Rates & Barrels - World Series Preview & Predictions: Yankees v. Dodgers

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Eno and DVR preview the World Series matchup between the Yankees and Dodgers, examining the team's position player groups -- including defense and baserunning -- pitching, and the difficulty of game planning throughout the series. Plus, they share their predictions for series winner and series MVP. Rundown 1:32 The Lineups: Depth Will Be Under the Microscope Behind Stars 14:38 How Do the Yankees & Dodgers Stack Up Defensively? 24:05 Do the Dodgers Have a Significant Edge on the Basepaths? 27:55 Game-by-Game Starting Pitcher Outlook 33:52 The Challenge of Limiting Looks at Your Relievers 37:07 Game Planning Considerations for the Series 51:54 Predictions: Series Winner & MVP Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, October 24th. Derek VanRyper, Enosaris here with you. This is our 2024 World Series preview. We spent a lot of time this week. This is it? This is the one. Not the other four. It was all building up to this. That was the long road, the detailed version of what we're going to do. This is the more condensed, meaty version, all of which should be enjoyable by my calculations.

So on this episode, we're gonna take a detailed look at the position players on both the Yankees and Dodgers, try and see if there is an edge within those groups. Spoiler alert, they're both great and it's hard to find differences. We'll do our best to do that. We'll dig into the pitching matchups now that we have a little bit more of the schedule

for the series, we're gonna to talk about the pitching plan. How do you game plan to face the league's two best lineups and some of the best hitters of all time? We'll get our predictions in at the end of the show as well. So a lot to discuss and frankly, I'm also ready for the games to begin on Friday because I want to see if all the things we've been talking about play out the way that we hope that they're going to play out. But you know, we're gonna begin with a position player breakdown.

So much of the dialogue around this series focuses on Shohei Otani, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, and it's all for good reason. They are some of the biggest superstars the sport has right now and I think the overall quality of these lineups is going to be on proper display and Under the microscope in this series if you remember just a few short months ago We had questions about the quality of the Yankees supporting cast behind Aaron Judge and Juan Soto

While judge and Soto were putting together a historically great all-time season for a duo. We're going back to the 20s and the 40s to find comparable production from teammates to what Soto and Judge have done so far this year. And some of those questions have faded in recent weeks because Gleyber Torres has performed really well in the playoffs. Jess Chisholm was acquired at the trade deadline. He was red hot when they acquired him, even though he hasn't done a lot in the postseason yet. You can look at this lineup on paper and tell yourself a better story

about what they're capable of around the two biggest stars in the heart of the order. Yeah, I think Anthony Volpe has really stepped forward in these playoffs and they've taken on a collective identity that is similar to what they did in the regular season, but is sort of extra. The regular season, they did a really good job of not chasing pitches outside the zone. Now they've stepped that up another level in the post season. they did a really good job of not chasing pitches outside the zone. Now

they've stepped that up another level in the postseason. Anthony Volpe has only chased at 12% of the pitches he's seen outside the zone. The average every year is 30%. Gleyber Torres at 17%, Alex Verdugo 19% and then you add that to Judge Nsoto who've always that's always been part of what they've done so they've been the most patient team in the playoffs and The Dodgers have been the second most patient team in the playoffs in terms of chasing pitches outside the zone But I think for the Dodgers it's a little bit less important because they have a deeper lineup They don't have as many of the questions that we've had about people like Volpe. You know, you're talking about Muncie and you're talking about Teosca Hernandez. Like there's a little bit more depth to the Dodgers lineup. So it's really important for Volpe to continue taking

this very patient approach. It's really important for Stanton to continue knocking the crap out of the ball. It's really important for Verdugo to continue putting the ball in play. To some extent, I think for them to hang and for them to to bang with the Dodgers this year, it's really important for jazz to find it, whatever it is. He's been the one that's been struggling this postseason, but he is what could give the Yankees more Dodgers like depth to this lineup. Because when you look at it, tail of the tape style, as they like to say, what could give the Yankees more Dodgers-like depth to this lineup. Because when you look at it,

tail of the tape style, as they like to say, put these two teams side by side and look at what they did in the regular season. We talk about WRC plus all the time on our show, the great catch all metric for overall offensive value created. The Dodgers 18% better than league average as a team. They were first, the Dodgers 17% better.

They were second. You look at strikeout rates. Both of these teams do a good job of tempering swing and miss overall. The Yankees were ninth during the regular season. The Dodgers were 11th. The difference,.2 percentage points, minimal, right? Both teams are very patient.

The Yankees walked more than anybody else throughout the regular season at 10.8%, Dodgers 9.6%. These teams don't chase pitches outside the zone. They were first and second in O swing percentage. The only differences you really see, looking at them as a group, is that the Yankees are less aggressive on pitches inside the strike zone.

They had a 62.9% zone swing percentage during the regular season. That was the second lowest in the entire league It's just kind of an oddity which makes me wonder if a lot of that is driven by a player like Soto who is Extremely patient and might be comfortable just working the count until he gets the exact pitch that he wants Yeah, Soto is not actually that great on pitches low in the zone. He's got the kind of a flatter swing and actually that great on pitches low in the zone. He's got kind of a flatter swing. And when he is, when you can pitch to him is when you're dotting

fastballs and sliders at the bottom, you know, not even third of the zone, sort of the bottom edge of the zone. And he takes those pretty regularly, you know, hoping that you make more of a mistake up. So that's the only way to really pitch to Juan Soto is to get it in the zone at the bottom of the zone, and just execute with great command. He will take those pitches.

As you start to think about where the differences will be within the series, the way you were looking at it before, saying the Dodgers secondary guys, the next level bats around Otani and Betts, and Freddie Freeman was ordinarily part of that group, but I think because of his foot injury, it's more questions than answers. He just hasn't been himself this postseason. It's easy to see how hobbled he's been.

