There’s been a narrative about postseason baseball the past couple of years. A thought that the randomness of the playoff format wasn’t rewarding the best teams during the regular season enough. This all culminated in 2023, when the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks met in the World Series despite neither having racked up even 90 wins. Well, that narrative dies on Friday.
That’s when the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers will meet in Game 1 of the World Series. Not only two of the biggest franchises in all of sports, but each league’s clear top team throughout the regular season. Congratulations, MLB marketing executives. You did it. We did it.
Let’s dive into the matchup and find some bets on the DraftKings Sportsbook.
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New York Yankees at Los Angeles Dodgers
Series Winner: Yankees (+105)
As stated above, this is a matchup between arguably the two best teams in baseball this season. The Dodgers had the most wins of any team in the National League (98), while the Yankees claimed the most victories of any American League squad (94). These two teams finished the regular season ranked first and second, respectively, in wRC+. They can each put up runs at an elite rate. So, in theory, this series is going to come down to which team is most effective at suppressing that ability. Which team can shut down the other’s super star bats. That’s where I believe the Yankees have a distinct advantage.
The Yankees have four starting pitchers at their disposal who posted an ERA below 4.00 in 2024: Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil. The least successful of that quartet was Rodon, as the left-hander struggled with the long ball, resulting in a 4.39 FIP across his 32 starts. However, Rodon’s looked incredible so far in the postseason, sporting a 37.3% strikeout rate and a 22.0 K/BB ratio in his 14.1 innings of work. There are certainly question marks with this rotation outside of Cole, but it feels like New York has more places to turn than the Dodgers, who twice used a bullpen game during the NLCS, including Game 6’s victory on Sunday. That puts a lot of pressure on Los Angeles to win the games that Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jack Flaherty start. A lot of pressure.
Then there’s the Freddie Freeman factor. It was an “off” year for the veteran slugger, as Freeman hit below .300 for the first time since 2019. Still, Freeman was a crucial element of this Dodgers lineup, posting a 137 wRC+ over 638 plate appearances. Freeman is currently nursing an ankle issue that has caused him to already miss multiple games in the playoffs. When he has been healthy enough to be in the lineup, Freeman’s slashed just .219/.242/.219 while showing absolutely no ability to run the bases. Los Angeles has other big names, but the loss of Freeman has made this lineup look much shorter.
MVP: Juan Soto (+500)
It’s a little funny to make a statistical case for Juan Soto to win MVP, because for as great as he is, Shohei Ohtani (+200) and Aaron Judge (+400) are better. For instance, the ability to hit right-handed pitching will be massive in this series, as three of the Yankees’ four projected starters are RHPs and all three starters the Dodgers used in the NLCS are also righties. So it’s obviously amazing news for Soto backers that the All-Star’s .465 expected wOBA off right-handers was the third-highest mark among all qualified hitters during the regular season. However, it was Judge (.484) and Ohtani (.476) who happened to rank first and second.
Still, Soto’s performed at a higher level than his teammate through the Yankees’ first nine postseason games, slashing .333/.439/.667 with a 202 wRC+. Soto also has the advantage of hitting ahead of Judge. Not only does that give Soto more projected plate appearances, but it also makes it extremely unlikely that Soto will ever be intentionally walked — though Giancarlo Stanton is certainly giving Judge some serious protection at the moment. If the Yankees win it all, it would be fitting to see Soto awarded the MVP, as the 25-year-old hired gun heads into what is sure to be an historic payday this offseason.
I’ll admit, Gerrit Cole (+2500) is an intriguing name at 25/1 odds, especially with how this series sets up from a rest perspective. Barring a sweep, Cole will almost certainly get two starts. Heck, if this thing goes seven games, Cole’s name will surely get tossed around as an emergency relief option. However, it’s worth remembering the history of the World Series MVP award. While a pitcher has won 29 times since it was first presented in 1955, a majority of those occasions were prior to 1986. Since 2004, a pitcher has only taken home this hardware three times: Cole Hamels (2008), Madison Bumgarner (2014) and Stephen Strasburg (2019).
Most Hits: Shohei Ohtani (+500)
While Tommy Edman (+475) had a very nice NLCS, I’m flabbergasted that Ohtani isn’t the odds-on favorite for this prop. It is worth noting that the former MVP has been walked in 20.8% of his 53 plate appearances in the postseason — way up from his 11.1% walk rate during the regular season — but this is still Shohei Ohtani we’re talking about. The 30-year-old was second among all NL players with 197 hits during the regular season. Though a 100th percentile hard hit rate (60.1%) and a 99th percentile expected batting average (.320) were a massive part of that, it’s also just a matter of simple volume. Ohtani’s 731 plate appearances were the most of any NL hitter.
Guess what? His 53 PAs in the playoffs are the most of any Dodger as Ohtani is the rare power hitter batting out of his team’s leadoff spot. If there are no major lineup shifts in the coming days, there’s a very good chance that either Ohtani or Gleyber Torres (+2500) ends up leading this World Series in plate appearances. It’s simple math. I’ll take my chances with Ohtani if he’s getting more swings that everyone else.
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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.
