The largest markets. The hugest stars. A renewal of the most frequently competed World Series.
Broadway vs. Hollywood. Aaron Judge vs. Shohei Ohtani. Yankees vs. Dodgers.
This is just about as Classic as the Fall gets, particularly once you throw in Gerrit Cole, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
These two teams will have played against each other in 10 percent of the 120 World Series. Of the 12, this will be the fifth since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the first overall since 1981. This represents the first matchup of top seeds in each league in a 162-game season since 2013 (Cardinals-Red Sox).
The Yankees are going for their record 28th championship, but first since 2009. The Dodgers are in the World Series for the fourth time in eight years and won in the COVID, 60-game 2020 campaign. They last won in a 162-game season in 1988.
So there are a lot of legacies for players, executives and franchises on the line in a best-of-seven that will stretch from Chavez Ravine to The Bronx in two of the most famous stadiums in the world. Let’s hope the production lives up to the preview. There are some mirror-image qualities to these teams. Let’s take a deeper scouting dive:
The stars
We will make an easy assumption that Judge and Ohtani will be their league MVPs. The last time a World Series had both was 2012, with Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera and San Francisco’s Buster Posey. The last time each league’s homer champ was in the World Series was 1956 (Dodgers’ Duke Snider/Yankees Mickey Mantle). But there has never been a World Series with two 50-homer hitters.
A lot in this series will come down to how often the lineups turn over and, thus, how often Ohtani/Betts/Freeman bat for the Dodgers and Soto/Judge/Stanton for the Yankees. Stanton, coming off the ALCS MVP, is coming home to Southern California and Dodger Stadium, where he has 10 homers and 26 RBIs in 25 games and won the 2022 All-Star Game MVP.
The literal leading men for both teams have excelled this postseason.
The Dodgers have played 11 postseason games and scored in the first two innings in 10 with a total of 18 runs. The top two in the lineup, Ohtani and Betts, have slugged a combined .793 in those frames (via MLB Network research).
The Yankee top two, Gleyber Torres and Soto, have reached in 15 of 18 first-inning plate appearances, but the Yankees have just four runs — a two-run homer by Soto, an RBI single by Soto and a dropped Judge pop-up by Guardians shortstop Brayan Rocchio. The other Yankees are a combined 0-for-23 in the first inning. Judge is 0-for-8.
It underscores a huge difference between the biggest stars this postseason.
Ohtani is 6-for-9 with runners in scoring position this postseason and the Dodgers were 33-for-106 (.311) in such situations with 14 extra-base hits, including eight homers. The Yankees are 13-for-72 with four extra-base hits and three homers, all by Soto and Stanton, who were a combined 7-for-12 with runners in scoring position. Judge was 0-for-7 and is 1-for-his-last-24 in the postseason dating to 2019 with runners in scoring position.
So Judge must rise and the Yankees have to unplug Ohtani. A pitching coach offered this theory how: “If you have a slow sweeper or a slow curveball or really anything slow because you have to go slow-fast with [Ohtani]. If you are just hard cutter, hard sinker, hard slider and stay in the 85-95 [mph] window, good luck, it just doesn’t work. But if you can throw something in the 70s with break, even if it is a ball, that messes up his timing and maybe you get some balls on the ground.”
Co-stars
Ohtani is not the only Dodger thriving with runners in scoring position. Judge is not the only Yankee struggling.
Ohtani, Betts, NLCS MVP Tommy Edman and Enrique Hernandez were a combined 19-for-40 with runners in scoring position through two playoff rounds while Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Austin Wells (who both got cleanup reps) were a combined 1-for-19.
During the regular season, the Dodgers had seven players (tied for the MLB high) with at least 250 plate appearances and a 110 OPS-plus or better — Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Max Muncy, Smith, Teoscar Hernandez and Miguel Rojas. The Yankees had three — Judge, Soto and Stanton. In the ALCS, Judge, Soto and Stanton teamed for nine homers, 19 RBIs and a 1.222 OPS while every other Yankee had one homer, six RBIs and a .656 OPS.