Maybe the days off from the end of the NLCS to the World Series will actually help him get a little bit closer to 100%. But that secondary cast, the likes of Teasca Hernandez and Max Muncie, they're just a little more established than some of the secondary options the Yankees are relying on. And at the bottom, the bottom half of both of these lineups, I think you see a lot of similarities actually. I mean Anthony Rizzo coming back from injury is a nice lift for the Yankees. That gives them some depth. At times Austin Wells has looked like a catcher that will be above average with the bat.

That has not been the case so far in the postseason. He's been a lot like Jazz Chisholm in terms of his overall struggles, but Wells adds value with his defense behind the plate. So even if he doesn't hit a lot, he's still important to what the Yankees are doing right now. And Alex Verdugo, probably one of the more, you know, maligned players within the Yankees fan base as far as his contributions this year.

Having him in there instead of Jason Dominguez has been something we've wondered about for a long time, but that's been the preference of Aaron Boone and this club throughout the postseason. You look at Rizzo Wells, Chisholm, and Verdugo versus the likes of Gavin Lux, Kike Hernandez, who's been really good on the big stage, Tommy Edmond, who took NLCS MVP honors in the last round,

and Andy Pajas, who ends up playing a lot because he's an option for them in center field. It's sort of a question of maybe those four guys for each team having to step up and make the difference if the stars start to cancel each other out at the top. Yeah, and we'll get to this in the pitching plan, but to some extent there may be some walk this guy in the plan. And if you walk this guy, when it comes to Otani or Muncie, because you don't really have the lefty enough lefties to avoid exposing your relievers to them. So many times, if you just have a walk, this guy, even an intentional four

finger walk or the unintentional intentional walk, that means runners on base when you get to the bottom of the order. I kind of think that it might be a little bit more sort of Te Oskar Hernandez and Max Muncie and Stanton and who's the Rizzo or Gleiber. I think Gleiber would be the leader, but he'd be kind of that other guy along with Stanton that would fit into that secondary group. Because those guys will be alternating around, so those guys will be the first guys who come up with somebody on base. I mean, by the time you get to the luxes of the world,

you might have the bases loaded, if it's going poorly for the pitching team. And then things got a lot easier for them. Of course, that is also kind of how Tommy Edmund got his NLCS MVP, right? It just came on with tons of runners on base, did not walk once, made a lot of contact, had a ton of RBI. And that, I think, if there is a guy on the other side, that's Verdugo. That's why they kept him around. That's why Jason Dominguez didn't take his job, was because Jason's defense in left field wasn't that great for do go

It's a gold glove finalist a little bit surprised by that But also Verdugo makes a lot of contact and Dominguez as a swing and miss guy if he came up with the bases loaded in The World Series you might be able to get him to swing and miss and strike out Whereas Verdugo at least you know put a lottery ticket out there Is there an edge for either one of these lineups just from a pure run production perspective? I mean, I think you, you start getting into matchups on the pitching side and be like, who can you, who can pitch to who?

And I think that, I think the lefties actually for both Otani and Soto are a real problem for the other team, just in terms of do I have enough and it's possible that the Yankees with Nestor Cortez along with Tim Hill and maybe Tommy Canely who has a great change-up it's possible they have better they're better suited than the Dodders we don't know yet if Alex Vestia is making the roster even if Alex Vestia makes it if he's a hundred percent Anthony Banda is sort of as I guess he's Tim Hillish and then what do they do I suggest maybe Daniel Hudson in my pitching preview you start to think

about it that way you're, it almost matters more who's pitching in each situation. You know what I mean? It's kind of hard to just be like, oh, you know, across the board, this guy, this team is better than this team. I think I trust the Dodgers back end of the lineup more. And I do think walk this guy will be part of the pitching strategy. And so I think I give the Dodgers a small, small advantage.

I completely understand where you're coming from and yet I look at the Yankees and I want the slight edge at the very, very top because the margins are so close. And I think as a duo, Soto plus Judge is just a hair better than Otani and Betts. It's a difference, as my friend Todd Zola would say, that I would never want to live off of. It's actually there.

I mean, when we looked at it earlier in the season, Soto and Judge were having one of the 10 best paired up seasons ever. And they were up there with Ruth and Garrick, and they basically, Ruth and Garak incarnate. And so I do think that this version of Betts, two, three years ago, Betts, you know, might have been closer, but this version of Betts, you know, where you have Judge and Soto right in the peak of, you know, their abilities right now.

I would take Judge and Soto. So then you, okay, so then Judge and Soto over Otani and Betts by a hair. And then you've got that secondary, which is Teoscar Hernandez and Max Muncie versus Glaver and Stanton. Ah, man. You get more damage on the Dodger side. Now I'm sort of agreeing with you.

Yeah. I think I take Glaver and Stanton. I think I do too, in part, because they've both done a great job, and this is less surprising with Gleyber Torres, but Stanton's done a great job of tempering strikeouts while getting to the power in the postseason too. If he brings that approach, that just puts him up a level, whereas Teasca Hernandez has that little bit of swing and miss that you worry about. Even Muncie has it.

I was looking at Max Muncie's pitch splits and he crushes four seamers, but you can be opportunistic with four seamers against them. You can also get them to swing and miss at them sometimes. So I think Muncie is going to be a really pivotal player for the Dodgers. If he can get a bullpen matchup in his favor, if there's some command issues in the matchup against Muncie and he can make the Yankees pitching staff pay for them That could be something that really closes that gap immediately It's another very small difference because you're talking about extremely high quality players

It's really a preference of what you want If you want the added thumb Hernandez and Muncie are the better duo if you want the balance And I do think you could make the case for for Gleyber Torres in John Carlos Stanton And then you go to the bottom. I'm with you on the bottom I think we'll see if I give you those I still only gave you four. Yeah, and the lineup is nine Lineups nine. So if you give me five Five is bigger than four. But is it is it a bigger difference? The top four is better But is it a bigger difference? The top four is better.

