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Here's the team the Chicago Cubs should fear the most in October
The Chicago Cubs are having a magical season. Monday night, they won their 92nd game of the year, as Kyle Hendricks took a no-hitter into the 9th inning.
The Cubs are 17 games up on the Cardinals in the NL Central with a magic number of three as of Tuesday morning. The playoffs are assured — home-field advantage is a near certainty.
If ever there was a year for the Cubs to break their 71-year pennant and 108-year World Series drought, this is the one. Chicago is, without much debate, the best team in baseball.
But there’s one team the Cubs should fear most come playoff time.
The National League playoff field is fairly set. Aside from the Cubs, the Nationals are going to be in the postseason. The Giants are likely to be a wild-card team, and the Cardinals and Mets are going to battle for the second spot in the one-game playoff.
While all of those teams are strong -- they’re in the playoff hunt, after all -- the Cubs should not fear them. The Nationals are an excellent team, but without Stephen Strasburg -- who is out indefinitely -- the starting rotation isn’t all that fearsome. Max Scherzer is tremendous, but Gio Gonzalez is an unlikely No. 2 on a World Series-contending team.
The Giants have the starting rotation, but one of the worst offenses in baseball in the second half -- it’s hard to take them seriously -- and the Mets and Cardinals have been so mercurial this season it’s difficult to see them clicking come October.
That leaves one team as a true threat to the Cubs this postseason: the Dodgers.
L.A.’s second-half surge should put the Cubs on notice, especially when you consider it did it without its best player. The Dodgers are deep, talented, clicking, and, if you’re the Cubs — scary.
In a seven-game series, the Dodgers will be able to put the now-healthy Clayton Kershaw on the mound three times. For all of the flack Kershaw has gotten for his playoff performances over his career, he’s still one of the last pitchers you’d like to see on the bump in a critical game.
The Dodgers will also be able to trot out a playoff rotation of Kershaw, Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda (3.90 ERA, 3.85 FIP in the second half), and perhaps one of the team’s two talented rookies, Julio Urias or Jose De Leon.
The Dodgers’ bullpen has been solid in the second half, too, posting a 3.94 ERA and 3.56 FIP since the All-Star Game.
And then comes the offense: The Dodgers have the best bats in baseball in the second half — they lead the league in weighted runs created plus and have a team slash line of .265/.328/.447.
Corey Seager is putting up MVP numbers, Justin Turner is raking with a .589 slugging percentage in the second half, Joc Peterson, Howie Kendrick, and Adrian Gonzalez are all hitting above .275 in the second half, and Yasiel Puig has come back from his exile at Triple-A on fire, hitting three homers in his first 14 at-bats.
The Cubs are an exceptional baseball team and should be the favorites in the National League this October, but they would be foolish to presume that they’ll slide into the World Series without a challenge. The Dodgers might not be as good as the Cubs man-to-man, but with that pitching staff, that bullpen, those gloves (8th-best UZR in baseball), and that lineup of hitters who are in a long, sustained groove at the plate, they are close enough that in a seven-game series, anything could happen.
