Five things Mets fans should know about Dodgers ahead of NLCS

Here are five things to know about the Dodgers as the Mets open the 2024 NLCS in Los Angeles:

Game 5 of the 2015 NLDS — which the Mets won — featured Jacob deGrom and Zack Greinke starting. Bartolo Colon waited in the bullpen. Chase Utley, a Queens villain for his slide earlier in the series, pinch-hit.

The rosters have changed since then, with Kiké Hernández the lone player who will be on the NLCS rosters. Clayton Kershaw, who started two games that series, has been shut down. This will mark the fourth Dodgers-Mets postseason showdown.

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Between Shohei Ohtani ($700 million, with most of that deferred), Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million) and Tyler Glasnow ($136.5 million extension after a trade), the Dodgers surged past $1 billion in offseason spending.

The Mets, who still operated with MLB’s most expensive payroll this year, never made a formal offer to Ohtani, pursued Yamamoto and executed a different philosophy in free agency.

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The sample size — just six games — was small. But three Dodgers who played in at least five regular-season meetings with the Mets collected an OPS above 1: Will Smith (1.186, three homers, five RBIs), Ohtani (1.143, two homers, six RBIs) and Freddie Freeman (1.134, one homer, eight RBIs).

And the L.A. pitching staff, a now-depleted group with the worst mark among the final four teams for HR/9 (1.64) and K/9 (6.55), surrendered 20 runs across those six matchups.

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J.D. Martinez’s relationship with Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc stretches beyond the 2023 season, which was Martinez’s lone campaign with L.A. and featured the pair fixing his swing.

Van Scoyoc, along with Craig Wallenbrock, also helped Martinez overhaul his swing following the 2013 season — which ignited his career and created the version of Martinez that made him such a pivotal Mets addition (16 home runs, 69 RBIs, .725 OPS and plenty of hitting mentorship for other Mets).

Dodgers bullpen coach Josh Bard was Aaron Boone’s bench coach for his first two years as Yankees manager. Then, he went back to Los Angeles in 2020, and Boone filled the vacancy by giving infield coach Carlos Mendoza the promotion that’d one day help him become the Mets’ manager.

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