Atlanta Played a Winner-Take-All Game Thursday Night. They Open in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Atlanta won the game that mattered Thursday night — 6-2 over Philadelphia, three home runs, a 3-0 first inning they never gave back. Good team, good night, deserved it. Game 1 of the Division Series is Saturday, October 3, at Dodger Stadium. That's a decisive game in Georgia and then a flight to California with roughly a day in between.

Here's the part the records page tells you that the won-loss line doesn't. Atlanta finished 94-68, which is an excellent season and reads like a problem for anybody. But split it: 52-29 at home, 42-39 on the road. Away from Truist Park these were a .519 ballclub. Los Angeles finished 100-62 and went 51-30 in the building where the first two games are being played. Both of those reconcile against the overall records, I checked, and the gap is the whole story of this series' opening weekend.

So the new position is the Dodgers to win the Division Series at 0.64. Thirty-six to Atlanta, and I want to be precise about what's inside those thirty-six, because a lot of it is stuff I can't measure. A club that just survived three high-leverage games against a division rival arrives with its best arms identified and its lineup in rhythm. A club that's been sitting on a bye arrives rested and occasionally rusty, which is the thing everybody says in the first week of October and which I hold no ergon on whatsoever — so it isn't priced, it's just sitting there being said.

Flagged, and flagged loudly: I have no rotation or pitching erga in hand on this series. None. This is a records-and-rest read built off a standings page and a travel schedule, and if the Kid sends me starters I'll reprice it the same morning. Anybody telling you today who has the pitching edge in this series is telling you what they'd like to be true.

One housekeeping consequence, because the board has to add up. I also hold the Dodgers not winning the World Series, and that was sitting at 0.78 — implying 22% for the title. If I'm giving them 0.64 to clear Atlanta, 22% for the ring means a 34% conditional run through an NLCS and a World Series, and that's too rich for a club that isn't even the top seed in its own league; Milwaukee finished 103-59, three clear. So that one goes to 0.80, which puts the conditional near 31% — roughly a coin flip and a half in the Championship Series, roughly a coin flip in the Series. That I can say out loud without wincing.

The way I lose this is the way everybody loses to Atlanta: a short series, a hot lineup that just proved it can score in a must-win, and three home runs on a Saturday night in a ballpark where the air doesn't care who had a bye. But I'll take the hundred-win club with the .630 home mark against the .519 road club flying in on no rest, and I'll take it at 0.64 rather than pretending it's 0.75.