Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series Preview

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(Photo by Michael Owens/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

This is all Shohei Ohtani ever wanted.

When the superstar two-way player crawled out of baseball’s gilded cellar in Anaheim after six straight losing seasons to sign a decade-long deal with the Dodgers last December, he did so because he wanted to go a team that would give him a chance to win a World Series ring every year.

This is all MLB and Fox wanted, too.

A Subway World Series between the Mets and Yankees would have also doubled the ratings from last year’s snoozy Fall Classic between the Rangers and Diamondbacks, but Ohtani’s presence this year means we will see ratings that rival numbers from the Before Times when everyone still paid for cable TV.

The ratings in Japan may be so high that the country might automatically qualify as the 51st state of our union. (Not that they’d want it!)

Anyway, the 2024 World Series starts in a few hours, and this is the Good Stuff for those of us who want to see the two best baseball teams in the world play for the championship every year—whichever those teams might be.

On the home side we have Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Clayton Kershaw (injured). On the visiting side we have Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gerrit Cole. I spy perhaps eight Hall of Famers on that list, and there’s no telling what young guys like Anthony Volpe and Yoshinobu Yamamoto might do if they reach their potential and stay healthy for the next decade.

I know that some people are Very Mad Online that two teams that spend a lot of money on talented baseball players have found themselves playing each other for a world championship. Some are even alleging that Fox or commissioner Rob Manfred cheated to fix this outcome.

It’s always been bizarre to me that fans direct their anger re: MLB payroll disparity at the billionaire owners who are willing to spend money instead of the billionaire owners who are not. I guess no one wants to talk about how the family that owns the Cleveland Guardians is richer than the family that owns the Yankees, because simply hating the Yankees for paying players what they’re worth is more fun.

So yes, I agree that we need to do something about the Yankees and Dodgers playing each other in the World Series every 43 years.

It’s killing the sport.

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Some housekeeping:

I recorded a World Series preview podcast with

Joe Posnanski

this morning and you can listen to it here:

We will chat during every single World Series game in the Substack app. The Game 1 chat tonight will be open to all free and paid subscribers. All other chats will be open just to the paid list. We will also have our Lab zoom tomorrow talking about the Series from 12 PM PT to 1 PM PT for paying subscribers.

Please share with your friends if you think they want to come hang with us!

Some thoughts on this World Series…

• Fernando Valenzuela’s death has hit me hard. I wasn’t alive for the summer of Fernandomania, but I would have been one of those maniacs had I been. I did, however, get to share a press box with him for many years, and I got to know him as a friendly, quiet, and quirky presence who was thoroughly unimpressed with himself even though if he had run for mayor of Los Angeles he would have cleared 85% of the vote.

  Valenzuela battled an illness privately this season, and quietly stepped away from his job as one of the team’s Spanish language broadcasters during the final weeks of September when it became too much. When the Dodgers announced his death earlier this week it felt like the whole city got punched in the throat. And I cannot believe he passed away just days before LA was set to play the Yankees in the World Series for the first time since 1981, the year of Fernandomania.

  

  A photo of Vin Scully and Fernando Valenzuela taken seven years ago today before Game 2 of the 2017 World Series (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea - Pool/Getty Images).

  There is some symmetry and poetry in the way Valenzuela’s death has unfolded. MLB.com released its predictions for this World Series, and the most popular series outcome choice from the 50 experts polled was “Dodgers in 6.”

  Would you believe me if I told you that Game 6 will take place on Valenzuela’s birthday?

  It’s mind-boggling to me that the Dodgers have lost Tommy Lasorda, Vin Scully, and Valenzuela in a three-year span. That’s three people on the organization’s Mt. Rushmore. (We are going with a six-man Rushmore here with Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, and Clayton Kershaw because this is my newsletter and I make the rules).

  The Dodger employees I’ve texted with over the last few days have been shattered by the loss of a man who was not only a legend on the field forty years ago but also a colleague who they worked with every day for the last two decades. I’m amazed they’ve been able to prep for this World Series through all their tears, but the show, as always, must go on.

  

  Yankee ace Gerrit Cole during the ALCS (Photo by Dustin Satloff/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

• I’ve also been struck but just how many Yankees are from California, and specifically have LA ties. Gerrit Cole grew up in Orange County and went to UCLA. Giancarlo Stanton grew up in the valley and went to high school in Sherman Oaks. Aaron Boone went to USC. Aaron Judge is from Fresno—which LA doesn’t claim, but I’m guessing he’ll still have a lot of friends and family in attendance because it’s only a three-hour drive from Dodger Stadium.

  Why do I bring this up? Because I think the Bombers will be quite comfy playing in a stadium many of their best players grew up going to, which will make baseball’s already weak home field advantage even less meaningful. I watched Giancarlo Stanton hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium. I witnessed Juan Soto hit a game-tying homer here off Clayton Kershaw in the 8th inning of Game 5 of the NLDS.

