The Dodgers lead the Mets three games to one in the National League Championship Series after winning the first two games at Citi Field in New York. Los Angeles has a maximum of three chances to win the one game needed to win the pennant and advance to a fourth World Series in eight years.

Being three games ahead of one in a best-of-7 series is the second-biggest advantage a team can have: an enviable position of power for the leading team, no matter how much the stomach-churning grind of October baseball makes you feel otherwise. .

League Championship Series have been around since 1969, but the first sixteen seasons of that new extra round, necessitated by divisional play, were a best-of-5 affair. In 1985, this round switched to best-of-7, which matched the World Series in length. Teams that take this series from three games to one will have a huge upper hand.

Teams that lead the LCS three games to one have won 37 of 45 series (82.2 percent).

Including the World Series, MLB teams that lead three games to one in a best-of-7 series have won 79 of 93 series (84.9 percent).

Six other teams trailed 3-1 in the series but lost Game 7. In other words, the team three games to one closed the series within six games 78.5 percent of the time.

The Dodgers were the last MLB team to buck this trend, overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the 2020 NLCS and winning the final three games in a row against the Braves to reach the World Series. If they can beat the Mets one more time in this series, it will be the Dodgers’ first trip to the Fall Classic since then.

In the best-of-7 era (since 1985), the Dodgers have led an NLCS just three games to one. That was against the Cubs in 2017, when LA won the first three games of that series, lost Game 4 at Wrigley Field and then romped in Game 5 thanks to Kiké Hernández hitting three home runs.

He is still by the way, it blooms in October.

In the World Series, the Dodgers led three games to one twice. In 1959, only their second year in Los Angeles, the Dodgers had a chance to close out the White Sox at home in the Los Angeles Coliseum, but lost 1-0. A 23-year-old Sandy Koufax was responsible for the heavy defeat. Two days later, the Dodgers wrapped things up at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in Game 6.

In 1988, the Dodgers got home runs from Mickey Hatcher and Mike Davis in support of Orel Hershiser, who completed one of the best two-month runs of any pitcher to close out the A’s in Game 5.

The 2024 Dodgers need to win one more game to win the pennant. Their first chance to do so comes Friday afternoon in Game 5 against the Mets.

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