The Bengals completed a nice weekend sweep on the free football plays. Today, I’ll take a look ahead at an event that’s not lined yet, but one where I’ve made up my mind already.
METS vs. DODGERS
Take: DODGERS (Series)
The 2015 Mets are a terrific story. This was a team that most felt might be ready to make a run at getting to .500. But the playoffs? That was a pipe dream for 2015, as the consensus was there wasn’t enough offense, and the staff was too inexperienced to contend this soon.
That was obviously not the case as the Mets are NL East division champs and it’s all gravy at this point. I don’t think there’s even the slightest amount of real pressure here. The Mets are perceived as overachievers and I actually think that’s part of the reason they’ve done this well. Low expectations often yield surprising results and if the Mets lose to the high expectation Dodgers, there shouldn’t be many complaints.
As for the Dodgers, they have the weight of being a season-long favorite that has to make a serious post-season run or the season will be regarded as a total failure. Whether or not they get as far as they’re built to remains to be seen. But I like LA to advance here.
The primary reasons for my confidence are the awesome 1-2 punch at the top of the Dodgers rotation. Clayton Kershaw has been utterly dominant and Zack Greinke is not far behind, and that’s if he’s trailing Kershaw at all. Kershaw in particular is as go with as it gets right now. Yes, there’s the memory of the 2014 playoffs, which ended up being a bit of a nightmare. But I can’t see that being a roadblock to backing Kershaw here, and in fact I expect it to be a motivator for the amazing southpaw.
The Dodgers are rightfully going to be priced as substantial chalk in this series. That might scare some off, but not me. As exciting as things are for the Mets with their brilliant arsenal of young arms and an improved offense since the arrival of Yoenis Cespedes, this is a still a team with one major flaw. The Mets have been absolutely horrendous against good teams this season. I don’t mean not so good, I mean staggeringly awful. That’s a huge key to me. The Mets did a great job of taking care of business against teams at their own level or below. When facing off against winning teams, they lost continuously.
No question, I’m going to need that there are no slip-ups in the games Kershaw and Greinke start as the rest of the LA rotation is very ordinary. But I’ll take my chances with that top two and in tandem with the inability of the Mets to beat the better teams, I’ll be laying the price with the Dodgers to win this series.
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My NFL 3* Game of Week goes on Monday Night!