Over the last two seasons, two teams are tied for the most victories in baseball:
• 191, Dodgers
• 191, Phillies
OK, then! This might not be the World Series, or even the National League Championship Series, but it might be as good of a “matchup between the two best teams in baseball” as you’re going to get.
After all: You’ve got the two potential front-runners for NL MVP, facing off in a most unusual way. (Most battles between designated hitters don’t end with “one pitching to the other,” after all.) You’ve got, by one measure, the two best pitching staffs in the game, and, in very different ways, they’ve each added 100 mph flamethrowers to their bullpens late in the season.
You’ve got, for the first time since way back in 2008-09, when the Phillies beat the Dodgers in back-to-back Octobers on their way to NL pennants, a Philadelphia-Los Angeles postseason series. Now: Who’s got the edge?
Catcher
A tremendous example, this, of how much things can change in the midst of a long season. Will Smith and J.T. Realmuto each entered 2025 with reputations that put them among the best catchers in the sport, but by the end of the July, there no longer seemed to be a comparison to be made, as Smith was hitting better than anyone at any position this side of Aaron Judge, while the 34-year-old Realmuto had spent most of the first half struggling to keep his bat at a merely average level.
And then, as they say, what happened? Smith fell apart in August (.159/.326/.304), then hardly played in September due to a hairline fracture in his hand. While he was on the NL Wild Card roster, he didn’t appear, leaving the backstop duties to journeyman Ben Rortvedt -- who performed well in two games, but is not Realmuto, who perked up in July & August (.818 OPS) before falling back in September. A healthy Smith would get the edge over this version of Realmuto. The Dodgers do not, until proven otherwise, have a healthy Smith.
Advantage: Phillies
First base
Good luck choosing between two future Hall-of-Fame lefty sluggers, right? Unfortunately for us, we’re obligated to, even if our hearts tell us otherwise. Bryce Harper had a season that would be good for most anyone else -- 27 homers and a 129 OPS+ is hardly a problem -- yet by his own lofty standards, was something of a down year, finishing with his weakest OPS and slugging since 2016. He did, at least, slug a lot better in the second half (.524) than the first (.451).
Over the last two seasons, Harper and Freddie Freeman have put up identical wRC+ figures of 138. Identical! Of course, second-half Freeman was a little -- not a lot, but a little -- better than Harper. The gap later in the season was larger, though we also know that’s not terribly predictive of what will happen in October. It’s not fair to pick, really. They’re both extremely great. Given the lack of space here, Freeman’s better finish gives him the world’s tiniest edge.
Advantage: Dodgers
Second base
This might be a job share for Los Angeles, and while there’s things to like about each of Miguel Rojas (good glove, competent hitting) and Tommy Edman (you saw what he did last October, right?), the truth is that Edman is limited by an ankle injury, and Bryson Stott might be entirely different player than the fine-but-nothing-special player he’d been for most of his career.
Stott, through the end of July, was hitting .233/.305/.340, which is a below-average line. Stott, after that, hit .310/.377/.503, which was a top-30 mark in the Majors. It was the third-best among second basemen. What changed? You’ll hear a lot about “dad strength,” given that his first child was born on July 23, and hey, maybe so. But also: “I just try to pull the ball now,” Stott told the Athletic. We appreciate that there seems to have been at least some kind of meaningful approach change behind such improved performance.
Advantage: Phillies
Shortstop
Mookie Betts and Trea Turner were Dodger teammates late in 2021, after Turner was acquired from Washington. Entertainingly: neither one played shortstop. Betts was still in right field, and Turner played second alongside then-Dodger Corey Seager. They have another thing in common, too, which is that both rated as plus-to-excellent defenders at short this year, a big achievement given Betts’s up-and-down first year there last year and years of defense not exactly being a strength for Turner.
Turner usually has a huge speed edge -- he’s still elite after all the years, while Betts has declined to below-average speed -- and he clearly out-hit Betts this season, too. So: Why the edge to Betts? For one, because he completely turned things around, to the point that after Aug. 15, he was a top-30 hitter in the sport, before getting on base seven times in two games against the Reds. For another, Turner missed most of September with a hamstring injury, and while he did get back in the regular season finale, we haven’t really seen him go all-out yet.
It’s sort of like catcher, but in reverse. A fully healthy Turner gets the edge. We don’t know if the Phillies have that.
Advantage: Dodgers
Third base
Max Muncy played in just 100 games this year due to oblique and knee injuries, but he also set a career-high in hard-hit rate (52%) by kind of a lot (previous high: 47%), which is saying something for a player who entered the season with four 35-homer years to his name. When he played, he put up a perfectly Muncy kind of season, which is to say a hitter with a 128 career OPS+ as a Dodger put up a 136 OPS+.
He’s a clearly better hitter than Alec Bohm, and there’s not really any daylight between them in terms of being moderately below-average defenders. But there’s a huge caveat here, which is this: The Phillies are expected to start three lefty pitchers, and Muncy has for the last several seasons carried massive platoon splits, hitting just .160/.266/.379 vs. southpaws over the last three years.
Depending on what Edman’s ankle allows for, the Dodgers will either play Enrique Hernández here, or Rojas, or live with Muncy. Bohm, meanwhile, hit .308/.356/.453 after a brutal April ended. We’ll take that certainty over the uncertainty the Dodgers face here.