“I think the Dodgers are tougher to play against because it’s just such a grind facing their offense,” Executive 1 said. “It’s really, really hard to keep that offense down over the course of that long of a series. And I don’t think the Yankees, while they have a really [expletive] good offense, but not as good as that.”
One way the Dodgers made themselves better is by getting deeper from the right-hand side. Obviously, teams want to have as many lefties as possible to go after Ohtani, Freeman and Muncy. Only Judge at 1.159 had a better OPS against righties in the regular season than Ohtani’s 1.036. It was .867 vs. lefties. Freeman and Muncy were mid-.800 OPS vs. righties and mid-.700 OPS vs. lefties, and 3-for-20 combined through two playoff rounds.
It is why, for example, the Mets took Adam Ottavino off their NLCS roster for Danny Young. The Yankees are putting Nestor Cortes on the World Series roster to join lefties Tim Hill and Tim Mayza in the pen.
But the Dodgers improved against lefties. The Yankees wanted Teoscar Hernandez to be their versatile righty-hitting piece, but he preferred to return to the Dodgers and the Yanks traded for Jon Berti. Hernandez is Robert Horry in the playoffs — a complementary player who becomes a star: 15 homers and an .889 OPS in 239 plate appearances. Edman was another player the Yankees coveted, but the Dodgers worked themselves into a three-way deal to land him from the Cardinals at the trade deadline.
Edman is 9-for-14 against lefties this postseason with three doubles and a homer. It makes the Game 2 start by Carlos Rodon trickier. Because beyond Edman’s surge, Hernandez is 3-for-6 lifetime against Rodon with all three hits being homers and Chris Taylor is 5-for-9 off Rodon with two doubles and a homer. But if form holds, there is also this: Betts is just 1-for-19 lifetime against Rodon and, so far, 3-for-16 in the postseason against lefties.
Among Yankees costars, Torres and the Anthonys — Rizzo and Volpe — are a combined 26-for-80 (.325) with 17 walks against 14 strikeouts. But to get batting average and on-base results, they have used the whole field at the sacrifice of power — five extra-base hits, including just one homer. Volpe has been the hitter in October he should always be with patience and gap-to-gap results. He has reached base safely in all nine postseason games, has a better on-base percentage (.459) than Soto (.439) these playoffs and has seen 4.70 pitches per plate appearance, which is the eighth most since tracking began in 1988 with a minimum of 35 plate appearances (via MLB Network research).
The walks
There is a lot of late-1990s Yankees in the ability of both lineups to wear down pitching and get into bullpens quickly. The Yanks are walking in 13.9 percent of their plate appearances this postseason, the Dodgers 12.6, every other team 8.6. The Dodgers drew a postseason series record 42 walks (11 by Muncy) against the Mets — 17 scored.
“Now you’re facing the varsity,” Scout 1 said. “Watching the Guardians and the Royals, they expand the zone from top to bottom. You’re not going to get that here. And from Mookie Betts to Will Smith to Max Muncy, these guys don’t strike out. They don’t chase and I think that is the adjustment that the Yankee pitching staff will probably have to make the most to win in the zone. Because Tommy Kahnle throwing 18 straight changeups out of the zone, that’s not working here.”
The scout added: “You saw what happened with Jose Quintana who wins by getting you to chase out of the zone. That doesn’t work against the Dodgers.” Quintana allowed nine of 19 Dodgers to reach and they scored five runs in 3 ¹/₃ innings in NLCS Game 4.
Executive 2: “For the most part, they do not chase offensively. They control the strike zone really well. You are not going to beat them giving free passes, especially at the bottom of the lineup. That turns their lineup over and that is a recipe for disaster.”
Both lineups have the same philosophy. They were 1-2 in the majors in lowest chase rate and highest walk totals. They will take walks to try to do multi-run damage with one swing, keep churning through the lineup to get back to the star-studded top and eventually force you into the zone (often in favorable counts) to go for the damage.