  Like Fernando Tatis Jr., these two dragon slayers love hitting at the Ravine. If I’m a Dodger fan, the positive associations that Stanton and Soto have with Dodger Stadium don’t thrill me! Neither does the fact that the stadium’s right field fence wrecked Aaron Judge’s toe last season, and he might be looking for revenge by hitting several baseballs over it. Judge has been exposed a bit in October because he chases pitches and strikes out. The pressure is on the Yankees, and on him specifically, to be great this week— and that’s a heavy burden. But Judge also just put together one of the greatest offensive seasons for a right-handed hitter that we’ve ever seen. Would it surprise anyone if he hit five homers this series? Absolutely not.

• The Yankees have not played a team nearly as good as the Dodgers yet this postseason, while the Dodgers had to run the gauntlet against the Padres (MLB’s most playoff complete team, IMO) and the Mets (the team with the most pixie dust). This *should* favor the Dodgers in the World Series, but who knows. If Jack Flaherty’s velocity is down again today and Soto-Judge-Stanton punish him with homers in the first inning, it could be a long series for the boys in blue. Their bullpen is mighty but they cannot take over in the second inning of Game 1.

Freddie Freeman in pain during the NLCS. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images).

• The Dodgers Big Three is also getting attention, and I expect both Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts to go off. (The jury is still out on whether Freddie Freeman’s ankle will be strong enough to allow him to hit anything more than cheap singles). However, playoff God Kiké Hernandez owns absolutely incredible numbers against this current Yankee staff, who he saw fairly often as a member of the Boston Red Sox. In 68 at-bats he has 5 homers, 5 doubles, 8 walks and 12 strikeouts and is slashing .279/.355/.574 (.929 OPS) against the guys who will be tasked with getting him out.

  His numbers against the Yankees top two starting pitchers are even crazier: he is 8-for-21 against Gerrit Cole with three doubles, a homer, four walks and three strikeouts (1.147 OPS). Against Carlos Rodón he is 3-for-6 with three homers and a 2.571 OPS. If the Dodgers do win this series, would it surprise anyone if Hernandez is named World Series MVP? If he goes off this week to help them win another title, they may have to build him a statue outside the center field plaza. And no, I’m not kidding.

• Even though the Yankees haven’t been tested by a lineup this good yet this postseason, I’m not ready to hand the trophy to the Dodgers just yet. Cole is the best starting pitcher on either roster at the moment, and he’s absolutely capable of tossing two gems and winning World Series MVP himself. And frankly, if he’s able to pitch deep into games and dominant these Dodger hitters—who do not chase—twice, the selection should be unanimous.

• The Yankees’ bullpen is much better than the Mets, but I still think the Dodgers relievers are better. As long as Joe Kelly isn’t added to the roster today, I don’t foresee any four-run meltdowns in close games.

• This series is going longer than four games unless the Yankees sweep. We already know that the Dodgers are going to chuck at least one of these games into the pits of baseball hell by using their C-list relievers to protect their A List bullpen dogs, like they did in Games 2 and 5 of the NLCS vs. the Mets. I do have to hand it to Dave Roberts though, because blowing Game 5 of the NLCS on purpose meant that the World Series started three days later, which wound up giving his badly banged up team and tiring relievers a full week of rest. As Roberts said earlier this week, his managing has “evolved” from back in 2017 when he used reliever Brandon Morrow in all seven games of the World Series (which did not end well).

  The extra days of rest could be just what Freddie Freeman’s ankle and Alex Vesia’s intercostal muscle needed to heal. Both of those guys being ready to go would obviously make an enormous difference for LA. Vesia, in particular, is the main guy who will be charged with getting Juan Soto out. I hope he’s good to take the ball, because I’m not going to volunteer for that job.

• I’ll be attending the Dodger home games during the World Series with my niece, who just turned six. She screamed when I told her she was going, and when she woke up this morning she said “I dreamed about Ohtani, Teoscar, and all the guys!”

  She has also informed me she would like to eat a Dodger dog and ice cream from a helmet and cheer her hardest. At one point she suggested breaking open her piggy bank to buy a front row ticket. I told her, baby, we will be in the last row with the biggest fans, and you’ll be able to cheer as loud as you want for as long as you want. I can’t very well buy her a Teoscar shirt because who knows if this will be his last week on the Dodgers. So, it’s looking like she’ll be the one at tonight’s game in the Ohtani jersey.

  I have been fortunate enough to attend three World Series now. But because I get to share this one Emmie and watch it through her eyes, this one will matter the most. She’s about the same age as I was when the Dodgers won in ‘88, and my God, I wish I could have witnessed those games live.

  It seems that like the rest of us, Emmie has inherited baseball fever. I just hope she experiences the joy side of this coin flip of a series instead of it landing on heartbreak.