Last season, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets traded blow for blow in the NL Championship Series, with the Dodgers ultimately prevailing in six games and going on to beat the Mets’ cross-town rival Yankees in the World Series for their second title in the last three seasons. With Los Angeles atop the NL West and New York setting the pace in the NL East, we could very easily be on for a rematch come October.
The Dodgers had better be thankful that this is just a regular-season series, though, as they’ve lost four of their six games against New York in the early part of the campaign. Tonight will be the seventh and final meeting of the season, and Landon Knack will take the hill against David Peterson.
Let’s break down this matchup with some odds and lines at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Mets at Dodgers prediction, preview
I wouldn’t blame Los Angeles fans for feeling that the start of the season was sluggish, but the Dodgers are still in a position to win 100 games and, as long as their pitching staff gets (and stays) healthy, they should still be unconcerned about their ability to win another championship. With the exception of Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, it feels like Los Angeles has been surprisingly quiet…yet it leads the league in OPS, runs, and homers. Ohtani has taken his torrid pace from last season and somehow improved on it, leading all of the major leagues with 23 homers and 64 runs scored, and he’s posted a career-high 191 OPS+.
Dodgers starter Landon Knack wasn’t even supposed to be in the rotation this season, but injuries to Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Roki Sasaki have scrambled the team’s pitching plans. He was thrust into action after a 2024 season in which he pitched 69.0 innings and posted a 3.65 ERA and a 4.72 FIP figure, and though he’s had a few blow-ups, he’s put together two consecutive solid starts. Across his last two outings — a 3-1 defeat to the Mets at Citi Field two weeks ago in which a leadoff Ohtani homer was the only offense and an 18-2 win over the Yankees at home last Saturday — Knack has pitched 12 innings and given up just two earned runs. He’s started to throw his changeup more frequently, and he’s allowed just a .140 wOBA on the pitch this season. Knack is, at minimum, better than Tony Gonsolin, who was hit hard by New York in last night’s defeat.
Meanwhile, Peterson, a tall southpaw, has followed up his breakout 2024 campaign with another great season, pitching to a 2.69 ERA and a career-low 3.3 walks per nine innings figure. He’s also one of the league’s best at inducing ground balls, a useful trait against a Los Angeles team that has led the league in fly ball rate in each of the last five seasons. If the Dodgers do manage to get it off the ground, they should be able to impart damage, as Peterson ranks in just the 15th percentile in both hard-hit percentage and average exit velocity. It’s worth noting that Peterson hasn’t given up more than two runs in any start this season despite owning a 3.90 expected ERA.
Mets at Dodgers pick, best bet
Best Bet: Los Angeles Dodgers Moneyline (-130)
Maybe this is just a homer pick, but Knack has posted two of his best starts of the season in the last two games and Peterson has gotten unsustainably lucky, especially given that his team ranks as the 12th-worst fielding team in baseball. It’s just a matter of math — Los Angeles is 22-11 at home and has the league’s highest home OPS by nearly 80 points. I can’t see the Dodgers losing three of four on friendly turf.
Strong Lean: Shohei Ohtani 3+ Hits + Runs + RBI’s (+105)
The fact that Ohtani even has a chance of matching or breaking Babe Ruth’s modern runs record, when he scored 177 times in 1921, is a testament to how incredible the Japanese slugger is. If Ohtani plays every game for the remainder of the season, he’s currently on pace to finish with 171 runs, and for context, he led the league with 134 runs scored last season. He’s had at least three hits/runs/RBI’s in 31 out of his 60 games, which alone would make this a mathematically sound bet, and since he hasn’t hit that number in each of the last two games, he’s due.
