Baseball Bytes: Breaking Down the Yankees-Dodgers World Series
What to watch for when two iconic franchises meet again on baseball’s biggest stage.
Welcome to a special ✨Postseason Edition✨ of Baseball Bytes1 — my column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!
⚾ No October Surprises Here
We finally have a Fall Classic matchup! And what a matchup it is.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees are a couple of very good baseball teams. They ranked Nos. 1-2 in run differential during the regular season, and they were two of the league’s three winningest teams as well. They also have a shared historical angle: These two franchises have met in the World Series a record 12 times throughout history,2 and they are two of MLB’s three most successful franchises by all-time winning percentage.3 And of course, as if that all wasn’t enough, this is the collision of the two biggest markets in North American sports, with the high-priced rosters to match.
In other words, it would be hard for Rob Manfred to script a bigger or better spectacle to determine the fate of the 2024 season. And the matchup is shaping up to be fairly close, too, with Los Angeles looking like a little bit less than a 55-45 favorite according to the Playoff Predictor:
📊 2024 MLB Playoff Predictor 📈
So what’s really going to determine who wins? Let’s dig into the numbers around the key matchups — and big questions — of this World Series to find out.
⚾ Tale of the Tape: 🌴 Dodgers vs. 🗽 Yankees
Star Wars
⭐ Best player in series: Aaron Judge, NYY (11.0 WAR)
⭐ Opposing best player: Shohei Ohtani, LAD (9.2 WAR)
⭐ 5+ WAR players: NYY 2, LAD 1 | 3+ WAR players: LAD 7, NYY 5
Five most similar World Series (based on the two teams’ WAR percentiles; 2024 equivalents are in parentheses):
1971: Pirates (Dodgers) def. Orioles (Yankees), 4-3
1953: Yankees (Yankees) def. Dodgers (Dodgers), 4-2
1975: Reds (Dodgers) def. Red Sox (Yankees), 4-3
1957: Braves (Dodgers) def. Yankees (Yankees), 4-3
1972: Athletics (Yankees) def. Reds (Dodgers), 4-3
⚾ Big Questions
Can anyone on the Yankees cool down these hot Dodger bats?
In a sharp contrast with previous years, when L.A.’s offense had a tendency to short-circuit in the playoffs, this postseason’s Dodger lineup has been downright terrifying. They’re averaging a league-high 6.4 runs per game, with five different batters posting an OPS of .800 or higher — Mookie Betts (1.063), Max Muncy (1.014), Shohei Ohtani (.934), Kiké Hernández (.863) and Tommy Edman (.811) — and they’ve collectively hit 20 HR in 11 games. Here’s a wild stat: L.A. has scored seven or more runs twice as often as they’ve been held below five runs. The Yankees can’t afford to let the Dodgers keep hanging those kinds of massive numbers on the scoreboard.When does Aaron Judge join the Soto/Stanton party?
That Juan Soto — whose clutch 10th-inning home run last Saturday sent New York to the World Series — has been one of the Yankees’ chief offensive catalysts is no surprise. He had a .989 OPS during the regular season and ranked second on the team in most hitting categories. But his partner in that October effort has been the overpaid, oft-injured and much-maligned Giancarlo Stanton — with a stellar playoff OPS of 1.179 and a team-high 5 HR — rather than presumptive AL MVP Aaron Judge. Judge is hitting just .161 with a .704 OPS and 2 HR this postseason… but his ability to get going will have huge implications for New York’s offense in this series. (Particularly if Stanton regresses some.)Bigger liability: L.A. starters or N.Y. bullpen?
Going into the playoffs, the book on the Dodgers was that their patchwork rotation (which ranked 21st in WAR and sported a subpar 4.23 ERA) would prove to be their downfall, if such a thing happened. Similarly, the Yankees’ bullpen — which finished 16th in WAR, but ranked outside the Top 20 for much of the season — seemed destined to doom them in October. What’s surprising is that, despite both teams making the World Series, each factor has continued to be problematic: L.A. starters have an ugly 6.08 postseason ERA — in spite of a rare appearance from vintage Walker Buehler in the NLCS — and Yankee relievers have 7 meltdowns in 9 games, including blowing Game 3 (and nearly Game 4) against Cleveland.4 So whichever pitching unit is simply less bad in the Fall Classic may end up tipping the scales heavily in their team’s favor.Will the baserunning gap matter?
We don’t typically think of baserunning as being a major factor in a best-of-7 series, when so much else can happen on the mound or at the plate to swing the overall result. But in this case, the gap on the basepaths is between the league’s best (Dodgers) and worst (Yankees) teams — just the third World Series in history to feature that kind of baserunning mismatch.5 Granted, in both prior cases, the lesser baserunning team won… but it’s still worth documenting just how slow and prone to horrible miscues the Yankees are when running the bases. And it’s not going to get any better in this series against Will Smith, the best throwing catcher in baseball. Meanwhile, neither Austin Wells nor Jose Trevino may be able to do much against Ohtani and his absurd 94 percent SB success rate. There are plenty of other matchups in this series that will probably matter more, but this is a lopsided Dodger advantage to watch.Who wins the big battle of superstars?
This is one of the most star-laden World Series matchups we’ve seen, with 25 total career All-Stars and multiple former MVPs. While baseball is a sport that lends itself as much (or more) to random journeymen proving pivotal in the championship — remember Steve Pearce? — than established superstars, it’s also a fair bet that the team with the more productive group of big names will have the upper hand in the series… simply because there are so damn many of them here, both at the plate and on the mound. The Ohtani-Judge MVP-off will be particularly fascinating to watch; while the Yankees’ top star had more regular-season Wins Above Replacement this year than anyone else in the series, Ohtani has outplayed his AL counterpart in the postseason thus far.So… who’s got this thing?
As mentioned earlier, the Dodgers are 55-45 favorites, and they were the better team by most metrics during the regular season. Their playoff run differential is +2.7 RPG better than we’d expect an average team to have against the same set of opponents; by comparison, the Yankees’ adjusted differential is just +1.5 better than average. (Some of this is also skewed by the NL’s perceived strength of competition as compared with the AL, but that’s a perfectly justifiable factor to consider.) But just because the best teams have made it this far in the playoffs, it doesn’t mean the better team is destined to win once they get here.
According to Elo, the most likely outcome (with a 19 percent chance) is Dodgers in 6, followed by Dodgers in 7 (at 18 percent). There’s even a 15 percent chance of Dodgers in 5. But the next-most likely outcomes are Yankees in 7 (13 percent) and Yankees in 6 (12 percent), with a 10 percent chance of Yankees in 5.6 With only about a 13 percent chance of a sweep in either direction, we are probably in store for a series on the longer side — and that means plenty of chances for the glitzy big names in both iconic uniforms to make their presence felt.
Whatever happens, it all gets underway with Game 1 on Friday at 8:08 p.m. ET on FOX.
Filed under: Baseball, Baseball Bytes
Not to be confused with Baseball Bits, the excellent YouTube series from Foolish Baseball.
Though not always in their current locations.
The New York/San Francisco Giants are the other member of the Top 3.
The Dodger bullpen, by contrast, has melted down just twice in 11 games.
The other two? 2011 — with No. 1 Texas vs. No. 30 St. Louis — and 1912 — with the No. 1 Giants facing the No. 16 Red Sox.
And remember, Elo is more bullish on the Dodgers than some of the other models in the Playoff Predictor mix.