The Los Angeles Dodgers Are One Win Away From Winning it All

Is this really happening?

Big Game Buehler does it again. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Hi friends-

Before we dive in, I just want to encourage those of you who haven’t already to join us in the chat tonight during Game 4! Chats are open to all paid subscribers, and they’re super fun. Come hang with us!

I have a million thoughts (and two million feelings!) about last night’s game and where this series stands but let’s cut straight to the point: the Dodgers have somehow taken a commanding 3-0 lead in a World Series we all thought would go six or seven, and now have a chance to sweep the New York Yankees and win the championship tonight.

The prevailing line of thinking among the biggest baseball brains right now is that this was supposed to be a World Series for the ages except the Yankees failed to show up.

I disagree.

The Yankees were one horrific Nestor Cortes meatball away from winning Game 1, and had the winning runs on base in the ninth inning of Game 2 with less than two outs and failed to cash in.

Both of those games came down to the last at-bat despite the fact that Aaron Judge has been horrible.

Then last night, Big Walker Game Buehler took the ball in the Bronx and shoved it down their throats. But it’s not like this is the first time Buehler has been spectacular in the Fall Classic. In three World Series starts, Buehler has now thrown 18 innings and given up just one run (0.50 ERA). He has struck out 22 and walked just three. We are dealing with a very small sample size, of course, except that we can now say for certain that Buehler is a red light performer: the more cameras that are fixed on his every pitch, the better he throws the ball.

Last night, Buehler joined Madison Bumgarner, Jon Lester, and Andy Pettitte as the only pitchers in the wild card era to toss multiple scoreless starts of 5+ innings in the World Series (and the only righty!). So, it’s not like the Yankees got shut down in Game 3 by Landon Knack.

*A note here about Clayton Kershaw. While it’s cool to watch Buehler succeed, it’s frustrating thinking about how different Kershaw’s playoff legacy would look if the Dodgers hadn’t demanded he go 7+ innings every time he took the ball in October, which is just a crazy ask. It was pretty clear that even though Buehler was rolling last night that he was never going to be allowed to face the Yankees lineup a third time through, and that’s almost always when Kershaw ran into playoff disaster. The Dodgers put Buehler in a position to succeed in ways they never did for Kershaw, who they also had throw on short rest every NLDS or NLCS. But, whatever! I’m not mad. Do not write in the newspaper that I got mad!

Maybe the baseball gods will sort all this out and Kershaw’s teammates will carry him to the second ring he was cheated out of in 2017 and his October legacy will seem more fair.*

Anyway, the other reason why I’m not totally buying the Yankee choke narrative is that the Dodgers pitching staff did this same thing to the Padres and Mets as well, and those hitters were good! Remember when Dodger pitchers combined to throw 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the NLDS and NLCS? That was two weeks ago.

So, yeah. You could say the Yankees stink because they’ve only scored 7 runs through three games, which is the same number of RBI Freddie Freeman has in this series. But that would mean that the Padres and Mets offenses also stunk. The common denominator here is the Dodgers’ arms, which are dominating against all odds. This is a team that is trying to win two seven-game series back-to-back with only three healthy starting pitchers. That kind of strategy places an unbelievable burden on a team’s bullpen, and those guys have been absolute dawgs. The Dodgers have turned to relievers 15 times so far during the first three games of this series, and none of them imploded (though Blake Treinen tried, twice). That’s pretty good.

But boy, I’ll tell you what: if the Yankees lose tonight, they should probably fire everyone from the GM down to the hotdog vendors.

Here’s why: