KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Short of Patrick Mahomes throwing a first pitch to Travis Kelce while Taylor Swift cheers from a box in a Royals jacket, what MLB wants most is a Dodgers-Yankees World Series.
Sure, the league will say it loves all 30 of its children equally.
But here in reality land, the league is pleased when the sport re-energizes fan bases in places like Detroit and Kansas City with surprise appearances in the playoffs and some early-round surprises.
However, MLB is in the business of business. That is why you are seeing the name of a German apparel company on every postseason batting helmet as ridiculous as that might look. And it is why – even if they don’t say it in their outdoor voices – Dodgers-Yankees is the dream for Rob Manfred and Co. considering the concern about national relevance and what the on-air financial future of the product looks like.
Thus, MLB sure could use a blockbuster. And in this sport, at this time, there is no way quite to merge the nostalgia that MLB relies upon with the potential cha-ching of the present than Dodgers-Yankees.
The league can sell lots of black-and-white video of Yogi Berra jumping into Don Larsen’s arms and Brooklyn’s shining moment in 1955. In theory, the sport can get some of the same New York-New York grainy imagery from a Subway Series. But what it can’t get is the whole country to care quite as much as it would if it could offer not only the historic coastal superpowers, but also a clash of the two most outsized stars in the sport – Shohei Ohtani vs Aaron Judge.
Because let’s face it, whether it is Hollywood or Broadway, you’d also love a project that has co-stars as huge as Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Gerrit Cole and Juan Soto.
But if this is heading toward MLB’s ideal, it is wheezing there more than breezing there.
These have been dramatic, traumatic, thrilling playoffs to date fueled by the lower seed winning three of four wild-card round series and three of four lower seeds taking at least a two-games-to-one lead in the Division Series.
For most of this season, the Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies and Orioles were viewed as a Big Four. The Orioles, though, managed just one run in two games against the Royals in Round 1. The Phillies did not weather the OMG magic carpet ride of the Mets in the Division Series.
The Dodgers already have survived one elimination game in San Diego and will face a do-or-die for both teams on Friday night. The Yankees had endured three grueling affairs against a Royals team that – among other items – had two different seven-game losing streaks from Aug. 28 onward. Nevertheless, the Yanks were the only one of the top four seeds to gain a two-games-to-one advantage.
These outcomes are going to renew further inspection of the rust-or-rest debate in the current playoff format, where the the top two seeds avoid the peril of a best-of-three series, but also fall out of the routine of playing near daily with five-ish days off between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the Division Series. The bye is better. But it does come with a disruption that after several seasons of data now is hard to ignore – for example, the Mets are the third straight NL No. 6 seed to reach at least the Championship Series.
It also is hard to miss that the Dodgers, Yankees, Orioles and Phillies all peaked in the first half. Baltimore struggled so much late that it fell into a wild card despite the Yankees’ meh play while winning the AL East.
Yet, it also is hard to miss – especially for the smaller markets that will scream this come time for the next collective bargaining agreement – the teams that acquired Ohtani and Soto last offseason ended up the No. 1 seeds in each league.
Still, neither feels like it is hopping from lily pad to lily pad this postseason toward that MLB dreamscape World Series.
The Dodgers invested more than $1 billion in the offseason, notably on Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez. But Glasnow is part of basically an entire pitching staff on the injured list this October and Freeman is hobbling between being able to play and not on a bum ankle. And the Padres, who went on a spree of their own to collect stars, have a fearlessness (and loathing) with the Dodgers that plays well.
The Yankees are far healthier than the Dodgers. And through three games, they have not been harmed by who has been hurt. Oswaldo Cabrera and Jon Berti had played well in place of Anthony Rizzo. And since Nestor Cortes would have been relegated to the bullpen, he hardly could have made the group better through three games – one unearned run in 13 2/3 innings.
The Yankee problem had been a lack of quality and length from their starters and minimal timely hitting – 10-for-56 (.179) with men on base and 3-or-25 (.120) with runners in scoring position.
Still, the 12th-ever Dodgers-Yankees World Series remained in dreamy play for MLB. Unless, you believe the league would rather try to sell the second-ever Padres-Tigers Fall Classic instead.
