World Series
N.Y. Yankees +117 over L.A. Dodgers

Pinnacle +117 ET365 +110 Sportsinteraction +110 888Sport +110

Posted October 25 before Game 1. Odds subject to change.

World Series - Series Wager

Yankees +110 over the Dodgers

The Yankees, rather infamously, have not captured an American League pennant since 2009, arguably ceding the throne of the junior circuit’s big bad to some sanitation workers from Houston. If anything the Dodgers’ struggles are even better-publicized: The legacy of what might unquestionably be the most successful multi-season run of the Wild Card era is blemished by an apparently endless well of postseason flubs. The team’s one World Series title in the 10-year Andrew Friedman era will always bear the stigma of a shortened pandemic season, rightly or wrongly diminished despite having required more tournament wins than any title before or since. These are reputational hazards that will only ever be negated with a win in this series, an eventuality for which both front offices have been laying the groundwork for quite some time. The Dodgers moved heaven and earth to bring Shohei Ohtani into the city proper, the Yankees parted with a lot of prospect capital for a singular year with Juan Soto, the sort of rental that more befits a New York club from 20 years back. None of that means others have to want success for these teams, though.

In some ways, the outcomes of this postseason have served to reinforce a status quo in October where it was beginning to appear that none existed. Particularly after the expansion of the postseason field in the current Competitive Bargaining Agreement by a further two teams, to 12 contenders, chaos reigned in the postseason. No matter how dominant a club, there were no guarantees that the transition into fall wouldn’t strip them of whatever constituting traits defined and carried them. Except for the 60-game regular season from 2020, no team that posted the regular season’s best record has managed to take home the Commissioner’s Trophy since the 2018 Red Sox. They are the most recent team to coast through the regular season and then dreamwalk through October, making it appear that there was never any other conclusion but a Boston championship. The notion appeared to be going extinct.

It’s unclear whether that archetype—that of a squad so head-and-shoulders above the rest that competition seems merely a formality, in retrospect—is going to make a comeback. To be sure, though, this isn’t the year for it. Were it, there would only be one team being presented in such a fashion, rather than two near-equals. The Dodgers remained MLB’s best team this year, but the gap wasn’t nearly so wide as it had been. There was a perfectly fair reason for that, to which we’ll return, but the outcome remains the same: Despite all their efforts, Los Angeles looked mortal for much of this year, flirting with giving away the division to San Diego up until the very last week of the season. The Yankees, too, took pains over the preceding offseason to position themselves as a formidable cohort after failing in their goals in prior years; bringing in Juan Soto was as short-term oriented as New York has been in this latter age of the Cashman epoch, a clear causal response to the franchise’s second fourth-place finish of the Wild Card era. The plan to wrest the division back from the insurgent Orioles bore fruit, and the Yankees captured the one seed on their side of the bracket, but it was a close thing.

And yet here they both are: The Dodgers and Yankees didn’t necessarily experience the smooth ride and easy landing they might have hoped for after ownership ponied up for the best batters the league has to offer, but they are nevertheless here. They were the best clubs in their respective leagues, entered October with the best odds of winning a title—18.4% for New York at the regular season’s close, 19.6% for Los Angeles—and delivered on that advantage. With the 2024 season having been the first in a decade not to feature a 100-win club (again, excluding 2020; one wonders why the Dodgers have had trouble convincing people that title counts), there might be room for reflection on why the potential end of the super-team era coincided with the first postseason in a half-decade to essentially play out according to seeding. The problem: That would require preferring the outcomes of this October over all the other ones, rather than just accepting it as another data point, a reminder that sometimes the random number generator pulls out the least random of the random options. Playoff baseball is still nasty, brutish, and short, but for years everyone has been reveling in the knock-on effect of that reality on both the Dodgers and Yankees. This year, things worked out okay atop the food chain.

