ATLANTA — Which team has won the most regular-season games in MLB over the past three seasons?
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Nope, it’s not the one going for a three-peat.
The Milwaukee Brewers have won 293 games over the past three seasons (two more than the Dodgers), including major-league highs of 97 last year and 103 this year (the franchise’s first 100-win season). They haven’t parlayed those regular-season wins into a successful October yet.
Last year, they were thoroughly dominated in the National League Championship Series, swept in four games by the Dodgers. The Brewers scored just four runs in the four games and batted a miserable .118 against Dodgers pitching in the series. Dodgers starters allowed just two of those runs in 28⅔ innings – Blake Snell allowed one hit in eight scoreless innings, Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed three in a complete-game win.
As the two teams prepare for a rematch in this year’s NLCS beginning on Sunday night in Milwaukee, there is bad news for the Brewers – this Dodgers pitching staff might be even better than last year’s.
Andrew Friedman certainly thinks so. Heading into the NL Division Series with the Atlanta Braves, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations called it “the best and deepest pitching staff we’ve ever had going into October.”
It starts with the starters. Three of the four that so throttled the Brewers last year – Snell, Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow – return with two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal replacing Shohei Ohtani.
The bigger difference is in the bullpen, where the Dodgers are in a much better place than they were a year ago.
Roki Sasaki went from disappointing starter, shelved for much of the season, to postseason closer last October because the Dodgers’ bullpen options were so thin. Tanner Scott wasn’t even on the postseason roster after his own disappointing season and health issues. Right-handers Evan Phillips and Brock Stewart were recovering from surgeries and didn’t throw a pitch last October.
All four of those pitchers are options now for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts in a bullpen that has rediscovered life with a dedicated closer. Edwin Diaz has found his way back into that role after a lost regular season.
“He’s had a tough season,” Roberts said. “He’s been hurt. He was having trouble with his delivery and went on a long rehab assignment. But to get him pitching this way – that’s the reason why we got him. The last two nights, that’s the reason why we acquired a guy like Edwin Diaz. He’s one of the great closers in the game. For him to be pitching his best right now, that’s what you hope for, and I give him a lot of credit.”
Friedman echoed the praise for Diaz’s willingness to work his way back.
“He would say, ‘Hey, I’m ready to come back,’” Friedman said. “And it was like, ‘Hey, we need to see more. We need to see this really lock in.’ And at every turn, he said, ‘Whatever you guys need … anytime you want me to pitch, I’ll be ready.’
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“It was never a question of the heartbeat and his ability to handle these moments. It was about just getting him right mechanically and getting back to the stuff that we’ve all seen over the years.”
Diaz recorded saves in Games 3 and 4 against the Atlanta Braves – his first saves in back-to-back games since the first 10 days of this season. He was one of the players shouted out by name during Roberts’ post-game, pre-champagne address to the team following the series-clinching win on Wednesday night.
“I feel great. I’m happy what I’m doing right now,” Diaz said. “I put in a lot of work this season. I went to the IL with elbow surgery. Came back, didn’t pitch the way everybody was expecting. Went back to IL with my neck. Then I started working on those things (an adjustment in his arm angle primarily). Those things paid off at the end of the day.
“The team trusts me. I think that was the most important thing for me, the team trusts me. … And the last two nights it’s been amazing. That’s why I came here – to win games and close games like this one (NLDS Game 4). So I’m really happy right now.”
Add in hard-throwing Edgardo Henriquez, who emerged this season, and stalwart left-hander Alex Vesia and Roberts has more branches on his ‘trust tree’ than last year – so much so that Vesia was asked about comparisons to the group of self-described bullpen ‘dawgs’ who came through so often during the run to the 2024 World Series title.
“I like it,” Vesia said of the comparison. “Once the starter comes out, we’re chopping it up, man. I mean, it’s either one-plus (innings) or up-downs, one or two outs. Like the last two games (of the NLDS), I got hot multiple times, ready to go for whatever. And that’s how it is. I think that going back to that ’24 team, we were all doing that. It didn’t matter the roles. The lanes, man, they were good. They were cut out for us.
“Last year was a little bit different. So yeah, I think Dave’s got a lot of weapons. And I like it.”
The Dodgers head into their NLCS rematch with the Brewers despite hitting just .203 as a team in the four NLDS games and going 1 for 16 with runners in scoring position – because their pitching staff held the Braves to a .145 average and 1 for 23 with runners in scoring position.
“Let’s be real – our postseason is going to rest on our pitching. It always does. It always will,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said during the postgame celebration Wednesday night. “You’re not going to go out there and get 15 hits a night in the postseason. You’re just not. So if you can limit the amount of runs the other team is getting, you’re going to do a pretty good job. Our pitching staff was unbelievable this series. For us to continue on, it’s going to rely on the pitching staff.”
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