Advantage: Phillies
Left field
Speaking of Phillies who got off to poor starts and then shined: Brandon Marsh, who didn’t get his batting average over .200 until May 19, then spent the rest of the year being not only one of the best hitters on the Phillies, but one of the better hitting outfielders in the Majors, too. He is, improbably after all this time, now underrated.
The Dodgers started Hernández here against the Reds, and his postseason heroics are noted. But if he’s needed at third base, well, it’s not like Michael Conforto is a better option against lefties. At times, they moved Andy Pages here with Tommy Edman in center, but Edman’s ankle may not allow for it. All of which means: How many games does Alex Call start in the NLDS? What a fascinating question to have to ask.
Advantage: Phillies
Center field
This had been Marsh’s role until mid-season acquisition Harrison Bader arrived and took over, and he was ultimately one of the most impactful additions any team made this summer, hitting .305/.361/.463 for the Phillies along with his usual truly elite defense. Bader has been such a plus glove for so long, in fact, that Pages can’t even really claim a huge defensive edge here, despite how well he rated among outfielders himself.
Where it gets a little tricky is that as outstanding as Bader was, we can’t really assume that he’s the guy he was for 50 Phillies games and not the less consistent hitter he was for nearly 900 previous games across five other teams. (To wit: he ended the season going 4-for-30.) On the other hand, Pages took a pretty big step back in the second half, and even if we don’t fully buy Bader being “That Guy” for much longer, it’s hard to make the case otherwise at the moment.
Advantage: Phillies
Right field
Last October, Nick Castellanos was hitting cleanup in the playoffs. This time around, he’s a bench player, at least against righty starters, as a career-low .694 OPS was no longer worth putting up with some of baseball’s weakest outfield defense. That’s put Max Kepler into the mix -- though Castellanos will likely start against Blake Snell -- and Kepler, after four relatively unimpressive months that had him worrying about how long he’d keep a roster spot, did manage to perk up late in the season, though only with a .791 OPS in August and September.
It’s not like Teoscar Hernández is an asset on defense, himself, by both the metrics (-9 Fielding Run Value, bottom 10) and the big error he made in the Wild Card series. Of course, he also hit two homers in Game 1 and reached base four times, and made a pretty massive decrease in his strikeout rate in September after a relatively middling season. It’s not a huge edge, but he’s got a much better track record, too.
Advantage: Dodgers
Designated hitter
This isn’t the NL MVP argument, because this isn’t about Shohei Ohtani on the mound. It’s just about hitting, about Kyle Schwarber’s bat against Ohtani’s, and we’re talking about two of the best six qualified hitters in the sport in 2025. (For real: these two, Judge, Cal Raleigh, George Springer, and Juan Soto. It’s a special group.)
Needless to say, there’s not a huge edge between a 56-homer slugger (Schwarber) and a 55-homer slugger (Ohtani). But when one had twice as many stolen bases, and a 27-point edge in on-base percentage, and a 59-point advantage in slugging, how do you not choose Ohtani? We will choose Ohtani.
Advantage: Dodgers
Starting rotation
We cannot express enough how much of a “who do you have right now” situation [this is], because Zack Wheeler isn’t here, Aaron Nola isn’t likely to get a start, and Blake Snell and Ohtani are here. The full-season Phillies rotation was better, but the September Dodgers pitching did just allow the lowest batting average by any team in any month ever, too.
Focusing just on the six likely starters is, in some sense, eye-popping. Cristopher Sánchez is likely to finish second in the NL Cy Young to Paul Skenes, and has at least a small case to win it; Jesús Luzardo was maybe the most underrated pickup any team made last winter; Yoshinobu Yamamoto is pitching as well as any starter in the game right now.
If we just keep it to those six, the three Dodgers were considerably better at keeping runs off the board by any split you want -- full season, second half, or September. That it’s a relatively easy choice to pick them over what’s an elite Philadelphia top three tells you a lot about the kind of pitching we’re about to see here.
Advantage: Dodgers
Bullpen
Los Angeles’s bullpen struggles have been chronicled for months, and even though we all figured some of the excess starters would shift down to take weight from weaker relievers, it didn’t go great against the Reds -- Dodger pitchers in relief allowed five runs and walked as many as they struck out in 4 1/3 innings. Roki Sasaki’s appearance to close out the series was thrilling and makes him the ultimate wild card, but he’s also hardly had a reliably good debut season, either.
The Phillies are not without their own middle relief questions, as David Robertson’s return has been bumpy and Orion Kerkering has been pushed down the pecking order. But, they do have a pair of effective lefties in Matt Strahm and Tanner Banks -- and, oh yes, the absolutely dominant Jhoan Duran, who showed a massive jump in strikeout rate (33%) after the July trade compared to what he had with the Twins (26%). He’s easily the best reliever on both rosters, barring a whole lot more proof from Sasaki. Put it this way: Which team will feel more confident in the ninth inning? We thought so.
Advantage: Phillies
Prediction
Both teams have a major position player trying to prove he’s healthy (Smith, Turner), both teams have outstanding starting pitching and an elite lefty designated hitter, and, as we said, an identical number of wins over the last two seasons. If we had a 30-game series, we’d probably assume a 16-14 outcome. That’s how close these teams are. We’ll give it to Philly because of the home field (both clubs were .506 teams on the road, yet elite at home), the best reliever, and the questions of how the Dodgers will handle all those lefty starters at third base and left field.
Phillies in five.