The Los Angeles Dodgers start their postseason journey with a stop in Washington to take on the NL Eastern Division champions, the Nationals.  Here they hope to put an end to their past postseason failures while also, hoping to put an end to his own postseason failures, their starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw who has a 2-6 post season record.

The Dodgers have made it past the NL divisional series since 1988 that ended with a victory over the Oakland A’s in the World Series.  Their several postseasons since have ended in early failures and some of those failures came while Kershaw had stood on the mound for them.

He has faced this team once this year which ended in a victory for him. Let’s hope for another one tonight.

Tonight’s game will pose a challenge for this team because the last time these two teams met that ended with dire results for the Dodger.  They could only squeak two wins from the six times that these two teams met.  One of those two victories came by way of Kershaw’s arm, so let us hope he can do it again tonight.

Tonight, the Dodgers will be facing Max Scherzer has gone 4-3 in the post season with a 3.73 era.  But the last time these two teams met last year that meeting ended in a loss for Scherzer. Though his loss happened last year and since he has not pitched against the Dodgers this year, no one will ever know if tonight’s meeting will be the same.

The Dodgers will be bringing four starting pitchers into tonight’s game which will obviously include Clayton Kershaw, but also include Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda, and Julio Urias.  Out all of the starting pitchers, I most happy to see Urias on this list. Closer Kenley Jensen and Ross Stripling will be part of the bullpen.  Some of the others on the list: Andre Either, Yasiel Puig, Corey Seager, Yasmani Grandel, and Howie Kendrick.

You can look over the entire roster by going to this link.

As I wrote in the beginning, this game begins the long journey and I hope that this game will be the first of many for the Dodgers during this long journey which hopefully ends with a World Series with a victory.  But as wrote before, in the past they have failed to reach that final victory.  But this year has shown us that even with the struggles that they went through, they still won the division.  So, let their journey begin and my end victorious.