Why the Dodgers can win the World Series

Pressure, pressure, pressure, the theme of recent Dodgers campaigns has been a constant one, and that can sometimes be a good thing. When a word like that is thrown around so often, it is not done lightly, people have expected to see the Dodgers win because their talent level indicates that. After a couple of deflating early exits, this team is back in the World Series with home-field advantage over the Yankees. This ball club’s path towards winning it all goes through the same qualities that have gotten them this far, a potent offense and bullpen strength.

Let’s start with the offense. Despite the NLCS only going six games, the Dodgers’ potent attack walked their way to the most runs scored by any National League team ever in a postseason series. Keep in mind, LA scored these record-setting 46 runs without much help from one of their MVPs as Freddie Freeman with his sprained right ankle was a non-factor outside of Game 1 of the series.

Freeman will be active in the World Series roster, but just how much contribution they can get or expect from him remains to be seen. However, even if they end up not getting much from him, we’ve seen the level of damage this team can do one through nine.

Until the start of the series, you’ll often hear about the Dodgers’ plate discipline and how that gave plenty of issues to a pretty talented Mets pitching staff. Well, a similar storyline has a decent shot at occurring in The Fall Classic.

The Yankees also have a pretty talented staff, better than the Mets not only in terms of depth, but high-end quality. Normally, the concept is that quality pitching beats quality hitting in the playoffs. With that being said, the Dodgers have an avenue to take advantage of their discipline.

Only one team in all of baseball carried a lower zone rate as a pitching staff than the Mets in the regular season, and that was the Yankees, coming in at 47.3 percent. Not unexpected, both the Mets and Yankees did fairly well in chase and whiff rates.

Carlos Rodón (42.7 percent) and Luis Gil (43.8 percent) stand out as two starters who are very successful despite not living in the zone much. It’ll be up to LA to make that a problem for the Yankees, and they’ve already proven they can do that.

It’ll be a battle of who caves first, and in the previous series, the Dodgers were able to exploit starters with low zone rates, like Manaea’s 44-percent mark in the clinching Game 6.

Moving over to the pitching side of things, the rest between the final game against the Mets, and the first World Series matchup, provides a sigh of relief for an overworked staff with little to no margin for error.

Freeman’s status may be getting all of the headlines, but it shouldn’t overshadow the importance of a couple of other potential returns, Alex Vesia and Brusdar Graterol carry optimism about their availability in the World Series.

Even with a slugfest in many a NLCS game, the Dodgers still had tough decisions to make about their bullpen deployment. Rightfully or not, Dave Roberts had an argument for basically punting any real chance of a comeback in Game 5 in the way he handled the bullpen.

For as much depth as the Dodgers have, getting Vesia and Graterol back would give them two extra high-leverage arms to better rotate this bullpen in what should be a long series.

Much like starters tend to struggle during their third time through the order, bullpen arms are more susceptible to damage the third time they see hitters in a short period, such as during a playoff series.

The Dodgers already did a tremendous job in that department, not giving any of the Mets’ star players too many looks against one particular arm. The potential return of those relievers, or even just one of them, would give LA more leeway and flexibility. For instance, it’s very reasonable to assume Vesia sees Juan Soto a time or two if he is active.

If the offense and bullpen keeps it up, the Dodgers can win it all.