Have the Dodgers Finally Cracked the Postseason Code?
If so, it took 'em long enough. (But they're probably just really good.)
In steamrolling the Milwaukee Brewers — MLB’s best team during the regular season — to open the National League Championship Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers have reawakened the fears many had about their potential “megateam” back before the 2025 season began.
Through a pair of games, both in Milwaukee, L.A. has outscored the Brew Crew 7-2, outhit them 18-5, out-AVG-ed them .273 to .086, out-OBP-ed them .400 to .143, and out-OPS-ed them .900 to .298. Both Dodger starters, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, combined for 17 innings and had an average Game Score of 86.5. It was as thorough a domination of a fellow elite ballclub as we’ve seen this entire postseason.1
As part of this, I’ve seen a lot of chatter that the Dodgers planned all of this out perfectly — that, in fact, they were built to do this all along. That, like a LeBron James-led NBA superteam, their good-but-not-dominant regular season was merely a deliberate prelude to the real potential of this squad being revealed — because the regular season means nothing, and L.A. has finally found the secret postseason sauce every team covets so desperately.
Which, good for them if true. People have been trying to crack that code for a very long time time, basically to no avail. And certainly I, armed with all my regular-season data points, clearly underestimated these Dodgers (or overestimated the Brewers — same difference). But it’s worth asking: Did L.A. really “figure out” October — or is October just cooperating with them more than usual?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Neil’s Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.