On Oct. 19, 2017, the 104-win Dodgers routed the Cubs 11-1 at Wrigley Field to win the NLCS in five games. The Dodgers’ offense chased Jose Quintana before he could get an out in the third inning, and Clayton Kershaw allowed just one run over six innings to send the Dodgers to the World Series for the first time in 29 years. That night, the Yankees were in Houston waiting to play Game 6 of the ALCS the next night.
A day earlier, Masahiro Tanaka had thrown seven shutout innings at Yankee Stadium and Tommy Kahnle pitched a scoreless eighth and ninth to blank the Astros 5-0 and give the Yankees a 3-2 series lead in the ALCS. With two chances to win one game in Houston, the Yankees went to sleep knowing if they did, they would set up a New York-Los Angeles World Series.
It didn’t happen. The Yankees scored one run over 18 innings between Games 6 and 7 and were eliminated. The Astros won the pennant and went on to win the World Series in seven games.
The 91-win, wild-card surprise Yankees weren’t necessarily supposed to play in that 2017 World Series. The 104-win Dodgers were. The Dodgers had made the playoffs in five straight seasons and had suffered heartbreak each time, losing two division series, two championship series and now a World Series. The Yankees had made the playoffs twice in five years, as a wild-card team both times.
The following year, the Yankees went down in the ALDS to the Red Sox, losing both Games 3 and 4 at home. In Game 3, their starting pitcher didn’t know the start time for the game as they suffered the worst home postseason loss in franchise history, and in Game 4, their manager showed his ineptitude, foreshadowing what was to come during his tenure. The Dodgers also went down that year to the Red Sox as Dave Roberts thought Kike Hernandez should be his 3-hitter and Ryan Madson should be his go-to, highest-leverage reliever.
In 2019, the Dodgers blew a 2-1 lead in the NLDS to Juan Soto and the Nationals, and not too long after, the Yankees went out in the ALCS to the Astros.
In the shortened season of 2020, the Yankees were eliminated in five games by the Rays, while the Dodgers finally reached the World Series, beating those same Rays in five games. The only issue was the Dodgers’ 60-game schedule was made up of games solely against the weak NL West and AL West without fans in stands and their World Series victory came at a neutral site in Texas. Playing only against the worst competition for two months and then playing the postseason in a controlled environment removed every obstacle that had befuddled the Dodgers during their era of disappointment. When things went back to normal the following October in 2021, they bowed out to the Braves in the NLCS. They were knocked out by the rival Padres in the NLDS in 2022 and were swept by the Diamondbacks in the NLDS 2023.
In 2021, the Yankees were the odds-on favorite to win the World Series. They met those odds by finishing fifth in the AL and third in their own division with their postseason lasting a single game. A year later they were trounced by the Astros in a four-game sweep in the ALCS, and in 2023, they posted the franchise’s worst record in 30 years, missing the postseason completely despite 40 percent of the league getting in.
Now after disappointing eras for both franchises in terms of championships, despite all of their regular-season wins, accolades and individual awards, the two teams are finally meeting in the World Series. The series we nearly got in 2017 has finally come to fruition.
It’s been a long time coming for both teams and for my household. My wife is from Los Angeles and since we met more than 12 years ago, my spring and summer nights have consisted of watching the Yankees at 7 p.m. and then watching the Dodgers at 10 p.m. Coming from a Dodgers season-ticket family, my wife’s love for the Dodgers is equal to mine for the Yankees. For many, this series is New York vs. Los Angeles, the East Coast against the West Coast, the city vs. the beach, Aaron Judge vs. Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Boone against Dave Roberts.
For me, it’s my wife and her family vs. me, and my family and me against her. I have always thought a Red Sox-Mets World Series during my adulthood would be my worst nightmare because one team would have to win, but the thought of losing to the Dodgers, personally, has displaced it. The idea of the Yankees finally reaching the World Series for the first time in 15 years only to lose is depressing enough. Add in if they lose, I will hear about it daily for eternity, and it’s a daunting thought. Fortunately, I don’t think they will.
Yes, anything can happen (that’s baseball, Suzyn), but the way these teams match up favors the Yankees, even if the oddsmakers don’t agree. The Dodgers are the slight favorite in the series because they hold the extra home game, but for as good as the Dodgers were at home (52-29), the Yankees were nearly as impressive on the road (50-31). The Yankees were better on the road than they were at home in the regular season, and this postseason they are 3-1 at home and 4-1 on the road.
The Dodgers don’t have a traditional rotation. In Games 1 and 2, they are scheduled to start Jack Flaherty (28 baserunners, 12 earned runs and only eight strikeouts in 15 1/3 innings this postseason) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (has thrown more than 75 pitches in a game once since June 7). They would be thrilled if that duo can pitch 10 of 18 innings in those games. The only problem is one of the other Dodgers’ four starters in the series is their bullpen. When your best-case scenario plan is to get at least 12 outs from your bullpen each game a traditional starter starts and then needing the bullpen to get all 27 outs in “bullpen game” starts, it’s an unsustainable formula. (Ask Stephen Vogt.)
