Giants at Dodgers

Friday night at Dodger Stadium, Apple TV, and the oldest rivalry in the sport gets a strange edition — a 93-win club with its banner already hung against a Giants team whose only stakes left are next year's evaluations. Look past the records, though, because the card the Dodgers actually posted tonight isn't the one this price was built on. Two things carry this ticket. First, Glasnow is walking into his three worst contexts stacked on top of each other. He's 22 innings into a return from a four-month layoff, he's allowed four earned runs in each of his last two starts, and he's carrying a 5.09 ERA across his last five. His home ERA is 4.56 over 23.2 innings against 2.84 on the road, and his night ERA is 4.20 over 30 innings against 2.84 in daylight. Tonight is home, at night. Second, the Giants have been living in tight games — nine of their last ten were decided by two runs or fewer, six of them by exactly one — and they arrive rested off a Thursday off day while the Dodgers finished a day game in Cincinnati yesterday and flew across the country. The rest is support. Los Angeles has Muncy on the bench tonight after he went 2-for-4 with two RBI in the finale, and their three lefty bats draw a left-hander. Their pen used Treinen, Wrobleski and Halvorsen yesterday, Tanner Scott carries a 7.71 September ERA, and Díaz was activated today with Roberts stating outright he's low-leverage only. San Francisco, meanwhile, has Wilkinson (four days down, three scoreless last time out) and Marte (five days down, five innings last time out) for real length behind a short rookie start, plus Trent Harris at a 0.61 ERA across his last 14.2 relief innings. The case against me is Perdomo, and it's a good one — three MLB starts, a fastball he throws 46.5% of the time that's been hit for a .444 average, and a 4.36 xERA underneath a 3.68 ERA that tells you the market is right to treat his results as fragile. Glasnow's 3.11 xERA says the opposite about him. I'm not betting on regression. I'm betting that a rested dog who plays every game by a run, against a diluted lineup and a starter in his softest spot, is worth more than 45%.