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(LA Times) Dodgers sweep Padres in NLDS behind stellar pitching and offense
The Dodgers steamrolled their budding NL West rivals 12-3 in Game 3 at Globe Life Field on Thursday to complete a three-game series sweep and keep their undefeated postseason record intact. They advanced to face the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series. Game 1 is Monday, also at Globe Life Park but with fans in the stands for the first time in 2020. Los Angeles, the National League’s top seed, will be the home team riding an nine-game winning streak.
(USA Today) Bang on this: Astros roll over Athletics to reach fourth consecutive ALCS
Sure, they may be publicly sorry for the worst cheating scandal in perhaps a century. But in these 2020 playoffs, a pandemic sending them hundreds of miles away from their Minute Maid Park cheat lab, they will make no apologies should they run roughshod over what many would call victims, but perhaps they’d refer to as haters.
(MLB) Atlanta’s stingy pitchers on historic run
The Braves’ team ERA is 0.92 (not a misprint) after Atlanta pitchers allowed just five runs in 49 innings to begin the postseason. Those five runs are tied with the 1983 Orioles for the second fewest allowed by any club through its first five postseason games, trailing only those 1905 Giants, who allowed three runs to Philadelphia in Game 2 (their only loss of that World Series).
(Yahoo! Sports) ALDS Game 5 is exactly why the Yankees got Gerrit Cole: ‘It’s a special opportunity’
This is what everyone craved as soon as the ink dried on the mega-contract. This is why the Yankees brought the most expensive pitcher in history to the Bronx.
Gerrit Cole, ace, gets the ball Friday night in a winner-take-all Game 5 of the ALDS against the Rays — the latest chapter in the fascinating rivalry growing between the teams.
(ESPN) Tampa Bay Rays will start Tyler Glasnow vs. New York Yankees’ Gerrit Cole in ALDS Game 5
Glasnow, who was the winning pitcher in the second game of the series, mowing down a Yankees lineup that struck out a postseason-record 18 times, will start Game 5 on just two days of rest. Glasnow hasn’t pitched on fewer than four days of rest since July 2018, when he was being used mainly as a reliever by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Non-Playoff News
(ESPN) MLB free-agent qualifying offer price jumps to record $18.9 million
The price of qualifying offers for Major League Baseball free agents rose by $1.1 million to a record $18.9 million. Determined by the average of the top 125 major league contracts this year, the figure announced Thursday is based on full salaries, not the prorated pay that players received in the pandemic-shorted season.
(MLBTR) KBO’s Kiwoom Heroes To Post Ha-Seong Kim This Offseason
Kim’s youth sets him apart from most other players who have made the jump from the KBO (or Japan’s NPB) to the Major Leagues. Current rules in the KBO stipulate that a player cannot be posted until he has accrued seven years of service time. Unrestricted free agency is granted after nine years. Kim’s first full season in the KBO came at just 18 years of age, however, which has him on pace to become available to MLB clubs a few years sooner than most of his peers.
“I had to battle half my team thinking the Earth is flat this year,” he said. “And they think we’ve never been to the moon and all kinds of crazy stuff. I’ve got a bunch of Flat Earthers... Paul DeJong, smartest guy on the team, is a Flat Earther.”