I thought I'd have the top four than the bottom five as far as the small edges of the series go. Then you have to look for the position player group, look at it from a defensive perspective for a moment. I was surprised to see the Dodgers were third during the regular season in defensive run save. It's from the Fielding Bible, defensive run saves. It's an indication of how many runs a player saves or costs his team in the field compared to others at the position.

You may be surprised by that because you're thinking maybe very specifically about the people that are on the field. So you're thinking, well, they played Mookie Betts at short for a long time and then Miguel Rojas is like 30 and like now Tommy Edmonds a 29 year old shortstop like you know is this really a good defensive team they had a segment on MLB network that was pretty good where they led the league according to baseball info solutions in positioning runs defensively so they're just really good at both making a pitching plan, executing that pitching plan, and then having a defensive plan that is in tandem with the pitching plan.

So you can't miss by three feet. You can't say, okay, when we have this outside target, we need Tommy Edmond to play closer to third base against this lefty because the lefty might go the other way, right? And then have the pitcher miss three feet in on the inside, you know, and have that guy pull the ball when he thought he'd push the ball. So there is, it's a sort of whole team thing. And I think the Dodgers are really good at this where they have a lot of resources, maybe more than the Yankees or at least as much as the Yankees devoted to

research and development and devoted to analysts, devoted to advanced counting. And a lot of this only works if everyone's listening. If Dave Roberts is listening, if the players are listening, the players are willing to make these micro adjustments to their defensive positioning because you can give somebody a card and they can look at it and they can take a step or they can take the two or three steps the card says, you know, I mean, like I've talked to players where they're like, yeah, you know, I don't trust their defensive positioning. I don't, you know, so I just do whatever I do a little bit of it, but you know, sometimes

I don't do it at all. You're like oh good Mines be a little league this last week in little league I was coaching third and I was telling the guy on third You know when the catcher dropped the ball or when he had it and I was saying I was be like stay stay stay And then from one of the kids from the dugout yelled you don't have to listen to him. You can go whatever you want from the dugout yelled, you don't have to listen to him. You can go whenever you want. Just absolutely destroyed your base running plan in one fell swoop.

Just completely mixed in. I was like, do you want to know if the catcher got the ball or not? He's like, yeah, I'm like, okay, I keep telling you that. Yeah, I think that's good information that most kids by that age decide is in fact valuable. I think you do see this reflected statistically in the year over year team BABIP leaderboards, right?

So you look at the team BABIP leaderboards, batting average on balls and play. It's your defense working in concert with your pitching staff, is the way I think about BABIP as a team defensive stats. Exactly what you described it. Good locations, but then defense that's in the right places. Regularly, for the high stuff good locations, but then defense that's in the right places

Regularly for the last five full seasons You're gonna see the Dodgers at or near the top of that leaderboard year over year even as some of the names and faces It goes in that rocker 20 years. Yeah, it goes all the way back There might be some park effects in there, but there's there's also a coaching effect That's been there for a while and prior to this, the Yankees have also done well in that regard. They weren't bad by bad this year, but they weren't as good as they've been the last two seasons in 2024. So the defensive quality of these teams is both, I think, at least average.

I think you can debate the Dodgers possibly being better than that. The important thing, though, is you mentioned some of the players that contributed. Miguel Rojas Who's been now injured during the postseason was their leader in defensive runs saved at plus eight? He's not playing He's been replaced by Tommy Edmund as the shortstop Edmund Z. I guess Mookie's the backup shortstop Yeah, Mookie would be the backup Probably yeah, it could be Kike Hernandez to depending on what else they need to do But that's kind of interesting that the guy that boosted that number the most isn't even

out there right now. There's some other oddities in here too. A couple guys you don't think about for their defense. Tasker Hernandez was a plus five in defensive runs saved in left. Doesn't he have a really good arm? Yeah, he's a plus five in right, but he's a minus eight in left, which is really, really kind of quirky. He's been playing more left in the postseason, right?

So Max Muncie, getting positive marks at third base, that's not really expected. Andy Pahe's good in the corner. Is this thing true for outs above average as well? That's, the outs above average is the baseball savant number. You're quoting defensive runs saved, which is a baseball infield solutions number. So that's the interesting thing,

is if you look at the outs above average, you get some different results. And even behind the plate, Dodgers pitchers have raved about Will Smith again. And this has actually been his worst year by defensive metrics. He's a minus four by defensive run saved. He's been worse than ever in framing. Yeah, framing numbers haven't been good.

We've wondered for a while, the bat has kind of cooled off after a fast start. Has it been great in the postseason? Maybe he's been playing through an injury. Most catchers this time of year are not 100% healthy. We pointed out that in the postseason, the offense is supposed to be 100 is average by WRC+, but 100 is average. In the postseason over the last five years,'ve seen and like an 87 from all offense I mean because you're using your best pitchers you're doing these bullpenning strategies all sorts of reasons why that might be the case so it's 87 as opposed to a hundred in the postseason and catchers are at 62

so basically offense goes down 13% in the postseason and catcher offense goes down 38% in the postseason so Ier offense goes down 38% in the postseason. So I think they're just tired. You know, I think these guys, we ask a lot of them, they have to plan for pitching their own pitching, the opposite pitching, they had to do defense, they have to do hitting. And I, what I hear is that Will Smith is grinding in the cage and I almost think less is more Will, like get out of there, just go get some fro yo and, and chill with, chill with your dog or whatever, like do something different and, and try to get

out of that head space. But I would say that, you know, from a sort of a, not looking at the numbers assessment that most like before this year, especially I would have taken Will Smith defensively offensively. I think I would have, I would have said, this is a clear advantage with Austin Wells struggling offensively. He has at least been great defensively. We've seen that in this postseason, you know, him versus Bo Naylor was a slam dunk for Austin Wells. He was blocking pitches left and right framing really well.

