National League

Game 1 of the National League Championship Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs is underway at Wrigley Field.

Keep it here for all the latest updates, reaction, analysis, pictures, tweets and anything else we can think of as the action unfolds.

Hit us up in the comments section below and on Twitter @RickWeinerBR to partake in the festivities! 

Final Score

Cubs 8, Dodgers 4

WP: Chapman

LP: Blanton

The New York Mets are chasing an improbable and long-awaited postseason run, while the Los Angeles Dodgers have some making up to do for last year. When the 2015 National League Division Series is settled, one of the two will head home disappointed.

It's already been a groundbreaking season for the Mets, who's preseason aspirations were finally fulfilled. They earned their first NL East title since 2006 and just their second since the 1980s. They are built to end a nearly 30-year World Series drought.

They'll have to rise up against a comparably talented team, though, as the Dodgers look poised to make up for their disappointing 2014 playoff exit and perhaps get another crack at the St. Louis Cardinals.

The early part of the week is set for wild-card showdowns, but it won't be long until the Mets and Dodgers face off. Let's take a look at everything you need to know.

2015 NLDS Schedule: Dodgers vs. Mets

Date	Matchup	Time (ET)	TV
Fri., Oct. 9	Game 1: Mets at Dodgers	TBD	TBS
Sat., Oct. 10	Game 2: Mets at Dodgers	TBD	TBS
Mon., Oct. 12	Game 3: Dodgers at Mets	TBD	TBS
Tues., Oct. 13	Game 4: Dodgers at Mets	TBD	TBS
Thurs., Oct. 15	Game 5: Mets at Dodgers	TBD	TBS

Note: Game times will be posted when released at MLB.com.

Preview

Take all of the battles of top pitching staffs in postseasons past and throw them out, because this one is likely to take the cake.

Up to six of the 10 best pitchers in baseball today could get the ball in this series. With the New York Mets' four-headed monster on the mound and the Dodgers' peerless duo, though, it's not hard to see where the advantage lies.

The Mets have a group of pitchers tossing at a level that hasn't really been seen on the same team before. Bartolo Colon, Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard all look like top-flight starters who can will the Mets to a win.

The stats show it, as they became the first team ever to boast four pitchers with more than 150 innings and a strikeout-to-walk ratio over five, as Erik Malinowski of Sports on Earth observed:

’15 mets first team *ever* to have four starters with 150+ IP & K/BB > 5, lol http://t.co/uaMxMsdrog pic.twitter.com/anrMgCREM4

— Erik Malinowski (@erikmal) October 5, 2015

Obviously, the Mets have a number of directions they could go with the ball in Game 1, but they're choosing to go with deGrom. His 2.54 ERA, 0.98 WHIP and over 200 strikeouts are incredible numbers that he can only hope to build on against the Dodgers' bats.

He spoke with reporters about how he's preparing for the madness, per the Mets' Twitter account:

"I feel ready." @JdeGrom19, our Game 1 starter, talks about preparing for the postseason. #Mets pic.twitter.com/ablTCUwR0N

— New York Mets (@Mets) October 4, 2015

The Dodgers will have a much more established ace on the mound in Game 1, as Clayton Kershaw will get the chance to improve his postseason reputation. He's become known for coming up short in the playoffs, after almost unbelievable regular seasons.

Kershaw will get to start the series, but perhaps the Dodgers' best pitcher—at least this year—will be on the mound for Game 2. Zack Greinke is that man, and Kershaw hasn't been shy on heaping praise toward him, per Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:

Kershaw said Greinke should win Cy Young -- "Best ERA, best WHIP."

— Ken Gurnick (@kengurnick) October 4, 2015

Both teams have bats capable of going off at any time, as Yoenis Cespedes has revitalized the Mets and the Dodgers have a stacked their lineup with RBI machines. But both teams have been no-hit this year and can be shut down by top pitching.

That makes it even more apparent that this series will be decided on the mound. And considering the strengths of these two teams, there's no more fitting way for it to be decided.

You'd think it would be impossible to downplay Adam Wainwright's season-ending injury and its effect on the St. Louis Cardinals. It's not like you can just snap your fingers and replace a guy like that.

Unless, apparently, you have a Michael Wacha.

It's been about three weeks since Wainwright was ruled out for the remainder of the 2015 season with a torn left Achilles tendon, and Wacha is a big reason why you may have already forgotten about that. It's largely because of his pitching that the Cardinals have an MLB-best 26-13 record.