“You can’t nibble against them,” Executive 2 said. “You have to try to win in the strike zone. I think Gerrit Cole has to set the example from the beginning and be on the attack. You have to make them beat you hitting the ball. If you walk them and get into bad counts, forget it.”
The pitching coach: “You can’t just throw it over the plate, you have to throw it over the plate with stuff. And what I think is fascinating is the Dodgers are a terrific sinkerball hitting team and the Yankees throw a lot of sinkers. So do they change for this series and throw more breaking balls or stick with a strength?”
In this series, the Yanks may have an advantage of having four starters while the Dodgers have only three, and with real questions as to how much length those starters can provide while already knowing they will throw at least one bullpen game. Over the last three years, in 476 plate appearances when a hitter sees a reliever for at least the third time in a series, the slash line is .274/.340/.488 with 21 homers, including Soto’s 10th-inning shot off Hunter Gaddis to enable the Yanks to win the pennant Saturday in Game 5 in Cleveland. So even if the surging closer Blake Treinen with his stellar sweeper/sinker combo gets into the game often and superb lefty reliever Alex Vesia makes it back from an intercostal injury, the Yanks will probably feel if they see it all enough, there will be some demystification.
So, as well as both bullpens have done, getting them into the game early and often will matter.
“If the Dodgers lineup faced the Dodgers bullpen, those bullpen games would not work,” Scout 1 said. “They would grind the hell out of that pen. The Yankees have to do that.”
Scout 2: “Get the [Dodger] relievers into the game early when the starters are starting, so when they go to the bullpen game, those guys are fried.”
The pitching coach: “If a Yankee starter goes five innings every time out, they will win this series. But that’s not easy because that lineup wears you out and then it gets a lead and when you fall behind against them, you start chasing it by getting your bullpen into the game to try to slow it down.”
The style
Both teams rely on homers and the short porch at Yankee Stadium, but two members of our panel noted how the ball flies from gap-to-gap at Dodger Stadium in late-afternoon starts (which will be all games in Los Angeles) before the marine layer sets in at night.
So if the long balls are equal, the Dodgers have an edge with a cleaner style. The Yankees were by far the worst baserunning team in the majors this year and had three players picked off versus Cleveland, plus Torres thrown out at the plate. But Cleveland was inferior, the Yankees hit homers as camouflage and Executive 2 said, “They got away with it against the Guardians. I don’t think they get away with it [against the Dodgers].”
The Dodgers were the second-best baserunning team by FanGraphs’ metric. They are 11-for-12 stealing bases this postseason. The Dodgers were judicious running against the Mets. Perhaps because they were doing so much damage at the plate, they wondered why risk anything on the bases? But opponents in the regular and postseason are a combined 38-for-44 against Cole/Rodon when trying to steal.
After 59 regular-season steals and just four nabbed, Ohtani has tried just one steal this postseason, and was caught. But you have to watch him, including that he stole third nine times.
“You can’t get lazy against their running game or else a Teoscar Hernandez or Will Smith will sneak a steal in,” Executive 2 said.
There was consensus that the Dodgers are a buttoned-up team and will have scouted the Yankees well, moving Scout 2 to say, “If Jazz is not in the right place on a cutoff or Gleyber gets careless in the field or they miss cutoff men, the Dodgers will keep taking an extra 90 feet.”
Conversely, when the Dodgers are in the field, Executive 2 said: “I don’t think any team positions its fielders better than the Dodgers, especially in the outfield.” Los Angeles was second in the majors in defensive efficiency — basically the percentage of balls hit turned into outs.
The outfield trio of Betts, Andy Pages and Hernandez all have strong arms, but Hernandez’s lateral quickness is not great and if he is moving, Scout 1 said, “Balls tend to get by him and to the wall or you can run on him if he is moving side to side.”
