After an exciting postseason that lived up to tons of hype, the stage is set for one of the most highly anticipated World Series’ in recent history. The New York Yankees will represent the American League and the Los Angeles Dodgers will represent the National League, with both teams loaded with star power. Game 1 will kick off on Friday night in Los Angeles with more on the line than ever.
After a disappointing 82-80 finish in 2023, the Yankees were hungry to bounce back from their first season without a playoff appearance since 2016. New York, one of the biggest sports towns in the world, demanded more from the 27-time champions, who had failed to reach the World Series for the fourteenth consecutive season.
GM Brian Cashman felt the pressure and made one of the biggest trades in franchise history, acquiring a perennial all-star slugger in Juan Soto. The middle of the lineup was to be feared around the league, with Soto joining former MVPs in Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. The rotation was set to be led by all-star pitchers Gerrit Cole and Nestor Cortes, as well as Carlos Rodon who was looking for a bounce-back season. The Yankees looked to get their AL East title back, which had been taken by the young Baltimore Orioles in 2023.
The new-look Yankees, with their rotation also improving with pleasant surprises from young arms in Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil, came out of the gate extremely hot. The team peaked at 49-21 on June 12, with the highest winning percentage in the league and Aaron Judge on track for another 60-homer season. Juan Soto, in his first and possibly only season in New York, was one of the only players competing with Judge in the MVP race. Gerrit Cole, the 2023 AL Cy Young winner, was set to return from injury on June 17. In the Bronx, the early stretch of the season was one of the most exciting in recent history.
The Yankees would struggle for more than the next month, going 11-24 through their next 35 games, sparking worry that the team was going down the same path as the 2023 Yankees, and intensifying the pressure on Cashman to have a productive deadline.
The club made their splash acquisition on July 27th, trading for Jazz Chisholm Jr. of the Marlins, whose energy and production provided a massive morale boost for the clubhouse. In addition, Luke Weaver emerged as the new Yankee closer in the late stages of the season after Clay Holmes had been inconsistent in save situations and Weaver had posted a sub-3.00 ERA all season. DeMatha junior Andrew Speed says the team has had the advantage of a “deep bullpen” all season. The Yankees would win eight of their next nine games, kickstarting their strong final two months of the regular season, where they ultimately finished 94-68, AL East champions, and the top seed in the American League.
On the west coast, expectations were high coming into the season. The Dodgers were coming off of a highly productive offseason, where they most notably signed two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani to a record-breaking contract. Ohtani’s megadeal amounts to $700 million over ten years, with deferrals lowering the present-day value to $460 million, still the highest in major league history. Ohtani was set to share the lineup with multiple big names, including former MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and recent all-stars in Will Smith, Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernandez.
The rotation, which caused the team to get swept in the 2023 NLDS, was upgraded in an expensive way. Tyler Glasnow, one of MLB’s perennial strikeout leaders, was acquired in a trade from Tampa Bay and immediately signed a five-year, $136.5 million contract extension. Shortly after, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a superstar pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, was signed to a 12-year, $325 million contract, making him the highest-paid pitcher in MLB history without even stepping on a major league field yet. Yamamoto was set to pair with Glasnow and eventually Walker Buehler when he returned from injury, plus Ohtani in the future as he would not pitch in 2024 while recovering from Tommy John surgery. The team had made bold moves, and also had bold hype around them and bold things to say. According to Mookie Betts, playing the Dodgers was now “every team’s World Series.”
