There will always be those who place a mental asterisk on the 2020 season Joey Rickard Jersey and its eventual champion, myself among them. However, the Dodgers journey to this point, and the quality of Tampa Bay Rays, the last team that remains between them and their first championship since 1988, stand as strong testaments to the legitimacy of this years champion, regardle s of who wins this years World Series, which will commence Tuesday night at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.For the Dodgers, simply reaching the World Series for the third time in a four-year span is a significant accomplishment. They are the first team to do so since the 1998-2001 Yankees won four straight pennants. The last time the Dodgers were in three of four World Series was 1963-1966 (they won two). No team has won three pennants in a four year span without winning at least one championship since the deadball era, when the Tigers (1907-09) and New York Giants (1911-1913) both lost three straight World Series. The larger context of their sustained excellence (eight straight division titles and three pennants in four years) alone should lend a 2020 Dodgers championship a greater sense of legitimacy.Then there is the fact that neither of these teams backed into the expanded postseason. Rather, they compiled the best records in their respective leagues, then survived an extra round of playoffs. In the Rays case, they bumped off the two teams that reached last years American League Championship Series, besting a fully operational Yankee team in the Division Series, then surviving a near-epic comeback from the defending AL champion Astros in the ALCS. The Dodgers, even more impre sively, offed the teams with the second (Padres) and third (Braves) best records in the National League, staging an impre sive comeback against the latter after falling behind three games to one in the best-of-seven NLCS.The result is the rare World Series between the teams with the two best regular-season records. The Dodgers went 43-17 (.717) this year, a 116-win pace over a 162-game schedule. The only other team to win 40 games in the shortened 60-game season was the Rays, at 40-20 (.605), a 98-win pace. In terms of run differential, the two next-best totals after the Dodgers +136 were the Padres +84 and the +60 posted by three teams. One of those three was the Braves. One of Melvin Adon Jersey the others was the Rays (the third was the White Sox, who lost to the As in the Wild Card round).This stands in sharp contrast to the bifurcated 1981 season, when teams clinched playoff spots by leading their division over roughly 60-game spans either before or after that years strike, a poorly devised system that left the two best teams in the National League over the full 100-plus-game season (the 66-42 Reds and 59-43 Cardinals) out of the playoffs. There were many similarities between that year and thisthe shortened schedule, the extra-round of playoffs, the Dodgers winning their third Hunter Pence Jersey pennant in recent yearsbut because this years playoffs included all of this years best teams, and the Dodgers have had to beat them all head-to-head, this years championship would be more legitimate, at least in my mind, than the one L.A. won in 1981. The same goes for the Rays, who have their work cut out for them in attempting to defeat what I consider a historically great Dodgers team for the first championship in their franchises 23-year history (their only other World Series appearance was a lo s to the Phillies in 2008).The Rays are unlike any team the Dodgers have faced thus far this year. The Brewers, their Wild Card opponent, were closer in quality to the bottom three teams in the NL West than the legitimate contenders the Dodgers have faced since. The Padres and Braves were both among the top three (with L.A.) in run scoring during the season but had to overcome pitching i sues on their way to the postseason (the Braves, by virtue of those i sues arising earlier in the season, did so more succe sfully).The Rays are a pitching-and-defense-first team. The Dodgers were among the top five teams in the majors in run prevention this year. The Rays are the only other one of those five teams L.A. will have faced this season, making this the toughest test for what was ostensibly the majors best offense this season. The Rays, by contrast, were only slightly above average at run scoring. Ignoring Randy Arozarenas postseason breakout for the moment, they lack any major stars on either side of the ball. Instead, they, not unlike the Dodgers, deploy extraordinary depth on both sides of the ball, with an ever-shifting lineup thick with platoon po sibilities and multi-position flexibility, and a deep, well-balanced bullpen of no-name wizards.The Rays are slippery. Playing them is like fighting a fog monster or a hydra. Second baseman Brandon Lowe (rhymes with now) was their best hitter during the regular season, posting 152 OPS+ and leading the team with 14 home runs. He has been lost at the plate this postseason, hitting .115/.193/.173 (6-for- Pablo Sandoval Jersey 52 with just one extra-base hit), but 25-year-old Cuban defector Randy Arozarena has emerged in his place. Arozarena debuted with the Cardinals last year, seemingly as a speed-and-defense fifth outfielder. The Rays acquired him as an apparent throw-in with outfielder/first baseman Jose Martnez in January and kept him at their alternate training site until August 30. Arozarena didnt become a regular presence in the Tampa Bay lineup until the second week of September, but this postseason he has hit .382/.433/.855 over 60 plate appearances with seven home runs in 14 games, including two-run shot in the first inning of Game 7 against the Astros.The Rays next hottest hitter this postseason has been first baseman Ji-Man Choi, a 29-year-old South Korean with a big frame and a big personality who can do the splits at first base and is on his sixth organization. Choi broke out after being acquired from the Brewers in mid-2018 and is hitting .290/.436/.516 this postseason with a pair of homers, but, more often than not, hell sit against lefties. He started just four games of the ALCS.The Rays veteran leader is 30-year-old Kevin Kiermaier, the longest Sam Selman Jersey tenured Ray, the second-oldest member of their active roster (after righty starter Charlie Morton), and one of the best defensive centerfielders in the game. Kiermaier is capable of series-changing catches in center, but was hit on the hand in Game 3 of the ALCS, sat out the next three games, and failed to make contact at the plate in Game 7.Their sparkplug is 24-year-old third-year shortstop Willy Adames (rhymes with llamas), who was acquired from the Tigers in the David Price trade way back in 2014, when Adames was still a teenager. Hes another big personality, and all-around talent coming off his best season at the plate, but he typically hits in the bottom half of the lineup.As a team, the Rays have hit just .209/.295/.407 t
