The Dodgers and Blue Jays couldn’t have taken more different paths to the World Series in their respective Championship Series matchups. The Dodgers rolled through the Brewers in four games, never really breaking a sweat. On the other hand, the Blue Jays lost the first two games of their CS against the Seattle Mariners, fighting back to a Game 7 where a George Springer 3-run homer put them on top in the 7th inning, sending them to the World Series.

By winning 94 games in the regular season, the Blue Jays have earned the home field advantage in the World Series, which could play a pivotal role in the series. The Toronto crowd was absolutely rocking during the ALCS series with the Mariners. The Jays offense is lead by Vlad Jr. and George Springer, who both hit 3 home runs during the ALCS. Vlad Jr. has hit a total of 6 homers in these playoffs, and Springer has 4, bringing his career postseason home run total to 23, tying him for the 3rd most all-time with Kyle Schwarber.

The Jays starting rotation features Kevin Gausman, Shane Bieber, Max Scherzer, and, rookie, Trey Yesavage. I think the make or break situation for the Jays in this series is going to come down to their bullpen. Chris Bassit, Louis Varland, Jeff Hoffman, and a trio of lefties, Mason Fluharty, Eric Lauer, and Brendon Little are going to be key to trying to keep the Dodgers from blowing games open late in games.

The Dodgers offense is stacked, to say the least. For most fans, you don’t even need to say their full names when talking about the likes of Ohtani, Mookie, Freddie, Kiké and Teoscar. Because of them, the edge obviously has to go to the Dodgers in this series. Knowing Ohtani, the Toronto crowd could go silent after the first pitch of the game 1.

The Dodgers offense is obviously amazing, but what really stood out for me in the NLCS was their pitching staff, particularly the starting rotation. Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani, absolutely dominated the Milwaukee Brewers offense. They combined to only allow 2 earned runs in 28 2/3rd innings. The Dodgers bullpen only pitched 6 1/3rd innings in the four game series, which is unheard of recent history, where some teams might use their bullpen that much in a single playoff game.

While this should be a pretty good matchup, I think the Dodgers have the talent to steamroll the Jays in the World Series. I’m not really a gambler, but if I were to bet, I’d say the Dodgers win this in 5 games. The Jays probably take a game 1 or 2 at home, but I think the Dodgers starting rotation is going to prove to be too much for them.

And for a little gaming action, here is what Out of the Park Baseball 26 says will happen:

Welp… sorry Blue Jays fans. The Dodgers sweep with Ohtani being the MVP after going 7-for-13 with 2 solo home runs for a .538/.625/1.077 triple-slash. He also threw 8 innings of 1-run ball with 9 strikeouts and a win in game 2.

This week, I was lucky enough to be invited on Ezra Denney’s show, OOTP After Talk. I had a great time chatting with him about my history at OOTP, with baseball video games, my love for questionably good baseball movies, and a lot more.

Ezra doesn’t archive these videos somewhere (we’re gonna work on that), so he’s given me the permission to post the archive over on my YouTube channel.

Check out his streams at Twitch.tv/EzraDenney.
Follow him on BlueSky at @ezradenney.bsky.social‬.

You can support my Stand Up To Cancer campaign at ThatSportsGamer.com/SU2C.

With the calendar flipping to August, now seems like a good time to take a look at what my all-time Braves squad is looking like in MLB The Show 25’s Diamond Dynasty mode. As of today, I have attained all of the cards of players who have played for the Braves in the mode. At a quick glance, you might notice a few weird guys, but we’ll talk about them as they come up.

The latest addition to the squad is David Justice. He just dropped in today’s Outfield Assist Program. His addition to the team moved Gary Sheffield to the bench and, because of Justice’s excellent defensive ratings, Acuña has moved to DH. I was really surprised to see Jose Bautista has 85 Fielding, 99 Arm Strength, 90 Arm Accuracy, and 80 Reaction. Thanks to that, even out of position in LF, he should be fine.

The Braves in Diamond Dynasty, much like real-life, are desperately lacking in quality middle-infielders. This Swanson and Albies haven’t moved from their positions, or the bottom of the lineup, in months.

The bench is kind of straight forward. Sheffield can bop against lefties and righties, Pendleton has a great contact and some decent power vs both as well. Having a backup catcher is a requirement for me, and Drake Baldwin covers that, with some good contact and power.

Why the hell is Eli White here? Simple, he’s got 93 Speed. Outside of Money Mike and Acuña, there isn’t a heck of a lot of that on Braves cards.

The rotation is also pretty straight forward. Glavine sticks around at the back end of the squad so that it gets double Tier 3 Captain’s Boost with Matt Olson. If it wasn’t for that, All-Star Max Fried would slide in there.

The only real problem with the bullpen is that only Chavez, Kimbrel and Bummer are “in uniform” to get the boost. To go along with that, the Live Series Raisel Iglesias is here instead of the Prime version because he’s the 18th card needed for the Captain’s Boost.

Looking towards the future, I’m hoping for a 99 Chipper Jones (bonus points if it has SS as a secondary), or a 99 Hank Aaron (bonus points if it has 2B as a secondary). The middle-infield really needs help, and without the aforementioned miracle secondaries, I’m not really expecting to get much.

Pitching wise, a 99 Craig Kimbrel, 99 Bruce Sutter, or a 99 Kenley Jansen would be nice.

Making All-Time teams would be a nightmare without the help of ShowZone.gg‘s All-Time Teams search tool. It has options to search for all the players from a specific franchise, state, or country.

ShowZone Connect has been invaluable to my in my pursuit of getting all the player cards in Diamond Dynasty this year. Currently I’m 30 cards away. I’d highly recommend checking it their site and resources, and if you’d like to become a ShowZone Pro, you can use my promo code “TSG” at checkout to save yourself 10%. Cards on the table, I do get a small commission from ShowZone if you do sign up.

As you may know, I’m the Head of Community for Out of the Park Developments. Every year on their Twitch channel I do a random MLB franchise stream that goes for the entire game cycle. This year I selected the Pittsburgh Pirates. The name of that franchise is Burn The Ships, because we’re here to win, and we’re not turning back, so we won’t need the ships anymore.

You can watch the stream over on Twitch.tv/OOTPDevelopments on Tuesday nights at 9pm ET.

Archives of the stream can be found at YouTube.com/OOTPDevelopments.

It’s been a long time coming that this page has needed a refresh, and I figured now is as good a time as any.