The Dodgers won the NL West for a fifth straight season and also registered the best record in all of baseball at 104-58. The opposing Diamondbacks, meantime, finished second in the NL West with a record of 93-69. They advanced to the NLDS with their win over the Rockies in the NL Wild Card Game on Wednesday night. Now let's break down the Diamondbacks-Dodgers best-of-five NLDS from every angle: 

The Diamondbacks won the season series

Since these two teams are division rivals, they played a hefty total of 19 head-to-head games. The D-Backs won 11 of those contests and out-scored the Dodgers by a hefty margin of 99-71 along the way. That's obviously good news for Arizona. 

The Dodgers are going to start a lot of lefties in this series

Here's how the Dodgers' NLDS rotation figures to go ... 

At minimum, the Dodgers will start left-handers three times if the series goes the full five games. Very likely, they'll start four lefties, as Wood seems likely to get the nod in a Game 4 while Maeda is a longshot to crack the NLDS rotation. Hill goes in Game 2 instead of Darvish presumably because the Dodgers want him pitching at home. However things slot, Arizona is going to get a heavy dose of port-siders. Speaking of which ... 

That may not be good news for the Diamondbacks

As for how the Snakes fared against lefties this season, let's turn to a stat called Weighted Runs Created+, or wRC+for short. It's an advanced metric that measures all phases of production at the plate and adjusts them for ballpark and league environments. The higher the wRC+, the better the hitter was (wRC+ is scaled so that a mark of 100 reflects a league-average hitter).

This season, the Diamondbacks tied for sixth in the NL in wRC+ against right-handed pitchers with a mark of 99. Against lefties, though, their wRC+ drops to all the way to 85, which ranks 12 among the 15 NL squadrons. 

Obviously, the July 18 addition of J.D. Martinez, who's one of the most powerful sluggers in baseball and also bats from the right side, improves Arizona's outlook on this front. Since adding him to the lineup, the D-Backs have a wRC+ of 105 against left-handed pitching -- much more respectable, in other words. We're talking about team-wide sample of fewer than 800 plate appearances, and it's of course not possible for one player to move the needle that much. The sensible middle ground is that while the D-Backs are much better off against lefties with Martinez in the heart of the lineup, it's still not their preferred side. 

Game 2 is going to be huge for Arizona

The Arizona NLDS rotation, at this writing, isn't yet settled. Manager Torey Lovullo will go with Patrick Corbin, Zack Godley, or Taijuan Walker for the opener, but Game 2 isn't decided yet. Given that a fully rested Kershaw is going against less than Arizona's best in Game 1, it's somewhat likely that the D-Backs will be in an 0-1 hole. Ideally, they'll be able to turn to Robbie Ray, who threw 34 pitches in relief in the Wild Card Game. Ace Zack Greinke had a relatively brief outing, but his 58 pitches would likely rule him out until Game 3. The D-Backs need to hope that Ray responds well to the limited Wild Card Game workload and the ensuing two days of rest and is thus able to start Game 2. That's because ... 

Ray has owned the Dodgers

This season, Ray has made five starts against L.A., and over that span he's pitched to a 2.27 ERA with a 4.42 K/BB ratio. Fold in his starts against the Dodgers from previous seasons -- when he wasn't as outstanding as he has been in 2017 -- and overall Ray has a career 2.69 ERA in 13 starts against his NLDS rivals.

Hitters presently on the Dodger roster have combined to bat .198/.288/.338 against Ray throughout their careers, so that's another point in Ray's favor. Chris Taylor stands out, as he's pretty much owned Ray, albeit in just 16 plate appearances. It'll be interesting to see whether Dave Roberts bets on the small sample and wedges Taylor into the lineup against Ray. 

Of course, anytime we're talking about a pitcher's numbers against individual hitters, it's worth bearing in mind those tiny sample sizes. Draw firm conclusions at your own baseball peril. 

The Arizona offense struggles outside of Chase Field

Chase Field in Phoenix, while not on the level of Coors Field, is still an extreme offensive environment. That's reflected in the fact that the D-Backs this season have batted .274/.350/.492 at home, but that slash line plummets to .235/.309/.398. Meanwhile, the pitching staff, which is one of the best in baseball thanks mostly to the rotation, sees much more balanced splits. In part because of the offense's struggles away from home, the Diamondbacks were only one game above .500 in road games this season. The Dodgers' having home-field advantage in this one could prove vital. 

The Diamondbacks don't have bullpen depth

When it comes to lockdown relievers, the D-Backs can pretty well counter Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen with Archie Bradley. After that, though, it's a mismatch. Arizona closer Fernando Rodney inspires little confidence, and as noted above there's just no depth. Considering how many capable late-inning pinch-hitters the Dodgers can muster, this Arizona shortcoming may be quite exploitable. The onus will be on the Arizona starters to go deep, which runs counter to recent postseason strategy around baseball.