Saved by the safety net of wild-card rounds, the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals have little time to taste their good fortune.
National League wild-card representatives meet in a winner-take-all game in Los Angeles on Wednesday, with the 106-win Dodgers facing the Cardinals, who built a franchise-best 17-game winning streak last month Was.
It's a pair worthy of seven games, yet it's only one night. Waiting for the winner is the 107-win San Francisco Giants.
The Dodgers opened as a 1.5-run favorite and remained there in most of the major sportsbooks. The Los Angeles spread line is backed by 67 percent bets and 53 percent money on Pointsbet. However, with the Cardinals (+170) being backed by 48 percent bets and 44 percent money, the action on Moneyline has become more divided.
Last season's four playoff rounds saw the World Series champion Dodgers an elimination game only once, when they won 4–3 over the Atlanta Braves in Game 7 of the NL Championship Series. Max Muncie had scored a run and a run in that, but is not expected to play on Wednesday due to a left elbow injury.
Corey Seeger, AJ Pollock and Tree Turner would have to make a Los Angeles offense without Munsey and his team's best of 36 home runs and 94 RBIs.
Right-hander Max Schaezer (15-4, 2.46 ERA overall) took an early lead after leading 7-0 with a 1.98 ERA in 11, with the Dodgers on the trade deadline from the Washington Nationals. started after his arrival.
Scherzer is 4-6 with a 2.76 ERA in 13 career regular season starts against the Cardinals. Louis in Game 2 of the 2019 NLCS while pitching for Washington, he scored 11 runs and one hit in seven scoreless innings.
"Everything (Scherzer) does it for a purpose; the little things matter to him," said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. "You look at the brilliance and back of a baseball card and what it did, I think it's an easy way to look at it. But when you take two layers back, the details matter to him."
Turner arrived with Scherzer in the same trade, winning the NL batting title with an average of .328, while closing the regular season on an 18-game hitting streak. He scored six home runs in his last eight matches (including two Grand Slams), giving him every right to feel confident.
"I don't know about horror. It's fun," Turner said of the wild-card game. "It's a game 7."
The Cardinals will turn to 40-year-old right-hander Adam Wainwright (17-7, 3.05 ERA). He went 6-0 up with 2.44 ERA in his last eight starts, but now faces a Dodgers offense who scored nine runs in his last five games.
Wainwright, a 16-year veteran, is 7–5 with 2.66 ERA in 17 regular-season appearances (14 starts) against the Dodgers. He has made three career post-season starts against Los Angeles, leading 0–1 with a 4.12 ERA. Wainwright's most recent playoff appearance came in the 2014 NL Division Series against the Dodgers, when he conceded six runs on 11 hits in a forgettable 4 1/3 innings.
With two experienced post-season starts on the mound, the current over/under for total runs at Pointsbet is 7.5. Overs have seen unilateral action with 57 percent bets and 73 percent money.
The Cardinals were written off at the start of the year when ace Jack Flaherty suffered an oblique injury that cost him nearly half the season, while the offense broke out despite Nolan Arenado's involvement.
St. Louis was a sub-.500 team until August 9 before winning the next six games. As of August 10, the Cardinals are 35-16.
Arenado finished with 34 home runs and 105 RBIs. Now, the Southern California native will return home for his first post-season appearance since 2018.
"What's it all about to be able to go to the playoffs," Arenado said. "I'm just grateful to be a part of this team. This team is incredible. We've pushed each other forward. ... That's why I'm here, and to be able to do it in my first year (together with the Cardinals) is a good feeling."