Preview of the 2024 World Series: An In-Depth Look at the Biggest Matchup of the Year

Rihanna said it best. Or maybe it was Russell Crowe. This is the main event. The top seed in the American League meets the top seed in the National League. The presumptive AL MVP is leading his team against the presumptive NL winner. Those guys, coincidentally, are the two biggest free agents in history – Shohei Ohtani broke the bank this past offseason, only a year after Aaron Judge signed a historic deal of his own. Juan Soto might eclipse them both this winter. And while those three are the biggest stars in the game right now, they have three previous MVP winners – Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Giancarlo Stanton – as sidekicks. Oh yeah, and the two highest-paid pitchers in history are the aces of their respective teams. Heck, I’ve allowed this paragraph to run to a ridiculous length, and I’m only now mentioning 2024 Home Run Derby winner Teoscar Hernández. By any objective measure, this World Series matchup is absolutely loaded with star power. But the current players are only half the story. This is the 12th Yankees-Dodgers matchup in World Series history – the Dodgers have played in 22 of these things, and they’ve faced one team more than half the time. This isn’t quite Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Fall Classic anymore, where the two preeminent teams are a subway ride apart, but the next best thing is a rivalry between the two biggest cities in the country. Want an example of how good the players in this series are? Here are the top five hitters in baseball by wRC+ this year:

Jay Jaffe dove into how rare it is to see the best player in each league in the World Series – turns out, it’s quite rare! Fifty-homer sluggers have also never faced each other in the Series before now, and that leaves out the fact that Ohtani stole 50 bags too. Soto is an absurdly over-qualified second banana. Betts isn’t on this list, and he was in the MVP running before missing time with injury. The star power on display is simply staggering, as Davy Andrews noted Wednesday. You probably already know all that. Those are just the FanGraphs previews, and you’re not exactly coming in here having not read other baseball analysis. So while I could rehash the same headlines with my typical mix of literary and musical nods shoehorned in, I thought I’d try something a little bit different in this preview. Ohtani is amazing. Judge is a modern-day titan. Soto is your favorite hitter’s favorite hitter. Betts is my favorite player to watch. Those are all givens. But there are a bunch of other guys playing too, and how they fare against each other and against the stars will go a long way towards determining which of these iconic franchises takes home the trophy next week.

The Dodgers’ Secret Bullpen Plan

The Dodgers rotation feels like it’s stapled together, or at best held in place by strategically applied duct tape. The team is only carrying three starters, and Jack Flaherty is the only one of them to pitch into the sixth inning so far this October. The Dodgers have played 11 games, and three of those have been full-on bullpen games. Their bullpen has covered 18.1 more innings than their New York counterparts. At first blush, that feels like a recipe for disaster against the Yankees, who just picked apart the best bullpen in baseball in the ALCS. But the Dodgers have thus far used a secret recipe to prevent their ‘pen from getting over-exposed. If you’re up by six runs, you can use pretty much any reliever you want, and Los Angeles’ offense has done a great job of putting up crooked numbers and taking all the drama out of games in the early innings. Want that expressed mathematically? In the aggregate, Dodgers relievers have dealt with a 0.65 leverage index in their 57 innings of work this postseason. Leverage index averages 1.0 by definition, and 0.65 is extremely low. That’s pure mop-up territory. Ryan Yarbrough and Nabil Crismatt, neither of whom are still on the team, were Dodgers relievers with that average leverage index during the regular season. Those guys are filler; they pitch when the outcome of the game isn’t in doubt. For a Yankees equivalent, think Ron Marinaccio or Dennis Santana.

The point is, while Dodgers relievers are doing a lot, they’re doing it in forgiving conditions. They’ve been on the receiving end of a few blowouts, and they’ve also scored 6.4 runs per game, so there hasn’t been a ton of drama either way. Those blowouts function like a release valve for the relief corps. Despite the most team bullpen innings, only one Dodgers reliever, Blake Treinen, features in the top 10 for postseason relief innings pitched. The Dodgers reliever to cover the second-most innings is long man Brent Honeywell, and he’s done it in two appearances, soaking up three to four innings at a time. Both teams ease off the gas in blowouts, and reasonably so: There’s no point in spending good pitchers in a game with a six-run score differential. That lets the Dodgers keep their top arms fresh even as their starters scuffle, and “scuffle” might be too polite of a term for what the rotation has done so far this postseason. The only “starter” with an ERA below five is opener Ryan Brasier. The three actual starters have an aggregate ERA of 6.14, and they’re only covering four and a half innings per game. Another way of thinking about it is that they’ve only accounted for 38% of the batters the Dodgers have faced this October. Yankees starters are at 54%, and the Dodgers were also in that ballpark (54.5%) in the regular season. With such meager contributions from the workhorses, every single reliever has had to work to pick up the slack.

All of those innings can take a toll beyond simple fatigue. I’ve focused on repeat matchups between relievers and hitters this postseason, because those feel like a key point of failure. You don’t want to give Judge and Soto a ton of looks at the same pitcher, no matter how good that guy is. So far, the Dodgers have done a spectacular job of avoiding repeat matchups. Their top three relievers are Treinen, Michael Kopech, and Evan Phillips. In total, those three have tripled up on a batter matchup three times – Treinen and Phillips faced Fernando Tatis Jr. three times, and Treinen also got Luis Arraez thrice. Contrast that with the Yankees: closer Luke Weaver has faced three batters three times and two batters four times already. Clay Holmes has a four-spot and two threes of his own. Tommy Kahnle, who only throws changeups and thus presumably faces a meaningful familiarity penalty, has as many same-batter-three-times encounters as the Dodgers’ top trio combined.

Dave Roberts has also been diligent about moving his matchups around. He has enough high-leverage arms that he doesn’t need to attack the top of the opposing lineup the same way every day, which has proven helpful. Could a lefty get the bottom of the Yankees order through Soto before giving way to a righty? Sure. Could Brasier get a few bites at the apple? Indubitably. Another thing to keep an eye on: In the NLCS, Los Angeles went without Alex Vesia. He strained his back while warming up in Game 5 of the divisional round, which left the team in a bind. He’s their best lefty reliever, and also one of just two southpaws, along with Anthony Banda, on the playoff roster. That was mostly fine against the Mets, who are light on lefty power, but the Yankees have five lefties in their everyday lineup, so Vesia’s health could make a huge difference. His recovery has gone well, and he’s expected to make the roster, but…