The Los Angeles Dodgers arrive in Queens on Friday night with the best record in baseball. The New York Mets, who were supposed to be their rival for it, will meet them 22 games under .500.
Los Angeles is 65-38. New York is 43-60, fifth in the National League East. First pitch at Citi Field is 7:10 p.m. ET, opening three games that run through Sunday.
The gap is the story
There is no way to preview this series as a matchup. It is a study in how differently two expensive rosters can go.
The Dodgers have held the top of the league essentially wire to wire, currently a half-game clear of Milwaukee for the best record in the majors. The Mets have had the kind of season that gets people fired — a fifth-place club in a division they were favored to contend in, arriving at the deadline with decisions to make about players they signed to win now.
Neither club has announced a deadline direction. A team 22 games under .500 in the last week of July is conventionally a seller, and the Mets' roster is full of the kind of veterans contenders call about.
The pitching matchup
Roki Sasaki starts for Los Angeles at 3-5. Sean Manaea goes for New York at 2-5.
Neither record flatters its owner, and in Sasaki's case it obscures more than it reveals — a 3-5 line for a pitcher on a 65-38 team says more about how his starts have gone than how he has thrown. He remains the more interesting arm on the mound tonight, and a road start at Citi Field against a lineup with nothing to lose is a reasonable test of where he is.
Manaea, a left-hander facing a Dodgers order built to punish left-handed pitching, has the harder assignment on paper.
What the Mets are playing for
Not much, in the standings. That is precisely what can make a series like this awkward for the visitor.
A team out of the race in late July has no pressure and a manager willing to try things, and the Dodgers have every incentive to avoid injuries and preserve arms for October. Three games at Citi Field against a club playing loose is the kind of series that produces one embarrassing night for the better team.
For New York, the value is evaluation. The last two months of a lost season are when a front office learns which young players can hold up against the best team in the league — and there is no better measuring stick available than the one arriving tonight.
