. Kershaw hasn't pitched in a game since September 28. My hunch is that Joe Torre will trust Lowe on three days' rest more than he'll trust Kershaw on two weeks' rest, but I don't really know.
As a token of goodwill, Charlie Manuel likes to bat Chase Utley and Ryan Howard back-to-back so that the opposing manager only has to make one trip to the mound for a reliever. Nice huh? When it comes to crunch-time and Utley and Howard are due up, what lefty will Joe Torre call in and how much confidence do the Dodgers have in him to get the job done?
Ideally, the Dodgers will have two options in Joe Beimel (.641 OPS allowed against lefties) and Hong-Chih Kuo (.557 OPS allowed against lefties). Both are strong, with Kuo being particularly awesome this year. But Kuo has had a sore arm in recent weeks, so we don't really know what will happen there. Cory Wade and Takashi Saito are righties that have done well against lefties, though Saito also has possible health issues.
Care to make any predictions?
Not really - you could have four close games and one team could lose all four. Of course, if you watched the Dodgers and Phillies in August, you knew that...
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In addition, Jay Jaffe, another long-time Dodgers-biased blogger pens a fairly even handed preview of the NLCS at Baseball Prospectus [subscription NOT required], though he does pick his team to win in six games.
