LOS ANGELES — Before the 2001 World Series pitting the Arizona Diamondbacks against the New York Yankees, Curt Schilling colorfully dismissed the idea of having to deal with “mystique and aura” when facing the Yankees.
But there’s another pairing of powerful forces at work in this year’s World Series matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees.
Power and patience.
Both teams have built their lineups around those twin pillars.
“Yeah, very similar,” Yankees DH Giancarlo Stanton said. “That’s what we’ve said all year is the keys to success. We both do them very well. That’s what it’s about. That’s what takes you deep into important games, deep into the playoffs and ultimately here.
“The juggernauts are here now.”
Indeed, the Yankees and Dodgers had the two lowest chase rates in baseball this season (the Milwaukee Brewers matched the Dodgers). Theses two teams had the most walks in the majors and finished first and third in home runs (the Baltimore Orioles slipping into second place). They were second and third in on-base percentage (behind the Arizona Diamondbacks), first and fourth in slugging percentage (the Dodgers on top).
“It’s the power-patience thing,” Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler said of the fuel that drives both offenses. “Guys that take balls and hit strikes for homers.
“Both of these organizations are kind of ahead of the curve in terms of development and scouting and things like that to find players that can do both of those things. I feel like our two teams are as similar, especially offensively, as you’re going to see.”
Max Muncy and Juan Soto are the very model of the modern embodiment of those two principles. Muncy has a career on-base percentage of .352 and four seasons with at least 35 home runs. Soto is the active leader with a career OBP of .421. He has hit 27 home runs or more in five of his six full seasons in the big leagues and led his league in walks three times.
“At the end of the day, the whole point of hitting is you want to swing at strikes and you want to take balls. That’s really just the most basic philosophy you can have,” Muncy said. “It’s obviously a lot harder to do than to just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to swing at strikes and take balls.’ But that’s something that we’ve preached for a long time here, and we finally got a group buying into it.
“It’s shown. We’ve had a lot of guys on base a lot of time (in the postseason). There’s a lot of chances to score runs and ultimately that’s the key to winning the game.”
You can preach it – but can you teach it?
“Some guys you try to teach it to and they lose their aggressiveness,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said to that. “They go up there trying not to swing at bad pitches and that’s a very passive mindset and you end up not hitting the pitch you’re supposed to hit. I think not chasing is a result of being so fixated on what you’re looking to hit and then as a byproduct you don’t swing at the bad ones, so to speak.
“When you have this broad focus at the plate just trying to hit the ball in general, pitchers are too good, you can’t cover it all. I think when you hyper-focus on whatever plan you have, as a byproduct you don’t swing at bad pitches. Then sure enough, if it’s four balls before three strikes, you’re walking to first base, but you didn’t set out to walk.”
Pitchers in this World Series will be walking that thin line most dangerously when facing the Big Three on each team – Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman on the Dodgers, Stanton, Soto and Aaron Judge on the Yankees.
“Oh, there’s going to be focus on the big three in each lineup,” Yankees pitcher Carlos Rodon said. “There has to be a ton. You have to respect those guys. They need to be on your mind. They’re going to be pitched smart.”
But this Series might be decided by how much power and patience the supporting casts for either team shows.
The Dodgers drew 42 walks as a team in their six-game NLCS victory over the New York Mets, the bottom half of the lineup turning it over to the MVP trio at the top often enough to score an NLCS record 46 runs.
The Yankees’ big three (Soto, Stanton and Judge) combined for 10 of the 13 home runs the Bronx Bombers have hit in their nine postseason games. But supporting cast members Anthony Volpe (.459) and Gleyber Torres (.400) have been on base often enough to score 15 runs between them.
“If you look at the NLCS, Tommy Edman was the MVP. Max Muncy got on base 15 times in a row or something like that,” Buehler said. “This isn’t the NBA. The ‘Big Three’ thing is real. We have three of the best players in the world. They have three of the best players in the world. But at the end of the day, it’s a 9-on-9, 15-on-15, 26-on-26 game.”
