On March 29, longtime Los Angeles Times Columnist Bill Plaschke said the 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers would be the greatest MLB team of all time. Turns out, they weren’t even the best team in the NL West through 162 games.
That distinction of course went to the Giants, who won a franchise record 107 games, edging the Dodgers by a single contest, and throwing their LA rivals into a one-game playoff vs. the Cardinals on Wednesday.
Still, Plaschke isn’t walking back his comments. He doubled-down on Wednesday during an interview with Murph & Mac on KNBR, saying that if the Dodgers play the Giants in the NLDS, LA will win, and there’s no question about it.
“If the Dodgers can get by the Cardinals…I think they go unscathed to the World Series championship,” Plaschke said. “I’m the same guy who said the Dodgers were the best team in history and they weren’t, I’m saying now that the Dodgers are going to handle the Giants in a five-game series. In my mind, there’s no question about that. It will be a great series, but the Dodgers are going to win that series. And you can have me on after they win it, and I will say that again.
“When it comes to the postseason it’s all about starting pitching, and I don’t think they have the starting pitching, to matchup to the Dodgers’ starting pitching in a five-game series. I think it’s just that simple. You can do the math on this all you want. If you have [Walker] Buehler, [Julio] Urias, [Max] Scherzer going seven on you, I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t see any Giants starter capable of doing that against the Dodgers.”
Plaschke is right that the Giants don’t have a traditional ace in the same mold of a Tim Lincecum or Madison Bumgarner. They do have Logan Webb, who while lacking postseason experience was one of the best pitchers in baseball in the season’s second half. The Giants pitching staff as a whole also had the second bast ERA and WHIP in the major leagues. The only team to best them in both categories? The Dodgers.
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Listen to the full interview below.