The latest chapter in this narrative was written Tuesday night at Citi Field, where Wacha led the Cardinals to a 10-2 victory over the New York Mets with seven innings of two-run ball that featured five strikeouts, two walks and only four hits allowed.

The 23-year-old right-hander now has a 2.13 ERA, one of the best in the majors, across 50.2 innings in eight starts. If you're into such things, Wacha also has a perfect 6-0 record that, as ESPN Stats & Info points out, might have been 8-0 under different circumstances: 

Cardinals rout the Mets ... they're 8-0 when Michael Wacha starts a game this season

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) May 20, 2015

Before we continue, let's clarify that we're not taking anything away from Wainwright. The 33-year-old veteran had a 1.44 ERA in his four starts this year, and he owns a 2.61 ERA over 493.2 innings dating back to 2013. When the Cardinals lost him, they lost one of baseball's elite aces.

For that matter, let's not take anything away from the rest of the Cardinals' rotation, either. Lance Lynn and John Lackey also have ERAs under 3.00, and as a whole, the group has an MLB-best 3.16 ERA.

But it's not by accident that Wacha has pushed his way into Wainwright's ace-sized shoes. He came into 2015 as a talented pitcher, and he's found new ways to make the most of his talent.

The notion that Wacha came into the season as a talented pitcher shouldn't need much support. He was the 19th overall pick in the 2012 draft, and he was a top-100 prospect when he debuted in 2013. That season saw him post a 2.78 ERA in 15 regular-season appearances before a star-making turn in the postseason, and he was pretty good (3.20 ERA) in an injury-shortened 2014 season, too.

Still, it is understandable if you're skeptical of Wacha's 2015 performance. 

The thing that stands out most as a red flag is that Wacha isn't racking up K's. After posting a 9.0 K/9 in 2013 and a 7.9 K/9 in 2014, he's striking out only 5.5 batters per nine innings this year, per FanGraphs. That's well below the starter average of 7.3, and it suggests that Wacha owes much of his success to a mixture of good defense and good luck.

Another stat that says the same thing is Wacha's BABIP (batting average on balls in play), which stands at .231. That's way below the starter average of .296, which opens up fears that what's currently down will eventually go up.

Either that or Wacha is actually doing his part to earn such a low BABIP. A pitcher can pull off such a trick if he's really good at managing contact, and that's quietly where much of Wacha's success this season is coming from.

For one, Wacha has become an above-average ground-ball artist, pushing his GB% from the low 40s to 51.5 heading into his Tuesday night start. As Jonah Keri wrote at Grantland, that "highlights a [former Cardinals pitching coach] Dave Duncan lesson that’s carried forward to a new generation of Cards pitchers: Keep the ball down in the zone, and good things will happen."

But it's not all about ground balls. For two, FanGraphs shows the rate of hard contact against Wacha heading into Tuesday night's outing had hit a new low:

• 2013: 35.8%
• 2014: 32.1%
• 2015: 25.0%

A stat that backs this up is exit velocity. According to Baseball Savant, Wacha went into Tuesday's outing allowing an average of 86.55 miles per hour off the bat. Among qualified starters, that put him among the top 15 in quiet contact allowed.

As for where this is coming from, we know two things that are very useful in the contact-management department are good command and overpowering stuff. Wacha's 2.1 BB/9 is a fine reflection of the fact that he has outstanding command. And with a fastball that sits 93-95, he certainly has power stuff.

But the real key? That would be Wacha's pitch selection. He has a reputation as a mere fastball/changeup pitcher, but Brooks Baseball can show he's evolved beyond that in 2015:

Wacha was indeed a two-pitch pitcher back in 2013, but he's increasingly become a four-pitch pitcher as he's put more trust in his cutter and curveball.

"He's just becoming a more versatile pitcher and that makes him less predictable," said Cardinals skipper Mike Matheny to Jenifer Langosch of MLB.com. "I think that's what takes a young pitcher to the next level."

The value of Wacha putting more trust in his curveball isn't hard to decipher. Along with his changeup, it gives two pitches that are getting ground balls better than 60 percent of the time they're put in play. As nice as it would be if they were getting whiffs, ground balls are also awesome.