So you're going to think he's not contributing at the plate. I'm going to give Austin Wells the defensive advantage. Aaron Judge is not a great center fielder. No, and it doesn't matter which system you look at, right? You mentioned outs above average before. In the team context, outs above average prefers the Yankees to the Dodgers, right? Plus nine is the Yankees number for the year,

minus four outs above average for the Dodgers. So the Dodgers are 19th by outs above average to the team, third by defensive run saved, Yankees 10th. And that includes Miguel Rojas too. So you're putting a lot of pressure on this sort of positioning excellence. Yeah, yeah. And the difference is, with outs above average,

the agreement comes with both Wells and Volpe. So at least at the two positions, or two of the very important positions up the middle the Yankees have graded out well kind of across the board with Wells and Volpe. But not in center. In center it doesn't matter what system you use Aaron Judge is minus nine by defensive run save he's minus five by outs above average you know Juan Soto is a minus five by outs above average DRS is more kind at minus one Galibertorres is bad defensively at second base no matter what system you Soto is a minus five by outs above average. DRS is more kind at minus one.

Galibert Torres is bad defensively at second base. No matter what system you like, he's minus seven outs above average, minus 11 defensive run save. So you see some big negatives on the field. Like, what do you prefer? Do you prefer a couple big strengths and then a couple of massive negatives? Or do you like the more balanced sort of view that you get from the Dodgers when you start to look at both systems? I do have like having a really good shortstop or they could catch her though

I mean if you just look at where balls go on the field and like who gets the most attempts You know who touches the ball most the catcher would you like to have a one that really blocks well and frames well Yeah, so I guess I'm I guess I'm gonna start there. I guess I will give the Yankees a slight. We're doing this again. It's also slight. I'm going to give the Yankees a slight edge in defensive value. Think I'm with you as far as where I would go, which I would prefer, but I don't think either of these teams is bad defensively. And we'll just see if an untimely error is the thing that ends up making the difference

and and swings a game that ultimately determines this series. But if there's a clear on paper advantage, it's a small one to say the least. The base running difference, there's a weighted stolen base stat over at Fangraphs and it looks at your successful stolen bases versus your caught stealing. And the Dodgers were third in that metric. The Yankees were tied for 26th. So that's the other part of these two teams when you go side by side, and there's not many of them,

where you go, whoa, that's a pretty big difference. Do you think the Dodgers will try to exploit their ability on the base paths? Wells isn't a bad defensive catcher, so it's not an easy situation overall to run, but that's an area where the Dodgers could have an edge that the Yankees have a few guys that can steal bases effectively,

but I think the Dodgers just have a few more of them. I mean, Otani at the very top, Betz, both of those guys can be very good on the base paths, and they have other guys at the bottom of the order that can also run. Well, one of the weird things is that you steal the bases off of the pitcher, not necessarily the catcher. People think of the catcher as, oh, he throws the ball the pop time, which is, you know,

what's the number of seconds it takes him to get to the ball to second base. But what has happened is that catchers over time, the difference between the best catcher pop time and the worst catcher pop time has really gotten small. So the difference between the best pitchers at getting the ball to the plate quickly and the worst, that has not coalesced in the same way. The Yankees gave up 120, the Yankees pitchers gave up 122 stolen bases in the year that was 13th in the big leagues,

but it's a little bit more important to go and look at who gave them up. And that's your answer. Your answer is they're gonna try and run wild on Marcus Stroman. 25 stolen bases allowed this year. If Stroman even gets into a game. That's right. So you can't weight that too heavily. That's the Stroman is maybe part of the bullpen or maybe a guy who eats innings in a loss, you know.

So I would say, no, that's not a big deal. Here's where it's a slightly bigger deal. They stole 21 against Carlos Rodon, which is weird because he's a lefty, but it's a slightly bigger deal. They stole 21 against Carlos Rodon, which is weird because he's a lefty, but it's the case. And they stole 15 on Garrett Cole in 95 innings. So against those two, that's gonna be what you do. And it actually, it sort of gives you a little bit of preview of how those games might go.

Rodon and Cole are maybe gonna go deeper than any other pitchers in this series, maybe go five. And if they go five and they're pitching well, they may not give up any base runners. But when they do give up a base runner, that base runner is likely to want to push the issue. That base runner is going to try and get throws over, get two throws over. If you get a third throw over, you get basically free base, you know? So they're going to try and push the issue. They're going to try and get throws over, get two throws over. If you get a third throw over, you get basically free base, you know? So they're gonna try and push the issue, they're gonna try and get out there in big leagues, they're gonna try and attract the,

because they may not have as many base runners, there may be more pressure on getting that guy to second off a walk. Get Otani to second, you know, get these guys to second. So my prediction is it may not make a big deal over much of the series, but it could make a big deal in the redone and Cole starts and that's important because That may force redone or Cole out early and they want and one of the advantages now that we go

to the pitcher breakdown is That I give the Yankees a clear advantage when it comes to starting pitching Yeah, I think when you said to break it down on a game by game basis, that's when you can kind of see it come together. Cole versus Jack Flaherty in game one, even if you're talking about 85% of Pete Garrett Cole right now because of the time he lost injury, maybe the stuff not coming all the way back,

that's still better than this version of Jack Flaherty who just recently has gone through a downturn in Velocity. I mean, he's throwing 92 right now. He is so much better when he's over 94. He gives up like 50% more homers when he's on fastballs that are under 94. So he's sitting 92 right now. And it's not with great command either.