The Guardians just tried to beat the Yankees with a similar strategy. That strategy got the Guardians one win in five games, and that one miraculous win was the equivalent of the roulette wheel landing on green on back-to-back spins for Cleveland. The Guardians’ rotation pitched only 17 of the 45 innings in the ALCS. The more the Yankees saw the best bullpen in the majors, the more comfortable they got. When the series began, everyone raved about the “Four Horsemen” in the Cleveland bullpen. When the series ended, only one (Tim Herrin) of the “Horsemen” was left unscathed. The Yankees overwhelmed Emmnauel Clase on back-to-back nights. They stunned Cade Smith and got to Hunter Gaddis. The Dodgers’ bullpen will eventually suffer the same fate, especially with inferior arms to the Guardians.
The Yankees’ greatest advantages lies in their starting rotation. They will use four actual starting pitchers in the series, and it’s certainly not outlandish to say all four of their starters are better than anything the Dodgers will start. The Dodgers’ path to a series victory lies in the performance of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon.
Cole represents the single-biggest advantage between the rosters. But for Yankees fans that have watched him pitch over the last five years, Cole in name and on paper is better than Cole in actuality. It’s hard to completely trust Cole because he has given Yankees fans a mixed bag of big-game and postseason starts since 2020 and Friday night’s Game 1 will be the biggest start of his career, surpassing Game 1 of the 2019 World Series since he’s still chasing a championship.
Rodon is similar in that at times he pitches like someone worthy of a $162 million contract and other times he pitches like the American Kei Igawa. You never really know what you’re going to get from inning to inning with Rodon. He could have electric, unhittable stuff one inning and unravel the following inning. Fortunately, he has fared well against the Dodgers 1-through-4 hitters in his career as Shohei Ohtani is 1-for-3, Mookie Betts is 1-for-19, Freddie Freeman is 1-for-7 and Teoscar Hernandez is 1-for-9.
On paper, the Dodgers’ advantages exist in their bullpen depth and the bottom half of their lineup. But because they are going to rely so heavily on their bullpen and give the Yankees frequent looks at the same arms, their bullpen advantage is negated. The bottom half of the lineup is still a problem.
The combination of Max Muncy, Will Smith, Kike Hernandez, Tommy Edman and Andy Pages is much deeper and more productive than the Yankees’ Anthony Rizzo, Jazz Chisholm, Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells and Alex Verdugo. It doesn’t have to be that way. If Chisholm could start hitting, Wells could hit like he did from late April to late August and Verdugo could put the ball in the air. But based on their most recent performances, the Dodgers have a substantial edge at 5 through 9. But that’s their only edge, including in the dugout.
There are very few instances and matchups in which the Yankees have the managerial edge, though this is one of them. Supporters of Boone love to cite his regular-season record as a way to prove his success in an attempt to disregard his postseason failures. The same holds true for Roberts. Roberts has been an even more successful regular-season manager than Boone and his postseason failures have been as magnified. As someone who watches every Yankees game and nearly every Dodgers game, Boone is a better manager than Roberts.
It’s possible Cole pitches as poorly in Game 1 as he did in Game 1 in the 2019 World Series. It won’t be surprising if Rodon lets his emotions get the best of him and he spirals out of control in Game 2. Maybe Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil poop their pants on the mound under the bright lights in the Bronx in Games 3 and 4. It’s conceivable the offense could disappear and Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver could turn into Paul Quantrill and Tom Gordon. But for every worst-case scenario for the Yankees in this series, the Dodgers’ worst-case scenarios are more prominent and more likely.
I shouldn’t feel this confident about a matchup, let alone a World Series matchup against the team with the best record in the league and the franchise that has been the best in the league over the last decade. If injuries didn’t exist I wouldn’t be. If the Dodgers had Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow and Dustin May at their peak abilities, I would be fearful. If the Dodgers weren’t using mound visits to give Freeman breathers following plays he’s involved with because of his ankle, I would be worried. If the Dodgers weren’t going to try to win four of seven games with the same strategy (but with lesser talent) that just blew up in the Guardians, I would be nervous. If someone other than Roberts was in the other dugout being asked to deploy that strategy, I would be uneasy. The Dodgers still have the name, but they don’t have the roster they expected to reach the World Series with.
I have spent my entire life listening to John Sterling calling Yankees games, outside of the majority of this regular season during his retirement/hiatus. Now that he only has between four and seven games left in his storied career, I think it makes sense to heed his words of wisdom when calling for the Yankees to win this series: You can’t predict baseball. I hope he’s wrong and hope his final words behind the microphone are “Ballgame over! … World Series over … Yankees win! … Theeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!” If I’m right, they will be.
Last modified: Oct 26, 2024
