From the Braves' young starting pitchers to their more experienced relievers, one thing in particular jumps off the page to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts — the Braves aren’t giving up many runs these days.
“I think the thing that stands out the most is the age of the starters, young guys, very talented, and Max (Fried) is kind of the leader of these guys and he’s a young guy himself,” Roberts said Monday, heading into the best-of-seven National League Championship Series, with 26-year-old Fried taking on Dodgers starter Walker Buehler. “Very talented, all of them. And I think as far as the bullpen, they’re kind of the grizzled veterans. So I think that for me, it’s just a really balanced team, but the staff has done a very good job of preventing runs.”
Leading up to the NLCS, the Braves' pitching staff has tallied four shutouts in five games (with an 0.92 collective ERA and .169 average against). The Dodgers, of course, are a similar story with a 2.00 ERA and .178 average against through five games.
Both the Braves and Dodgers have swept their way here, with the Dodgers beating the Brewers in the Wild Card series and the Padres in the NL Divisional Series and the Braves beating the Reds in the Wild Card series and the Marlins in the NLDS.
The Braves' pitching staff has enjoyed wild success so far in the postseason, joining the 1905 New York Giants team as the second MLB team in history to pitch shutouts in four of its first five games in one postseason. In the regular season, the Braves registered just four shutouts, which was the fewest among National League teams that qualified for the postseason.
Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman commended the Braves' bullpen depth and young starters, though he feels the Dodgers have an advantage in the end.
"Atlanta’s a really good team. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t. Really deep, powerful lineup, really deep bullpen, some really good, young starting pitching. There’s a lot of similarities, obviously I’m biased and will bet on our guys, but they’re a really good team and for us it’s about just creating as many good matchups as we can throughout each game.
“We’re kind of dealing with an unprecedented series in terms of potentially having seven games in a row, and so I think the depth of your roster has more of a chance to kind of shine, and we feel really good about one through 28 on our roster and how they can each kind of play a role in winning four games.”
For all the Braves' pitching success, they’re about to take on an offense with tons of firepower. In many offensive statistical categories, the Braves and Dodgers went 1-2 in the NL’s regular season (the Braves led with a .832 OPS in the regular season, with the Dodgers No. 2 at .821, and the Dodgers led with 118 home runs, with the Braves No. 2 at 103).
Dodgers infielder Max Muncy thinks having success on offense throughout the series will come down to capitalizing on the mistakes of Braves' pitchers.
“They’re good,” Muncy said. “They’ve put together good game plans against the teams they’ve been playing and I’m sure they’re going to do the same thing (Monday night). They’re going to go out there and execute. We’ve just got to stay within ourselves and execute our game plan and hopefully they make a mistake or two. And (we’ve got to) not let things get too out of hand.”
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