The Dodgers, despite being in first place for almost the entirety of the season, did face struggles on the injury front throughout the 2024 campaign. Yamamoto, who Los Angeles specifically targeted due to possibly long injury recovery processes for Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw, as well as Shohei Ohtani’s inability to pitch, faced his own injury problems. The young phenom missed close to three months with a rotator cuff strain, while Buehler posted a 6.00 ERA after his return and Clayton Kershaw faced setbacks and was only able to give the Dodgers 30.0 innings all season. Glasnow made two trips to the injured list, the second being an elbow inflammation that would sideline him for the season. When the trade deadline came around, President Andrew Friedman had pressure to do what he hadn’t in 2023, add starting pitching for a potential playoff run. Friedman would make his big move before deadline time, acquiring starting pitcher Jack Flaherty from Detroit, bolstering a rotation that would not prevent the Dodgers from accomplishing their regular season goal. Despite surges in the second half by the Padres and Diamondbacks, the Dodgers would finish with a 98-64 record, the best in the major leagues, and became NL West champions for the 11th time in 12 years.
The pressure was on for the Yankees heading into October, with the young Kansas City Royals, one of the hungriest teams in the league, coming into the Bronx for the ALDS. Kansas City hadn’t made the postseason since 2015 and finished with 106 losses in 2023, but had played consistent baseball all season after a productive offseason and swept the Orioles in the Wild Card series. The Yankees would silence all the doubters from the start of the series on the back of solid performances by their pitchers, who didn’t allow more than five runs in a single game. All of their stars contributed, with Soto collecting three hits in game one, Stanton collecting multiple extra-base hits in game three, and a stellar game four performance from Cole.
They would run into the AL Central champion Cleveland Guardians in the ALCS and dominate in similar fashion, with the pitching staff giving them a chance to win every game, allowing six runs or less in four of the five games. Giancarlo Stanton stayed hot in the ALCS, crushing four home runs in the series. Anthony Volpe batted .353 in the series and Juan Soto hit three home runs of his own, one of them the biggest in recent franchise history. Soto’s go-ahead home run in the 10th inning of game five would send the Yankees to their first World Series since 2009, with the decision to acquire Soto looking better than ever.
In Los Angeles, excitement was high heading into the NLDS, with the Dodgers set to face a rival in the San Diego Padres. The Padres went 56-29 in their final 85 games, and were coming into LA confident that they would do the same thing that they did in 2022, knock off a top-seeded Dodgers team. Things went according to plan for San Diego through the first three games, blowing the Dodgers out by a 10-2 score in game two and dropping six runs in the second inning in game three, pushing LA to the brink of elimination.
The Dodgers would force a game five on the back of a scoreless night from eight relievers and home runs from Betts, Will Smith, and Gavin Lux, bringing the series back to Dodger Stadium. The pitching continued their dominance in game five, with Yamamoto giving his team five scoreless innings and the bullpen following up with four more, leaving the Padres scoreless for the last 25 innings of their season.
The Mets would be their challenge for the NLCS, a team looking like a team of destiny after finishing their season 67-40 and knocking off the Brewers and Phillies on their way to the NLCS. After splitting the first two games, the Dodgers would score 18 combined runs in games three and four, with Ohtani cranking a big three-run homer in game three and Betts delivering four hits in game four. The pitching was dominant in these two games, allowing only two runs in 18 innings, with Buehler, Yamamoto, and the bullpen silencing a great Mets lineup. After a pitching blowup in game five, the Dodgers would return home for game six and Tommy Edman would deliver a home run and a double, powering the lineup to ten runs and their fourth appearance in the fall classic since 2017. Betts finished the series with a .346 batting average, with Ohtani at .364 and Tommy Edman batting a ridiculous .407. The Dodgers hope that this production will continue in the World Series.
This is one of the most highly anticipated World Series’ in a long time, with two huge fan bases clashing and more than enough star power. The Yankees have the advantage of healthy starting pitching, while the Dodgers have the advantage of a deeper bullpen, with Blake Treinen posting an unbelievable 1.13 in the postseason thus far and bullpen games going surprisingly well. The lineups are very evenly matched, but according to Andrew Speed, the Dodgers have a special advantage in Shohei Ohtani, a “$700 million megastar.” Hopefully the fans will have the chance to enjoy exciting, high-scoring games, and a fun World Series after an already memorable postseason.