And he's kind of a two-pitch pitcher. Sometimes he throws a curve in the sinker or something, but you're talking about a pretty easy choice for me. Yeah, so I have no pushback on that whatsoever. I'm Cole over Flaherty, I think most people would be. Game two still has not been announced by the Yankees, at least at the time of this recording. We have wondered if it's just Carlos Rodan

because he's their second best starter, or if because games three, four, and five are all lumped together without any off days in between, if they might split Cole and Rodan to maybe take some wear and tear off of their bullpen, expecting Rodan to get deeper into his start, right? You're gonna have a chance for- He's gone the deepest into his starts

in the postseason this year. Yeah. A whole five and one out. Five and one third on average. Five and a third, okay. So that's your new deep, deep into the start. I mean, if anybody is listening to this that hasn't been paying full attention,

like the days of sort of Madison Bumgarner and the complete game shutouts in the postseason are long gone. The Dodgers got 60% of their outs from the bullpen against, in the postseason so far. I mean, that's your starter going, you know, three and two thirds. Right, and I think as we look at the starting pitching breakdown,

I think if you use your relievers as much as the Dodgers do, giving something up, having an edge go to the Yankees with the starters may not matter if your bullpen is better and your bullpen is by design going to be used a lot more anyway. But as far as the game two matchup goes, given what you just said about Rodin and considering how nasty the Dodgers are against left handed pitching, They had a 121 WRC plus against lefties during the regular season. That could also make it difficult for Rodin to get deeper than five innings at the start.

We've talked about the importance of Rodin maybe getting to Shohei Otani a third time because of the lack of power lefties that they have in that bullpen. That's sort of the tipping point though. Beyond that, maybe you don't want them to see Mookie Betts a third time. Maybe you don't want him to see Teasker Hernandez

a third time, depending on how close these games are. I think when you consider five and change as sort of the ceiling, it makes you look more at Rodin versus Yamamoto, if that ends up being the game two pitching matchup, as more of a toss up. Because Yamamoto has been limited also, coming back late in the season from an injury. But I mean, Yamamoto could be a top 10 starting pitcher in Major League Baseball at this point.

He has that type of skills floor. And I think our main questions about him are more just about health and effectiveness coming off this injury. And he's passed the few tests along the way. So I think I'd give the game to edge just slightly to Yamamoto Even if it's Carlos Rodin taking the ball for the Yankees Yeah, I think so, but I will flip that again in game three if they use Clark Schmidt against Walker Bueller I'm gonna take Clark Schmidt. I think that's an that's an awkward

game three pairing for both teams because it is three in a row there and to some extent both teams will be doing a bullpen ish game for game four. So that said, I take Tlaksmit because I think he can go four. I'm not even sure Walker Bueller can go four. And one of the reasons why I say this, even though Walker Bueller just came off a great start in that great start against the Mets, everybody showed the best movement of the year. And we looked a little bit closer into it and there was a headwind. There was a wind going out to center and it was cold. Now when you're

throwing a pitch, you actually want cold weather because that's more drag, the pitch moves more. A headwind also creates more movement. So what happened in that game was Walker Bueller had the best movement on his pitches of the year. Those conditions may not show up again. And if you look back to Walker Bueller before that, he was basically bouncing the curveball in front of the plate, really focusing a lot on the cutter and not really showing a good slider. So having, he was too small of a, of a arsenal to go deep into games, poor command on the curve ball.

I think Clark Schmidt will go deeper. Clark Schmidt this year has figured out that he can throw his sinker high to lefties and he can throw his sweeper, you know, to get called strikes against lefties. And he also threw the cutter more than ever against lefties. So he's figured something out against lefties this year, threw the cutter more than ever against lefties. So he's figured something out against lefties this year.

The cutter and the curve are the basis. He also can do some stuff other than that. I like Clark Schmidt to go deeper and that's going to be important in game four where I also give the Yankees the advantage because I think they've got Luis Gil, perhaps Nestor Cortez. I take that for depth over guys like Ben Kasparis and Landon Nack You know, they have to get some guys to go four or five innings and if that's in the middle of a three-game series If three game in three days Then I have to give the Yankees the the advantage in game five as well because they haven't used their relievers as much theoretically

so You know, I think one of the things that people may not know is, you know, listeners, long time listeners of this will know that the third time you see a starting pitcher in a game, the advantage flips 100% to the batter. And that's something that, you know, if you've been watching the games, that's why they're taking out the starters earlier. What we've recently found out is the third time you see a reliever in the same series, you get the same effect. It's a familiarity effect. You see that

curveball, you know that shape, oh you see, you may be not even able to tell us exactly what you see, but you see something. Your body starts to get used to it. Oh you're like, oh that finger or that or he does this or you may not even know what it is, but you get more comfortable against those shapes the third time you see a reliever in a series you hit over 800 against them as an OPS sorry yeah as an OPS not a batting average yeah so the Dodgers did a great job of this in the Mets series they only had one endgame reliever. They, you know, Edgardo Rodriguez, the guy that they called up, he was there in losses guy.

