During Tuesday evening’s pre-Wild Card Series broadcast of SportsNet LA’s Emmy-winning Access SportsNet: Dodgers, show host John Hartung, former Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti, and former Dodger Jerry Hairston Jr. all agreed on one very significant point: Entering a best-of-three Wild Card Series is like entering Game-5 of a normal best-of-seven League Championship Series or even a best-of-seven World Series, with each team having won two of the previous four games.

In other words, winning Game-5 (or in this case Game-1) is paramount, as it eliminates the extreme pressure of a win-or-go-home Game-6 (or in this case Game-2).

Later during the broadcast, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman had this to say about the best-of-three Wild Card Series format:

“Obviously, I don’t like it.”

By no coincidence, earlier in the day during his Zoom media conference, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said this about it:

“I don’t like it.”

Although the Dodgers – the number-one seed in all of baseball after their MLB-best 43-17 (.717) season and after slugging an MLB-best 118 home runs – are enormous favorites to beat the number-eight seeded Milwaukee Brewers, every baseball fan on the planet knows that:

‘Any team can beat any other team on any given day.’

This, of course, includes the 29-31 (.483) Brewers, who wouldn’t even be in the postseason if this were a normal baseball season.

But a normal baseball season 2020 is not, and team owners – for whom MLB commissioner Rob Manfred works – need to recoup their enormous financial losses somehow … and here we are.

Of their 20 series played during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 regular-season, the Dodgers went a remarkable 15-1-4, with their only series loss occurring September 4-6 to the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field, losing two of three to the Rox. Colorado would finish the season in fourth place in the NL West with a 26-34 (.433) record – a mere three games worse than the Brewers.

Proof yet again that:

‘Any team can beat any other team on any given day.’

Play Ball!

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