If there’s one thing I know about baseball, it’s that there’s no such thing as a sure thing.

After experiencing 2 straight World Series losses and the winningest team in franchise history, I already knew how this was going to end. The Nationals 5.68 ERA bullpen would to carry them into World Series glory, Howie Kendrick would out-dinger the entire Dodger team, and Kenley Jansen would throw a meatball cutter to Matt Adams to blow the final game.

But after tonight’s perfectly executed game. I am back on the Dodgers hype train baby. 2019 World Series Champs.

Game 1 of the NLDS played out exactly how anyone would have expected. Excellent starting pitching, poo poo National bullpen, and deep dingers from a deep Dodgers bench. So, how did the Dodgers end up executing so well?

Key Takeaways

Hitting

Patrick Corbin, as was expected, succeeded by mainly throwing his slider. Fortunately, the Dodgers were able to run his pitch count up by laying off on a good amount of his fairly predictable repertoire. Although running a starter’s pitch count up to get to the bullpen isn’t quite as fashionable, it worked for the Dodgers. 5 of the 10 hardest hit balls in the game came from the Dodgers against the Nationals bullpen.

Also maybe don’t let Joc hit 3 home runs in one at bat?

#Joctober has arrived. https://t.co/M9qbyCA52d

— Chad Moriyama (@ChadMoriyama) October 4, 2019

Pitching

Walker Buehler is good, who would’ve thought?

Adam Kolarek continued his LOOGY domination: 3 sliders, 2 swings and misses, and 1 strike out.

Kenta Maeda was used as a ROOGY, similar to past postseason runs. 11/19 of his pitches were sliders and they were all gorgeous. In the odd situation against lefties, he threw a couple of changeups to great effect.

Speaking of expected, Joe Kelly came in, apparently fine from his lower body problems, had a typical post-early season Joe Kelly outing: had #goodstuff, yoinked a couple of pitches in the dirt, and quickly finished the night with 2 strike outs.

Conclusion

Almost anyone that paid a little bit of attention to the Dodgers and Nationals would have been able to draw up the game plan for tonight.

Towards the end of the game Michelle said that it felt like a normal game, which makes sense! The Dodgers have spent the last 4 months perfecting and fine tuning their post season plans. I knew how they were going to use Kolarek, you knew Kenta’s pitch selection, Doc’s starting lineup and pinch hitter deployment weren’t surprising at all. We’ve seen them go through this dance dozens of times.

They’ve made the unpredictable, predictable. Let’s just hope that they can continue to look like geniuses.