He saw guys multiple times. He was there kind of clean up guy in their regular sort of end a bullpen, their a bullpen, their wins bullpen. Only one reliever saw a Mets player three times. It was Ryan Brazier against Pete Alonso three times. That was the only one, but the longer this series goes and the more that, you know, Walker doesn't go deep or, you know, the more that they use them in games three and four, the harder it is to finagle that grid so that you don't

see that same, you can't use Nestester Cortez against Shoya Tani three times and on the flip side, you can't use Alex Vesia against Juan Soto more than three times or even three times. So they're gonna hamstring each other. The longer this goes into, the deeper this series goes, the more the Yankees starting pitching depth matters. Yeah, I think that's probably a fair way to assess it. So we're given the starting pitching edge to the Yankees.

When we talked about the bullpens in detail on Wednesday, a lot of the quality on that list within the top five relievers in the series and the Dodgers had four of them, like Luke Weaver was the only Yankees reliever that cracked your top five, memory serves me right. You're giving some kind of edge to the Dodgers, are you giving them enough of a bump in the relief core

to say pitching's actually even, because they have the quality and the depth necessary to get the matchups they want, to overcome their planned bullpen game, and to work around the schedule. It's worked so far, this is easily the toughest test yet, given the quality of the Yankees lineup. Is the pitching a wash or is it still advantage Yankees

because they have enough surplus in the starting pitching advantage? I have a pitching plan going up on the Athletic Tomorrow where I discuss a lot of these issues and how you might plan this. And one of the things I came up with was this idea of counting the Otani outs and

Counting the Soto outs and this is the way that you can look at it Let's say your starter can go through the lineup twice. You don't want to see a third time You know so hitters get to the plate five times a game. It becomes math, right? So, okay So a hitter gets to the plate five times a game. It becomes math, right? So okay, so a hitter gets to the plate five times a game. Two times can go to my starter. That means three times are going to my pen. I want to win four games, right?

Three times four is 12. So you have 12 Otani outs and 12 Soto outs. And you don't really to see anybody three times. So the magic number is to have like basically five relievers that you could use against these guys. So that is where I think the Dodgers Brawlers will come through. They do have the righties to neutralize judge and stand.

They do, if you think about it. Ko-pek, if you you wanna talk about 12 outs from Judgenstand, you can Co-pec, Brazier, Daniel Hudson, Evan Phillips, Blake Trinen. That's five. So you can limit it to two times each, and maybe Trinen gets three. So that's doable.

It's the lefties that are a problem for both. Because if you need 12 outs against Juan Soto, you give three to Vesia, that's three. You didn't want to give him three. You give three to Banda, that's three. You didn't want to give him three. And you give three to Traynon, who throws a sinker and a slider against the lefty.

Or you go with Kopek who throws a great high fastball and it's theoretically good against lefties. Oh wait, Soto's amazing high in the zone and against people who don't have good command. That sounds like Michael Kopek. So in my plan, I suggest Daniel Hudson is the third guy that used against Soto, but it's still only three. This is where the location will start to matter too. The Dodgers did had below average location.

If you look at location plus, which is a count and pitch type judge of how good your locations are at the plate, then the playoffs we've actually seen way above average stuff in the playoffs. And that makes sense. Use your best pitchers. You don't use your worst pitchers. But we've seen slightly below average command in the playoff, and that makes sense. You use your best pitchers, you don't use your worst pitchers. But we've seen slightly below average command in the postseason. The Dodgers have been worse than that,

the Yankees have been better than that. And that'll matter when you're facing these really patient lineups. So I think there's gonna be a lot of walks in the series. And that's gonna put pressure on these guys. And you know, and then if you're trying to limit the amount of times that your reliever sees them you can do it okay for the Dodgers against Wrighties but Soto is gonna be a problem.

Otani is gonna be a problem. I think some of the depth relievers that work well in the regular season in the fifth and sixth inning against non-playoff teams a lot of times and occasionally come through against playoff teams too those are the guys that are obviously the most vulnerable. An example in the Yankees bullpen is Jake Cousins. I think Jake Cousins is filthy, he's got excellent stuff, but it's well below average command. And the Dodgers can make him pay.

What's he gonna do against Mookie Betts, you know? If he doesn't execute really well, those plate appearances could get very long and then he's in danger of making a mistake out of the plate and those hitters are, as a group, more than good enough to punish him for it, right? So that's where I just kind of look up and down that bullpen and think, there are more matchups I like where the Dodgers, even though you don't feel good in many of these situations you feel better about the Dodgers Relievers with multiple matchups that work against the Yankees then you do going the other direction

That's the thing that I think is gonna be really kind of critical as the series goes on and we saw in the usage too Up to this point think about the usage of Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes and some of the guys they've leaned really heavily on usage of Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes and some of the guys they've leaned really heavily on they just tried as much as they could to stretch an extra out or two here and there from a lot of those a relievers is there going to be a cumulative wear and tear on a guy like Weaver especially of all the relievers in the World Series Luke Weaver has been worked the most 84 innings during the regular season a bunch of appearances in the post-season that have gone more than one inning. He may get to 100 total innings for the season by

the end of the series. We saw him dust off the cutter in the ALCS, so he's added that wrinkle. He's going to need that. If they're going to use him that much again in this series, he's going to have to have everything working. Yeah, and we do know from multiple pieces of research I found one recently JC Bradbury the economist did a piece where he found that every pitch over the course of a season adds fatigue to a reliever and made some Worse, but we've also Quoted a Russell Carlton piece from baseball prospectus that found the same thing. So you're right

I mean Weaver is you know, there's a lot of fatigue there. I wonder, and this is something that hasn't been studied as hard, is like, I wonder about season to season fatigue. He has not been a reliever for long. And he has, maybe this is, he's still froggy because this is his first time doing this as a reliever and he feels good, you know? So it's, it's, it's kind of hard to parse that all the way down, but you're right. They have been used more in the postseason. They've been used more during the regular season They could be more fatigued than the Dodgers crew on the other hand You know some of these Dodgers are pitching better in the postseason Daniel Hudson. He threw

Two miles an hour softer in September. I don't know if he was just preparing It's like I know I'm gonna have to throw harder in October. I'm just gonna dial it down here. I thought maybe he been, he was injured. His fastball velocity was going down. He has seen a real spike in his stuff in the postseason. And we've seen that from some of the Dodgers relievers, but I tend to like, there's a little bit of me that's like, put away the advanced metrics, put away the numbers, put away the VELO, look at the name of the back of the jersey. We're counting on guys like Ryan Brazier,

Anthony Banda, Daniel Hudson, we're counting them as like way better than what the Yankees have, because the Dodgers have used them. But did the Dodgers use them because they thought that they were elite relievers or because they were pushing that corner because their starters weren't doing anything?