Neither team is playing at full strength at this point, but that appears to be an even more certain fixture of October baseball than upsets; it’s just impossible, seemingly more so by the year, to make it this far without significant injuries—to say nothing of the minor maladies like the two broken fingers Anthony Rizzo will this series continue to play through. The Dodgers tried to build a rotation that would hold up to the tumults of the regular season and the pressure of the postseason, but Emmet Sheehan, Dustin May, River Ryan, Tyler Glasnow, Gavin Stone, Tony Gonsolin, and Clayton Kershaw are all down and out, leaving Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Walker Buehler. The bullpen will be frenetically called upon, both as a bullpen and as a fourth starter, from Blake Treinen all the way down to Ben Casparius. The Yankees can boast a relatively intact rotation, at least, with Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Clarke Schmidt, and Luis Gil prepared to start games and keep going back out once the second inning comes around (one might not learn such things, observing Michael Kopech). Nestor Cortes also remains a possibility to return to action, though the southpaw’s insistence that he and the team have “weighed the consequences” implies that it’s no sure thing he will be ready, though his willingness can’t be impeached.

The lineups, at least, will be at something approaching full strength, if we’re willing to discount Freddie Freeman’s bum ankle in a similar fashion to Rizzo’s rizzless ring fingers (they’re all ring fingers if you’re a Yankee). The Dodgers lack Miguel Rojas, the Yankees DJ LeMahieu. The cores of what were the league’s best and second-best lineups—DRC+ had the Yankees at an unfair 118 and the Dodgers at a distant 112—are here and functioning. Ohtani silenced any ludicrous doubts with nine walks and eight hits in the NLCS; Mookie Betts had six extra-base hits in as many Championship Series games; the only way Max Muncy could be better in this series is if he actually amasses more walks than at-bats, rather than just threatening to. For the Yankees…well, Aaron Judge isn’t exactly performing to the terrifying standard he’s set whenever available in the past few regular seasons, but Giancarlo Stanton appears to have reinitiated his contact with the divine at the same time. Since the Yankees are here and there’s no one who doesn’t believe Judge can turn things around on a dime, they’re probably perfectly fine with the tradeoff.

One might point out that Austin Wells has been a nonfactor at the plate, but Jazz Chisholm and Alex Verdugo have been scarcely better, freed from the caul of the tools of ignorance. The Dodgers haven’t really weathered any massive underperformance on the offensive end—of their starters in the decisive game of their preceding series, Will Smith’s .605 OPS was the lowest. Teoscar Hernández hasn’t been as electric as the rest of the lineup’s top half, but it scarcely seems to matter after the pair each reached base and scored twice to claim the NL pennant. Each of these lineups is frightening, and they’ve spent the month reminding their opponents of it: The Dodgers averaged nearly eight runs per game across their championship series; the Yankees couldn’t match that outpouring but did not plate fewer than five in any game of their five.

The phrase “pitching wins championships” (or its cousin, “defense wins championships”) is too non-offensive to genuinely offend; it’s an observation as useless as “a penny saved is a penny earned.” Pitching wins championships. Pitching loses championships. Pitching bears on championships. A penny saved is a penny. By spending theirs, though, some 70 billion in Los Angeles’ case, the Yankees and Dodgers guaranteed a World Series that’s only about pitching in the way that it’s not about pitching, only about pennies in the way that it isn’t, an antithesis to much of the collected wisdom and expectation about what October baseball is and means and we’re thankful we get to watch it.

Do we love the Yanks? No, we don’t but since L.A’s pitching staff is a mess, we’ll take the Yanks to win the series at a plus price.

Sherwood

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For straight bets, if the team you back to win goes 17 Points ahead at any stage during the game, BET365 will pay out your bet in full regardless of whether the opposition comes back to win the game.

For parlays and Same Game Parlays, if a team you have backed goes 17 Points ahead, this selection will be marked as won within My Bets, with the remaining selections left to run.

Here is a wager we were paid out early on that would eventually lose. 

Sharkies

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Our Pick

N.Y. Yankees +117 (Risking 2 units - To Win: 2.34)