Dodgers News: LA Not Focused on Trying to Pass Braves for the Top Seed in NL, Says Dave Roberts
As the regular season winds down, the Dodgers find themselves only a few games back of the Atlanta Braves for the top seed in the National League playoffs. It would give them home-field advantage throughout the postseason, but with only a week and a half left to go, it’s unlikely they catch Atlanta.
LA just wants to be playing their best baseball entering the postseason, and home-field advantage tends to be overblown come playoff time. Obviously, they would rather have it, but LA has had home-field advantage in the past, and it hasn’t amounted to an advantage.
“Obviously, there’s the benefit of looking way out to the home-field advantage in the CS,” Roberts said. “I think that it’ll play out the way it’s going to. I’m not going to make decisions on trying to catch the Braves. I think that our thought is just to beat these guys tonight and get ready for the Giants. And then however it kind of washes out, we’ll kind of prepare that way.”
However, there are perks to not getting the first overall seed, as well. As the No, 2 seed, they will face the winner of the NL Central and the lowest wild card winner. Right now, that would be either the Milwaukee Brewers or Chicago Cubs, as opposed to the Philadelphia Phillies or Arizona Diamondbacks.
But Roberts doesn’t want to get caught up in these types of things. He knows that in the postseason, anything can happen. Better matchups can turn out just as bad as poor ones, so the Dodgers are just playing their game.
“I don’t think so – because I don’t want to play the ‘Be careful what you wish for’ game,” Roberts said. “You look at the Phillies. That’s a very talented team. You saw what they did last year. They can pitch. They can put up a lot of runs quickly. You look at the Brewers. They can really pitch. And in any series, they’re very dangerous. And the other teams that are in the mix, they are there for a reason."
Los Angeles seems focused on just playing their game, and not worrying about anyone else. It's the correct mindset to have, and hopefully, it yields better results in the playoffs this time around.