And if you, and if I told you, you know, even in September that the Dodgers is gonna go do really well because they're Anthony Bond, Daniel Hudson, and I don't know who's really stepped forward for them. That is a little bit of a surprise. I mean, Kasparius has been good on the bottom. Brazier, higher spots. Those three. Then you'd be like you're crazy those guys aren't that good. So there's still a chance that like we're counting guys as elite that aren't. A recency bias. Yeah to some extent and we can use these numbers like I can tell you stuff plus is a number

that looks at just the physical characters of the pitch and it's really useful in small samples and it's really most powerful in small samples. And I can tell you, Daniel Hudson is pitching to a 123 stuff plus and that's really good. That's better than almost anybody in the postseason not named Rodin and Weaver. So that suggests, no, he's good. But Anthony Bond is his 98 stuff plus Ryan Brazier is 110. Those three are the key. Like we're talking about the bottom of the lineups

for the Yankees and the Dodgers. The bottom of the line up quote unquote for the Dodgers on the pitching side is Brazier, Bond and Hudson. They have to come through. Last pitching matchup question I have for you is, are there tendencies that either of these teams have from a granular level, a pitch specific level

that you think can be exploited? Yeah, I mean, I think that some of it actually just makes things more difficult, but the Dodgers threw the second most foreseen fastballs in the postseason so far, and it served them well. But the Yankees have crushed fastballs this postseason and during the regular season. And it's not only the top guys. The only people who have struggled in the postseason against fastballs are Jazz and

Wells in this lineup. So you've got seven guys who crush fastballs against the Dodgers team that's coming in throwing fastballs are Jazz and Wells, you know, this lineup. So you got seven guys who crush fastballs against the Dodgers team that's coming in throwing fastballs. That's gonna be an interesting matchup. You know, another thing, the sort of a secondary part of this is, the Dodgers during the regular season,

they were better than average by every pitch type. They were so good at every pitch type, their pitchers were better than average at everything, except for sinkers and changeups. Yankees hitters, second best in baseball against sinkers, above average against changeups. Judge and Soto were the third and fifth best against a sinker in baseball this year.

Torres was eighth. And Judge in particular, you're gonna, we just put Trinen on the judge list. How to get Judge out a bunch of times Trinen Well Trinen throws 34 percent sinkers. That's a super sinker. Maybe judge is gonna see that maybe judge can handle that Anthony Banda is supposed to go up against Soto. He's our Soto guy. He was our second Soto guy He throws 24 percent sinkers and Soto was fifth best against the sinker this year and He throws 24% sinkers and Soto was fifth best against the sinker this year.

And Gleyber Torres was eighth best against sinkers and Ryan Brazier throws 16% sinker. So it's like, Oh, that's, that's like the subset of the fastball problem. You know, it kind of goes the other way too. The Yankees have thrown the second most changeups in baseball in the postseason this year. The Yankees have Tommy Canley who's throwing 90% changeups this postseason, but you also have Luke Weaver who you might circle and say, okay, he's going to get me three of my O'Tonnie outs because he's got a good changeup. The Dodgers were the best team in baseball against the changeup this year. Te'Oscar was the second best bat in baseball against them. Freeman was 11th, Ohtani was 14th. Even

Pahez and Enrique would have been top 15 if they had had more played appearances. So Tommy Cantley, who's been really good, he's been kind of the, oh, we needed somebody like this to step up for the Yankees, right? You may not want to throw them against Teoscar and you may not want to throw them as much as the series, or you may want to tell them, hey, dude, you got to throw something else at least once or twice Even if as we discovered yesterday with Trevor May on this podcast, even if it's possible Tommy Connelly actually has two change-ups It's still going to be an issue for the Yankees to think about is that this is a really good change-up hitting team So that's gonna lead to some

small Things really okay judge hits 700 against sweepers good change-up hitting team. So that's gonna lead to some small things where you're like, okay, Judge hits 700 against sweepers. I don't really want to throw Evan Phillips against Judge a bunch, right? And then you're gonna say, okay, Teasca Hernandez slugged like 800 against change-ups, and I don't really want to throw Tommy Canley against Teasca Hernandez. But you're also the back of the head, you're like, oh, well, I don't want to, I don't want to three times. Okay. I definitely want to do four times. God.

So you're like, it's a math problem. And that's what the front offices are doing right now. They're sitting down with the manager, with the pitching coach, with the analysts, and they're, they're trying to do that grid where they're like, how can we not have them see our guys too often have the a bullpen ready, not have Teoscar see Conley, not see have judge see Phillips. You know, they're like, they're trying to do this. And because it's so complicated, that's led to a more rigid pitching plan than I think

fans want to acknowledge. That'll lead to decisions where you're surprised as a fan. This guy is dealing. Carlos Rodones is dealing. Why is he coming out of the game? Walker Bueller is dealing. Why is he coming out of the game? And one of the most fundamental pieces of research that has been replicated over and over again that I just have to tell you is true and is behind a lot of this is there's no such thing as dealing. It doesn't exist and I know that's hard to believe but you can dice it any time you any way you want. You can take you can take guys who are doing great and look at what they did in the next inning.

