Podcast 33: Atlanta Braves are ready to mix it up with the Dodgers

The best NL teams — the Atlanta Braves and LA Dodgers — get underway Monday night.

The Cinderella stories are complete.  The upset bids have been vanquished.  The ‘nice stories’ of 2020 have been told.  Now it’s time to get to work as the Atlanta Braves will face off against the LA Dodgers to determine champions of the National League.

The best-of-7 series gets going Monday evening at Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX in prime time at 8:08 PM EDT.  It will be variously broadcast on the Fox and FS1 (Fox Sports 1) channels this week, and will run on consecutive days until we get a winner:  no days off.

When recording this podcast last Thursday, we made the assumption that the Dodgers were going to be the opponent for Atlanta this week.  That was a safe bet given that the Padres were hamstrung without their best starting pitching options and they simply didn’t have any real chance of a remedy.

As we are already very well aware, the Atlanta Braves have more-or-less been in the same situation for most of the regular season, but after several weeks of trial and error and more trial, they have managed to cobble together a surprisingly good — though still inexperienced — group of 3 starters that should be able to test a team built specifically to win the World Series.

This trio — Fried/Anderson/Wright — will need to be on top of their games, for it’s almost certain that LA will overscore both the Reds and the Marlins… maybe even in the first game.  Seems the Dodgers boast the same kind of offensive firepower that Atlanta brings.

The trick will be whether the bottom of the Atlanta hitting order will be able to hit at least enough to challenge the LA pitchers (or maybe just not swing at balls in their eyes!)  If they can, they a tried-but-true strategy of spoiling pitches and running up pitch counts might be a good tactic this week.

You see, if there’s any vulnerability to the boys in blue, it’s their bullpen.  But you can’t see them while the starters are still in the game.  The Braves hitters are thus likely to be exhibiting great patience at the plate this week; a move that could also serve to help struggling hitters at the back half of the lineup.

So with that, here is the 33rd Podcast on this NLCS, which is also available on the TomahawkTake feed via most major content providers.

We’re definitely looking forward to seeing the best of the NL square off this week — here’s hoping you are, too!