But it's Wacha's cutter that's really emerging as his money pitch, as hitters were hitting just .216 against it at the start of play on Tuesday. According to the man himself, this has much to do with how the pitch has similar movement to his changeup but in the opposite direction.

"It keeps something in the back of their head that I might be throwing it," Wacha told Langosch. "I've got confidence in every pitch, and I've had confidence in [my changeup and cutter]. It's just about being able to throw them for strikes and then expanding the zone with those pitches as well. I'm just trying to keep them off balance."

While Wacha's changeup tends to get ground balls, his cutter tends to get soft contact, period. Heading into Tuesday's action, Baseball Savant says batters were hitting it at an average of just 81.8 miles per hour when they put it in play. In a season full of soft contact, his cutter has drawn the softest.

In a way, Wacha has come to resemble the very guy in whose shoes he now stands.

Wainwright has never been a particularly lethal strikeout pitcher, and he became downright mediocre at striking guys out during the 2014 season. But thanks to his own diverse pitch mix, he more than compensated for that by improving his own contact-management skills.

Certainly, Wacha picked a heck of a guy to emulate for the next step of his career. And the longer he keeps it up, the longer the Cardinals won't really be missing their departed ace.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

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A hotly contested topic among the baseball world in the past week (and for quite some time now) has been whether or not the National League should change its rules to institute the use of the designated hitter. The American League adopted the DH in 1973, yet the Senior Circuit has remained surprisingly resilient through the years.

However, National League owners may be under increased pressure to make a change.

The debate was jump-started when St. Louis Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright, one of the elite starting pitchers in the MLB, tore his Achilles tendon running out of the batter's box after putting the ball in play. The club announced that he would miss the rest of the season, which is a crippling blow to a St. Louis squad trying to advance to the NLCS for the fifth consecutive year.

Washington Nationals hurler Max Scherzer was the first to rally behind Wainwright's banner. He told Jon Heyman of CBS Sports that he would not be opposed to bringing the DH to the National League, saying that it would be a great way to increase scoring and make the game more entertaining.

"If you look at it from the macro side, who'd people rather see hit—Big Papi or me?" Scherzer said. "Who would people rather see, a real hitter hitting home runs or a pitcher swinging a wet newspaper? Both leagues need to be on the same set of rules."

This logic makes sense from Mad Max—having a designated hitter batting instead of a pitcher would make the game more fun to watch and ostensibly give the fans more bang for their buck. But his initial claims were met with a flurry of other opinions, and most weren't in agreement with his.

Madison Bumgarner was the first to publicly disagree. The San Francisco Giants left-hander also happens to be one of the best hitting pitchers in the league, and he was not afraid to come down hard on Scherzer.

This was his comment to Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News about the Wainwright injury and the possibility of the DH entering National League play:

What if he got hurt pitching? Should we say he can't pitch anymore? I hate what happened to him. He works his butt off out there. But I don't think it was because he was hitting. What if he gets hurt getting out of his truck? You tell him not to drive anymore? That's the way the game has to be played. I appreciate both sides of the argument and I get it. But [ending pitcher plate appearances] isn't the way to go about [addressing] it.

That is an excellent point as well. It was an Achilles injury that Wainwright suffered. If that part of his body was going to tear, it could have been anywhere. He could just as easily have injured it pitching off the mound or covering first base as he did jogging out of the box.

One of Bumgarner's teammates, Jake Peavy, gave another reason why the designated hitter must stay away. He began by talking about a situation last year when Bumgarner hit against the Los Angeles Dodgers' Zack Greinke in the eighth inning. It was late in the season in a crucial situation, and manager Bruce Bochy didn't have to go to a pinch hitter and then a reliever. 

"We have a distinct advantage because of what he can do at the plate," Peavy said, per Baggarly. "We'd take a ton of strategy out of our game. The bench player is so much more important a part of the game. Managers have their say in how the game is played out.

"As pitchers, it's about taking pride in batting and baserunning and getting a bunt down or putting it in play. If you do that better than the other pitcher, you've got an advantage."

For Scherzer, even his own general manager is not on his side. Nationals GM Mike Rizzo—who gave Scherzer a $210 million contract this offseason—went on record against the DH earlier this week.

Rizzo was very adamant on a Wednesday radio appearance he made on 106.7 The Fan that he will never favor the DH.