Average. You can take guys were going good. Average. You can take guys who are doing great and look at what they did in the next inning, average. You can take guys who are going good, average. You can take guys with the fastball velocities up, average. There's no such thing as dealing. And so the only thing that matters is matchups and getting the right matchups that you want. And that's the grid. And so they have a grid

and they're gonna stick mostly to it. The only big difference will be what happens in the score. Yeah, if you have a lead, you protect it. Maybe you let someone go deeper than you would because it's one fewer look at one of your relievers. If you're up three or four, oh, okay, he's pitching well enough. We've got a big enough lead.

We'll go until there's trouble. We'll go until there's traffic. Some of my evidence for this is the Mets Dodgers series where there was blowouts, right? What happened in the wins for the Dodgers is our A bullpen according to the grid, exactly what we want, nobody sees anyone three times, bang, bang, bang, right? What happens to the losses?

Hey, Henriquez, honeywell. Come on, guys. Yeah, you have one or two guys on the roster that are just gonna try and get five or six innings so nobody else gets out there. That's the chaos that I think enters the series though is if your A relievers get hit, if you lose the matchups you want and you can lose the matchups you want. I think if this conversation is highlighting anything, it's the margins are so slim, if

your command isn't there, if the hitter just puts a good swing, if they just anticipate what you're going to do really well, if they have the book that you have on them and they're prepared, they are good enough to do damage. Tanner Bybee missed his spot against John Coller Stanton by about 10 inches. That's that's about average for missing your spot in baseball and it was it was that big homer. Yeah, Stanton hit the ball with 120 miles an hour. Yeah, so another way of putting this is like some of this is gonna be impossible. So let's say you're facing you're facing Shelly O'Tonnie, you know, and you've got a good split finger. Oh, well, Shelly O'Tonnie slugged 1000 against split fingers this year.

Also, you're gonna go to your curveball. Ah, Shelly O'Tonnie slugged 882 against curveballs this year. Oh, so maybe you just fill up the zone with sliders. That's a good idea. 826 against sliders. Okay, well, you can't do all that and also be going to get 639 against four-steam fastballs. Oh, but I've got a good changeup. 621 against changeups. Well, you wouldn't expect a sinker, would you? 518 against sinkers. Well, I'm going to get in with the cutter. 508 slugging against the cutter. Oh, oh, I found something.

He slugged zero against knuckle balls. There it is. There's your hack. Just throw it away. Oh wait, no one throws those. Yeah. I mean, so to some extent, we try to set up these things. You try to set up a grid, you try to set up a plan, and then maybe just excellence will

shine through. You know, strength on strength. You know, maybe Otani will just take that best pitch that you thought. Nester Cortez has a good record against Otani so far, and it's lefty on lefty. It should be a good matchup and then Otani says no, man I'm just gonna hit you a grand slam right now or yeah Michael Kopec splits against Aaron Judge where he's held him hit list so far and he's got a bunch of strikeouts against them

Well, he missed and judge hit it 430 feet So that split didn't matter and that changed everything Alright, so all of this considered who wins the series How many games does it go and who ends up winning the MVP honors? In order for these I think all of these things need to be true in order for my prediction to be true I think in order for the Yankees to win it has to go deep because then that they're Starting pitching matters more and they're Starting to see the Dodgers bullpen three and four times, right?

So I'm thinking six or seven and I'm thinking that the Yankees and I'm thinking Nobody can get Soto out Okay, that's that's my deal. So your Yankees in Six you're saying with Soto. I think Carlos Yankees in six, you're saying, with Soto? I think Carlos Rodon in my plan ends up pitching game six, I forget. Yeah, you'll get a repeat of game two, most likely in game six from a matchup perspective.

Yeah, so Yankees in six, Juan Soto is the MVP. All right, I'm on the Dodger side. Dodgers in six six same number of games I think Yoshinobu Yamamoto shoves twice in this series and it ends up being a huge day of rest He can do two and six. Yep. I think he'll have five days rest between those two starts Both of those starts are gonna be at Dodger Stadium not Yankee Stadium. I think that bodes well Those starts are gonna be at Dodger Stadium, not Yankee Stadium, I think that bodes well. So I think Yamamoto comes through.

If he pitches like 12 innings of one run ball, I think he would get the MVP maybe. There's a shot at it. Maybe even because of 10, that might jump off the page. If the rest of the series is such a slugfest, we see a pitcher come through at 10 really great innings, 10 Ks, that's my narrative, that's how they did it because if Yamamoto comes through in those two starts,

it takes pressure off the pen at critical times. They only have to win two other games. Yep, and I just, I think that's, so much of this series is gonna be such a gridlock. I'll say for my MVP, it's so hard to go against Otani, but how about Max Muncie for an MVP? Just he's gonna wait everybody out. Mm-hmm, couple of clutch homers.

We'll say Max Muncie for an MVP prediction for me on this one. So opposite sides, a lot of different ways this could play out, and guess what? For every Corey Seeger MVP in the World Series, there's a Steve Pearce. We've had Corey Seeger twice, we've had Steve Pearce types two or three times in the last few years.

We're gonna be here all week talking about it, breaking it down, looking at stories from outside the World Series as well, so be sure to follow us as you watch this series. Join our Discord, the link is in the show description. You can chat along during each game of the series, as I mentioned up top. Really looking forward to this one getting underway.

Give us a follow on Twitter, Eno is at EnoSaris. I am at Derrick and Ryper. The pod is at Rates and Barrels. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.