The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Atlanta Braves will meet Thursday night at Turner Field to kick off their best-of-five division series.
The Dodgers scuffled coming out of the gate this year before coming together to dominate the rest of the National League throughout the summer, while the Braves started the season 12-1 and never looked back despite having a woeful September.
Everybody is looking at L.A. as the favorites in the series despite Atlanta having home field advantage and dominating the season series 5-2; the main reason for this is that the Dodgers have Clayton Kershaw on the mound tonight.
If one were to only look at Kershaw's 16-9 record they would assume that he had a good, not great, season. Look a little deeper and you'll find one of the best seasons by a pitcher in recent memory. Kershaw put up an other-worldly ERA of 1.83 while striking out 232 batters at a rate of not quite one per inning.
"He's definitely at the top of his craft," the Braves' Justin Upton told MLB.com. "He's one of those guys, you can tell when you see him out before games, when he's not pitching, he's preparing, so you know he's one of those guys that when he steps on the mound, he's prepared. You just have to be prepared to go at him, too."
The Braves already struggle against southpaws, they hit only .239 against lefties this season, so they are at quite a disadvantage facing the league's best left-handed pitcher.
Kris Medlen will be sharing the hill with Kershaw on Thursday night. Medlen became the default ace of the Braves staff once Tim Hudson went down with a broken ankle. Medlen has been pitching exceptionally well lately, going 5-0 while only allowing four earned in his last six starts, so it looks like he will be up to the task of matching up against the likely National League Cy Young winner, according to ESPN.
The game starts at 8:00 p.m. ET Thursday night and will be airing on TBS. A live stream of the game can be seen at this link.
*Stats for this article were obtained from Baseball-Reference.com.
