Padres vs. Dodgers Prediction
A rematch of the 2022 NLDS features the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers in a best-of-five series. The NLDS schedule plays Saturday/Sunday, while the ALDS schedule goes Saturday/Monday to split the games up, so we’ll see what, if any, impact that has on the series. The AL teams only play back-to-back days once, while the NL teams play back-to-back days twice.
That could potentially impact a team like the Dodgers, who are very thin in the starting rotation right now. San Diego did lose Joe Musgrove after he left his Game 2 Wild Card start with elbow soreness, but I think their rotation is decidedly deeper, even without Musgrove.
Top MLB Resources:
Will that be enough? Time will tell, but the Dodgers are looking for some retribution from 2022 when the Padres, who finished 22 games back in the NL West, knocked off the Dodgers in four games. That Dodgers team won 111 games, five more than any AL team and 10 more than any NL team, but got bounced.
This year’s Dodgers team won 98 games, the fewest in a non-COVID year since 2018. That team made it to the World Series, but lost to the Red Sox in five games. That Dodgers team also didn’t have Shohei Ohtani.
Let’s preview this series, the likely pitching matchups, and find some bets.
Padres vs. Dodgers NLDS Schedule
Game 1: Saturday October 5, 8:38 p.m. ET (Cease vs. Yamamoto)
Game 2: Sunday October 6, 8:03 p.m. ET (Darvish vs. Flaherty)
Game 3: Tuesday October 8, TBD (Buehler vs. King)
Game 4: Wednesday October 9, TBD (Knack vs. Waldron) (if necessary)
Game 5: Friday October 11, TBD (Cease vs. Flaherty) (if necessary)
(all pitching matchups are projected by me until otherwise announced)
How To Watch Padres vs. Dodgers
All games on FS1/Fox
Padres vs. Dodgers Series Odds
San Diego Padres +120 // Los Angeles Dodgers -140
Over/Under 3.5 Games: -340 // +270
Over/Under 4.5 Games: +150 // -180
Padres vs. Dodgers NLDS Preview
The Padres had the most wins of any team after the All-Star Break with 43. The Dodgers had the second-most with 42. LA has one pretty noticeable flaw and it is with the rotation, as they’ll rely heavily on some guys that have not had good seasons or have spent a long chunk of them injured. Personally, I don’t think San Diego has any notable flaws, though the lineup is not quite as strong as what LA is able to put out there.
And that will have to be the difference for the Dodgers, who led the league by percentage points in wOBA over the Diamondbacks and also wRC+. It certainly helped that Ohtani had a monumental offensive season as the first player ever to go 50/50 with 50 HR and 50 SB. For good measure, he hit .310 and walked over 11% of the time.
Eleven players had at least 200 plate appearances and nine of them posted a wRC+ of 100 or better, led by Ohtani’s 181. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernandez ranged from 134 to 141. There were 35 players with a wRC+ of 135 or higher and the Dodgers had five of them.
The Padres had two and none higher than Jurickson Profar at 24. Fernando Tatis Jr. was the only other one. However, Jackson Merrill had a 130 and Manny Machado’s monster second half left him with a 122. 100 is the league baseline, where anything over that means an above average player and anything below that means a below average player.
So, there are a lot of good hitters on both of these teams, but the better, top-end hitters belong to the Dodgers.
The great equalizer could be the pitching staffs for these respective teams. For the full season, the Padres were 12th in ERA at 3.86 and the Dodgers were 13th at 3.92, which feels like a nominal difference, but San Diego had 19.3 fWAR and the Dodgers had 14.6, as the Padres ranked fifth in FIP at 3.78 and the Dodgers were 21st at 4.18.
FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, is a metric of what pitchers can “control”, consisting of strikeouts, walks, hit by pitches, and home runs. Batted balls are volatile. A 100 mph missile can get hit right at a fielder and a 65 mph flare can fall in. The inverse is also true. So, FIP tries to put the onus fully on the pitcher. The Padres had a higher K% at 24.1% compared to LA’s 23%, a lower BB% at 7.7% compared to 8.3%, and allowed 29 fewer homers. Now, of course, Petco Park comes into this equation, but the Dodgers allowed the fifth-most homers in the league. They were only better than the White Sox, Angels, Blue Jays, and Rockies.
If we narrow our focus to the second half, the Padres were fourth in ERA at 3.38 and second in FIP at 3.49. The Dodgers, meanwhile, were 16th in ERA at 4.16 and 20th in FIP at 4.27. With an offense like LA’s, they can out-hit their opponents. In the depressed run environment of the playoffs, when you’re getting every team’s best arms and everybody is throwing a little bit harder, winning with offense does get tougher.
The Dodgers will use Jack Flaherty, who was better with the Tigers than he was after the trade to the Dodgers, in Game 1. He had a 358 ERA and a 4.16 FIP in 10 starts over 55.1 innings. Yoshinobu Yamamoto made four starts after coming back and allowed seven runs on 16 hits in 16 innings, with six runs allowed over his final eight innings, all against the Rockies. Walker Buehler had an ERA over 5. Landon Knack was really solid over 69 innings, but his 4.72 FIP with a 3.65 ERA is scary. Maybe Clayton Kershaw can return, but he hasn’t pitched since late August. Gavin Stone and Tyler Glasnow are done for the year. The Dodgers will play a lot of their pitching decisions by ear.
While I have reservations about batter vs. pitcher and team vs. pitcher stats, it really caught my eye that San Diego starters held the Dodgers to a .198/.281/.343 slash (BA/OBP/SLG) over 13 games and 281 plate appearances. Padres relievers, however, allowed a .245/.345/.330 slash line with some major control issues over 224 plate appearances. They walked 12.5% of Dodgers batters and had just an 18.8% K% compared to the starters with a 22.8% K% and a 10.3% BB%.
Dylan Cease gets the Game 1 call, followed by Yu Darvish and Michael King. Cease had an excellent year and a stellar September, holding opponents to a .218 wOBA and a .174 BA over 30.1 innings. Darvish, like Yamamoto, missed a lot of time. He allowed 10 runs on 20 hits in 25.1 innings over five September starts when he returned. King was terrific all season and outstanding in the start against Atlanta.
So, it’s a classic case of a better Dodgers offense versus a better Padres pitching staff. Personally, I prefer the pitching in October and I genuinely think that this Padres team is as good or better than the Dodgers. Unlike the other teams that lose a little something having to play in the Wild Card Round, I don’t think SD really did, as Cease is every bit as good or better than King and Musgrove, so they could get off to a great start.
Pick: Padres +120
