2024 World Series Gameday Thread

Get this over quick so we can start those "Five days after the World Series ends" hot stove timers

The Red Sox - who, you will all recall, totally blew the offseason by not signing Jordan Montgomery - had a better starting rotation than both these teams by both WAR and ERA.

Jordan Montgomery stuff aside, the Yankees ability to get better length from their depth options was a big thing - New York starters threw 32 more innings than Red Sox starters, despite the fact that Crawford/Houck/Bello threw 21 more than Rodon/Cortes/Stroman. Part of that was Cole coming back, but the Yankees ability to get replacement-level innings out of guys and put less pressure on their bullpen seems to be a big deal. Maybe the Boston relievers would've gotten worn down anyway, but the number of times the Red Sox needed to cobble together a game was likely a factor. I think there's something to the idea that a bullpen game gives you a better chance to win a specific game than using your #7 starter in a traditional way but makes it harder to win other games down the road. In September in the pennant race, play for the one win, but in June I think it'd be better to just call up Jason Alexander and try to get five innings from him.

(Also, using a runs allowed version of WAR [bWAR] puts the Yankees starters ahead of Boston's).

None of this applies to the Dodgers, of course, who had all of their pitchers fall out of a helicopter and they just hit and played defense so well that it didn't matter. Their top two pitchers by innings broke by September, just the un-Dodger-est successful Dodgers team I can imagine.

Mookie
Kiké
Brasier
Kopech
Joe Kelly

Vs.

Verdugo
Rizzo

I know where I land.

Time to put away the old phrase "whoever wins the off-season, doesn't mean they're going to the world series."

These two teams had the two biggest off-seasons and have the highest payrolls in 2024.

I'm not saying they've had a lucky season; I'm saying they've been incredibly lucky with how their free agents have worked out for them. (I didn't even mention Shohei because that's not exactly a "luck" case, but 9 WAR as a DH... that might be the biggest overperformance of them all.)

I think those are the two most impressive, actually. Teoscar's arc looked like a classic parabola heading straight into the sea through age 30; but he bounced back to have the second-best wRC+ and WAR totals of his career. And players just shouldn't be maintaining a peak through age 35 like Freeman is. JD Martinez in 2023, too, come to think of it. Somehow the aging curve just doesn't apply in Los Angeles. [enter Hollywood botox joke here]

I think you have severely conflated different arguments haha, I don’t think anyone was saying those things about the Ohtani or Soto deals

If you had told people November 2021 that one of 32 year old Freddie Freeman and 28 year old Trevor Story was about to have the best three year run of their career and the other was going to play just okay and miss 2/3rds of their games it wouldn't have been like extremely obvious which was which.

My prediction is Dodgers in 6 with Teoscar Hernández as WS MVP. But I think it's a pretty close matchup and it wouldn't shock me at all if the Yankees win it all.

If Soto signs with MFY in the offseason my guess is this won’t be the last time you see them vs the Dodgers in the World Series. I wish there was an option to have neither team win but you have to hope the dodgers win. I understand both teams got lucky with injuries but they both have superstars, something that the Sox need to achieve over the next couple of years. Who knows, Roman Anthony might be the Sox version of Juan Soto in 2028.