After Tyler Matzek won a CIF championship for head coach Bob Zamora at Capistrano Valley High School, and before he took the mound for the Atlanta Braves in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series Tuesday, he was an AirHog.
The Texas AirHogs play in the independent American Association. Their home field is a 5,445-seat ballpark in Grand Prairie, Texas. This is where Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos found Matzek in 2019, pitching his way back from a case of the yips that nearly derailed his baseball career.
Ian Anderson, like Matzek, is a former first-round draft pick. He was still just a prospect as recently as spring training, a 21-year-old whose progress was measured by the late life on his breaking ball on a back field in Orlando. This is where Anthopoulos would pluck his starting pitcher for Game 2.
Anderson and Matzek held the Dodgers to two hits over the first six innings of the Braves’ 8-7 win on Tuesday. The Dodgers had been outscored 12-1 in the series, held to merely six hits, until Corey Seager muscled up to start a late rally and make the final score close.
The Dodgers now must ask questions they could not have fathomed when the week began. Their bullpen options look scant. Their lineup, which outscored the other 29 MLB clubs in the regular season, has looked feeble for most of the last two days. Their manager is feeling a familiar October heat for his button-pushing blunders, but if so many buttons lead to disaster, would anyone be able to manage the Dodgers out of this 2-0 deficit?
The scary prospect – the one the Dodgers might need to consider – is that the Braves are legitimately the better baseball team.
Before interleague play was allowed in 1995, the World Series was a test of the American and National League’s best teams. With no common opponent to serve as a frame of reference, it was harder to say with confidence which was the better team until they played each other. The usual statistics carried less weight.
The strange 2020 regular-season format – three geographical clusters of 10 teams that never played outside their region – is a throwback to the pre-interleague era. Much will be made of the Dodgers’ 43-17 record, but it can’t be taken at face value.
The Braves went 35-25, which included a combined 12-9 record against the four East opponents (Marlins, Rays, Yankees, Blue Jays) that qualified for the postseason. They were tested often during the regular season. They usually passed.
“I thought when we faced them last time (in 2018) and I said it afterwards, we weren’t as strong as they were,” Manager Brian Snitker said of the Dodgers. “We’ve made a lot of progress in that regard. We’re a better club now. We’re more well-rounded. We’re a stronger team than we were two years ago. Our offense … the bullpen, what we’ve seen out of the young starters is pretty good too. We feel we’re a lot better club than we were two years ago.”
It’s an echo of the Andrew Friedman-built Dodger clubs of years past. The 2016 team could not pitch or play defense at the Cubs’ level when they met in the NLCS, but the 2017 team turned the tables in a convincing five-game series. It only took two years for Friedman to get the Dodgers back to the World Series for the first time since 1988.
Like Friedman, Anthopoulos inherited a good farm system and an established core of veterans when he was hired in Nov. 2017. So far, it appears he’s held on to the right prospects (namely Ronald Acuña, Game 1 starter Max Fried, center fielder Cristian Pache, and Anderson). First baseman Freddie Freeman, a perennial down-ballot MVP candidate, suddenly looks like the best hitter in either league.
To a degree, it makes sense that the Dodgers and Braves would mirror each other as much as they do. I asked Anthopoulos on Sunday what he learned during his 22 months in the Dodgers’ front office (2016-17).
“I think, generally speaking, my focus probably in the past was more on the 1 to 25 at the big-league level,” Anthopoulos said. “Obviously you’re worried about scouting and development. But in terms of going in and competing during the season, I was more focused on the 25 than I was the entire 40-man. And I think among other things, they understand more than I did, the importance of getting through the season and needing all 40 guys and that next group of players is going to be important.
“Guys are going to get hurt. Guys aren’t going to perform. I think that’s where some clubs that are unable to stay afloat aren’t as deep as they should be or can be. That’s something I learned to value and appreciate.”Take this year. The Braves’ starting rotation to begin the season figured to include Fried, Cole Hamels, Mike Foltynewicz, Mike Soroka and Felix Hernandez. Only Fried is on the roster for the NLCS. For Atlanta to win the first two games of the series, it needed big contributions from the back-field prospect and the AirHog.
Similarly, Dave Roberts didn’t pencil Tony Gonsolin into his starting rotation when the season re-started in July. Already the series has tested the depth-building acumen of the rival GMs.
It’s also testing their stars. Freeman is 3 for 8 with two home runs and four RBIs. Betts is 1 for 7, his first hit of the series arriving in the ninth inning of Game 2.
The Braves aren’t just leading the series. They’re out-Dodgering the Dodgers.
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