I hate the DH. I always have hated the DH. I would hate to see the DH in the National League, and I love the National League brand of baseball. Now, I worked with the Chicago White Sox for years, and the Boston Red Sox for years in the American League, and I'm a much bigger fan of the National League style of play, with the pitcher pitching and all the strategy that that employs. 

That's my favorite part of this whole argument. The phrase "the strategy it employs." Personally, that is one of the things I enjoy about the game of baseball. The managers competing in a chess match throughout the ballgame is arguably the most compelling thing about baseball and the main reason I like the National League better than the American League.

In the American League, the manager does not have nearly as many factors to worry about, most notably pinch hitting for the pitcher. To illustrate this, I'll introduce a common situation in baseball. 

Let's say Team A is winning by two runs in the seventh inning and the pitcher is due up next with runners on first and second with one out. The manager has a tough decision on his hands: Does he leave the pitcher in the game to pitch another inning even though it likely means they won't tack on any runs that inning, or does he elect to use a pinch hitter in an attempt to add some cushion to the lead even though that move will result in leaning heavily on the bullpen to finish the game?

An American League manager is never faced with this dilemma. All he has to do is monitor the pitcher, and when he gets tired or ineffective, put in a reliever.

The Junior Circuit also does not incorporate nearly as many situational pitching changes or as much bunting as the National League does.

Now some fans don't really care much about some of the finer points of the game—they prefer to see guys hit the ball as far as they can in high-scoring games, and that is perfectly fine. They can stick with the American League, but the NL does not need to change its rulebook to satisfy those fans.

The final witness in this trial is someone who should know better than anyone. Cubs manager Joe Maddon has spent time in both leagues, and even though he has only been in Chicago for a few months, he has already adapted the National League style of play and is against bringing the DH to the NL.

"That's part of the game," Maddon said, via the Chicago Tribune, about Wainwright's injury. "That's the way it works. It's unfortunate. It stinks. I like the National League the way it sets. It's a really interesting baseball game."

Ultimately, it will be up to NL owners on whether or not they eventually adopt the DH. They might do it sometime in the future, but they don't need to. Their brand of baseball is more of a traditional style of play, and contrary to popular belief there are still some old-fashioned baseball fans out there who have the attention spans to watch an entire game even if substitutions and pitching changes are involved.

In my opinion, the game is much better with all nine fielders hitting for themselves. It forces players to be more well-rounded, and it makes it more interesting from a strategy standpoint. Also, it results in more intriguing scouting, as pitchers handy with the bat continue to become more and more rare. As the Giants do right now with Bumgarner, NL teams with pitchers who can hit have a tremendous advantage over their opponents, and that is nothing to sneeze at.

Either way, this is a very polarizing debate. Each side has its pros and cons, and baseball pundits, coaches and players are obviously not afraid to state their case.

Bumgarner, Peavy, Rizzo and Maddon are for the DH staying the heck away from the National League, and I wholeheartedly agree with their arguments.

Jimmy Rollins left Monday night's game against the Pittsburgh Pirates after suffering an injury on a triple in the bottom of the fourth inning. According to Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly.com, the Philadelphia Phillies shortstop strained his left hamstring:

Jimmy Rollins left with a left hamstring strain, according to Phillies

— Jim Salisbury (@JimSalisbury215) September 9, 2014

Although the curtain is closing on the 2014 regular season, Rollins believes that he'll be back before the year is over, targeting sometime a little over a week away for his return, per Ryan Lawrence of the Philadelphia Daily News:

Rollins says he figures he'll miss at least a week to 10 days, but definitely expects to return before end of season.

— Ryan Lawrence (@ryanlawrence21) September 9, 2014

Matt Gelb of The Philadelphia Inquirer thought that, all things considered, Rollins has played above expectations in 2014:

If that was Jimmy Rollins' last act of 2014, it was a heck of a season for a 35-year-old shortstop.

— Matt Gelb (@MattGelb) September 9, 2014

Coming back before regular season is out carries major financial weight for both Rollins and the Phillies. Gelb wrote in December 2013 that an $11 million vesting option would be wiped out if the 35-year-old finished the season on the disabled list. The option could come back in play, however, if a doctor finds him ready to go for the 2015 season.

With Philly cemented in last place in the National League East and holding no hope of making the playoffs, it will be interesting to see how Rollins' recovery is handled. There's no reason to rush him back to the field, and the team would possibly save money if it kept him on the shelf.

It adds a little intrigue into what is an otherwise dull road to the finish in Philadelphia.