Individual Matchups Rule the Series

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As everyone knows, there are enough ways to pare down baseball statistics that it’s more than tempting to just throw your hands up in the air and go with vague hunches: “Carlos Beltran hits the low fastball, and Derek Lowe throws a sinker. Advantage Beltran!” It’s equally tempting to look at miscellaneous numbers and let them be their own conclusions: “Beltran has two singles and three walks in 20 atbats against Lowe. Advantage Lowe!” Both temptations are to be resisted.

The Mets, all pessimism aside, pose a pretty stiff challenge for any pitching staff, especially the Dodgers’. They’re a remarkably patient and disciplined team, with power from the leadoff spot down to the eight-hole and a versatile bench. While every hitter has his weaknesses, none of them tend to have the same weaknesses.

The casual take that the Mets can be busted inside right now isn’t really true, and if it was, the Dodgers’ starters (Brad Penny excepted) probably couldn’t take advantage anyway. The keys to watch will instead be those Mets who are weak against the individual pitchers.

Lowe, possessor of one of baseball’s nastiest sinkers, owns Beltran, and David Wright and Jose Reyes both have a tendency to golf low fastballs rather than drive them.

The key player in the lineup will probably be Carlos Delgado, who has the classic lefty power zone, down and in. He can kill Lowe’s best sinker, and if he does the Mets will be in good shape.

Greg Maddux is the likeliest Dodger to simply get stampeded by the Mets; Wright and Reyes have incredibly quick bats and do very well against pitchers who rely on motion on their fastballs, while grizzled veterans Jose Valentin and Shawn Green have the mythic sliderspeed bat that makes them lethal against this class of pitcher.

Penny has the best raw stuff among the Dodgers’ starters, but a real tendency to overthrow; when he came out blowing 98 mph fastballs in the All-Star Game you saw the upside, but as his 4.33 ERA this year attests, there’s a downside, too. Even if he’s on his game, the Mets can wait him out.

Los Angeles has a stronger bullpen than their eighth-place finish in reliever ERA would suggest. 36-year-old rookie Takashi Saito does a credible Eric Gagne impression, having struck out 107 in 78 1 /3 IP, and 22-year-old flamethrower Jonathan Broxton struck out 97 in 76 1/3 IP. The rest of the Dodger’s relievers are mainly soft-tossing journeymen, but if the Mets are behind after six, they’ll be in trouble.

For the Mets’ pitchers, the key will be very simple: Pitch to contact and let the fielders catch the ball. J.D. Drew and Nomar Garciaparra tied for the team lead with 20 home runs; no one else had more than 15. Pinch-hitter Olmedo Saenz possibly excepted, this simply isn’t a powerful lineup, but rather one that scorches line drives to all fields. That plays into what the Mets do well — they were second in the league in turning balls in play into outs — but it also presents a problem, as none of the Mets’ pitchers have such great stuff that they can attack a lineup full of this type of hitter in full confidence that they’ll be able to induce bad contact.

Assuming the starters can hang in there, the Mets, of course, have a fabulously deep and diverse bullpen, with luxuries ranging from a tremendous long man in Darren Oliver to a deadly righty specialist in Chad Bradford to three legitimate set-up men for closer Billy Wagner.

For the Dodgers, the key will be to aggressively attack in the hopes of getting into that bullpen early and hoping to hit on someone having a bad night. It may work, it may not, but it should lead to some of the more exciting playoff baseball seen in New York in years.


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