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For the second year in a row, it’s the Dodgers and the Braves in the National League Championship Series, which started Saturday, October 16 at Truist Park in Atlanta.
2021 National League Championship Series
| Game | Date | Location | Result/Pitchers | Start time (PT) | TV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Game | Date | Location | Result/Pitchers | Start time (PT) | TV |
| 1 | Sat, Oct 16 | Atlanta | Braves 3, Dodgers 2 | 5:08 p.m. | TBS |
| 2 | Sun, Oct 17 | Atlanta | Braves 5, Dodgers 4 | 4:38 p.m. | TBS |
| 3 | Tue, Oct 19 | Los Angeles | Dodgers 6, Braves 5 | 2:08 p.m. | TBS |
| 4 | Wed, Oct 20 | Los Angeles | Braves 9, Dodgers 2 | 5:08 p.m. | TBS |
| 5 | Thu, Oct 21 | Los Angeles | Dodgers 11, Braves 2 | 5:08 p.m. | TBS |
| 6 | Sat, Oct 23 | Atlanta | Braves 4, Dodgers 2 | 5:08 p.m. | TBS |
Game 1 started Saturday, October 16 at 5:08 p.m. PT, with left-hander Max Fried on the mound for the Braves. Max Scherzer was the plan to start the opener for the Dodgers, but that was before he was used to close out the final inning of the NLDS. He gotpushed back a day instead, with Corey Knebel opening a bullpen game in Game 1.
The Dodgers outlasted the Giants in a five-game NL Division Series between the teams with the two best records in MLB. The 2-1 win on Thursday night in San Francisco sends the Dodgers to their fifth NLCS in the last six years.
Despite winning 106 games during the regular season, 18 more than the Braves, the Dodgers will not have home-field advantage in the NLCS because they are a wild card team. Wild cards can’t have home-field advantage in a Division Series or League Championship Series per MLB rules, but such a restriction does not apply to the World Series.
If the Dodgers advance to the Fall Classic, they would have home-field advantage over either the 95-win Astros or 92-win Red Sox. But they’ll first need to get past the Braves, who beat the Brewers in four games in the NLDS.
These teams are quite familiar with each other, meeting in the postseason for the third time in the last four years. The Dodgers beat the Braves in the NLDS in 2018, then a seven-game NLCS in 2020 that saw the Braves squander a 3-1 series lead.
Joc Pederson, whose 64 postseason games with the Dodgers are second-most in franchise history, hit two pinch-hit home runs in the Division Series for the Braves, who also have former Dodgers Travis d’Arnaud, Jesse Chavez, and Terrance Gore, plus president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos, who was in the Dodgers baseball operations department in 2016-17.
The 2021 NLCS is the fifth postseason meeting between the Dodgers and Braves. In addition to the two recent matchups, the Dodgers beat the Braves in four games in the 2013 NLDS, while Atlanta swept LA in three games in the 1996 NLDS. The two clubs also met in a best-of-three National League tiebreaker in 1959, when the Braves played in Milwaukee. The Dodgers won that tiebreaker two games to none, though those counted as regular season contests.
The Dodgers won four of six games against the Braves during the regular season, dropping two of three in Atlanta from June 4-6 and sweeping a three-game set at home from August 30-September 1.
TBS will televise the NLCS, with Brian Anderson on play-by-play along with analyst Ron Darling, just like in the NL wild card game and the Dodgers-Giants NLDS. But for the NLCS, Jeff Francoeur will join the booth as an analyst. Lauren Shehadi will continue on-field reporting for TBS during the series, just as she did for Dodgers-Cardinals and Dodgers-Giants.
Another change in the TBS coverage of the NLCS is Bob Costas hosting the pregame and postgame while on-site in both Atlanta and Los Angeles.