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How do you pitch to Shohei Ohtani? Scouts break down Dodgers-Yankees World Series
On paper, there isn’t much that separates the Dodgers and New York Yankees.
Both teams had the best records in their leagues. Both are led by the consensus favorites for most valuable player. Both have superstar casts bolstered by important depth pieces. And both enter the World Series feeling optimistic about their chances.
Beyond the brand-name franchises and big-name players taking the field, that’s the dynamic that should make this matchup most interesting.
So, to decipher the strengths and weaknesses of both clubs, as well as the factors that could determine the best-of-seven series, The Times spoke with two rival major league scouts with extensive knowledge of each team who spoke under condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.
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Some answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Key matchup
Scout A pointed to the matchup between the Dodgers lineup, which is leading the postseason in runs, and Yankees pitching staff, which had the lowest postseason ERA of any of the four league championship teams.
“Two things stand out to me,” Scout A said. “Can the Yankees throw enough strikes as a staff? And will the Dodgers lineup wear down the Yankees' pitching as a whole? The Yankees have stuff, but the Dodgers have as deep a lineup as I’ve seen in a while. The fact that the Dodgers don’t go out of the zone, they take really good at-bats from top to bottom, and they’re balanced — we’ll see how New York’s staff does with that.”
Indeed, throwing strikes has been no easy task against the Dodgers. The team has 55 walks this postseason and trails only the Yankees in chase rate, swinging at pitches outside the strike zone just 25.2% of the time. And when they’ve gotten pitches to hit, the Dodgers have done damage, posting a .295 average and .527 slugging percentage on pitches over the plate, both playoff bests among teams that advanced past the wild-card round.
“The Dodgers lineup is so deep,” Scout A said, comparing it to the Yankees lineups of their late-90s dynasty. “So you have to compete in the strike zone. You have to get them out in the strike zone. You have to make quality pitches on the corners, and at the top and bottom of the zone too.”
Scout B saw things similarly and pointed to one player who could swing the series: Yankees ace Gerrit Cole.
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“That’s the one clear, definitive advantage that the Yankees have over the Dodgers,” Scout B said. “They have the singular best starter in the series, and he’s gonna throw twice. So if two out of seven games, they can get him to do what he’s more than capable of doing, that’s going to give them a huge advantage.”
Doing that, however, will require a meticulous game plan from Cole, Scout B said. He noted that Cole is similar to San Diego Padres right-hander Dylan Cease, tending to bully hitters with an upper-90s fastball that is complemented by a couple of breaking pitches.
During the National League Division Series, Cease was punished by the Dodgers for fastballs he left in hittable places. For Cole, limiting the Dodgers with an array of secondary stuff could be key.
“One of my concerns with him has always been, he can have a tendency to go after hitters with his fastball. That’s kind of his mentality,” Scout B said. “But he’s gonna have to keep them off balance. And he can do that. And he can locate better than a guy like Cease. So he’s gonna really, really have to pitch.”
How to limit the Yankees’ bats
The Yankees’ lineup is no walk in the park, either.
While the Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, the Yankees have their own big three in Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton.
And this October, there hasn’t been a better trio. Soto and Stanton have had monstrous postseasons, combining for eight home runs and 19 RBIs. Judge rebounded from a slow start, belting a couple of key home runs in the American League Championship Series.
A key question: Whether the Dodgers can replicate their bullpen-heavy pitching plan, or their consistent-enough starting pitching production, from the first two rounds.
“Can you win a World Series basically running multiple bullpen games?” Scout A asked. “That Game 3-4-5 pocket is where it really shows up.”
When it comes to attacking that trio, Scout A put Soto and Judge in a different category of difficulty than Stanton.
“You can spin it away on them, but you have to speed them up inside, you have to make them uncomfortable in the box,” Scout A said. “If you throw too many breaking balls and leave them in the zone, Judge kills in-zone breaking balls. They’re big guys with long arms and want to get extended. If you go fastball away, in-zone breaking balls, it goes right into their swing paths.”
Stanton, on the other hand, can be more susceptible to sweepers, having slugged just .349 against the pitch — a specialty of several key Dodgers relievers — this season.
“No question, he struggles with the sweeper,” Scout A said. “But you need to go hard in to earn that pitch.”
Scout B’s bigger question in regards to Dodgers pitching was the bullpen. The availability of top left-hander Alex Vesia could be crucial, especially against the left-handed-hitting Soto. Scout B also pointed to Michael Kopech as a potentially key piece, noting concerns about his occasional lack of command over the latter parts of the season.
“The ability of that bullpen to continue doing what they’re doing — obviously, injury-wise a big variable is Vesia; but performance-wise, a big variable is Kopech,” Scout B said.
Scout A made another observation, noting that beyond the Yankees’ big bats, the rest of their lineup is “much more pitchable” than the Dodgers.
“People don’t talk about how good [Max] Muncy is, and he hits fifth or sixth,” Scout A said. “[Tommy] Edman versus a left-handed pitcher is really good … As a team, they can handle right/left matchups and they’re balanced, all the way down.”
Other important factors
The Yankees will have to devise their own plan for Ohtani, who has a .286 batting average, .934 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, three home runs and 12 RBIs in the playoffs.
When Ohtani has looked susceptible, it is when he chases breaking stuff away or gets beat up and in with velocity.
“I would probably just try to live down and away and keep him in the park,” Scout A said. “He likes the ball in and can cover up. So I would go down and away, show him up, show him in, try to get him to hit the ball off the end of the bat, get him leaking down and away.”
Scout B noted another way the Yankees could try to disrupt him.
“You got to move his feet,” Scout B said. “That’s true with any hitter, but especially him. It’s amazing that people don’t put him on the ground more.”
There’s also the uncertainty of Freeman’s ankle injury. Freeman told reporters this week he should be “a 100% go” for Game 1 on Friday, thanks to the week of rest he was afforded. But if his ankle continues to limit him — like it did in his one-for-15 slump to end the NLCS — it could negate some of the Dodgers’ firepower.
“If Freeman is healthy and sound, and whatever production they can get out of him, I would give a slight advantage to the Dodgers lineup,” Scout B said. “But he’s got to be there.”
In the field, the Yankees also could try to stress Freeman in a way the Padres and New York Mets didn’t, by bunting to him and forcing him to be more involved defensively.
But, Scout A noted, “They don’t have a bunch of guys who bunt. Maybe [Jazz] Chisolm or [Anthony] Volpe … but it’s not in their DNA to do that. And good luck bunting off these pitchers, with their stuff. You don’t want to ask someone to do something they’re not used to doing.”
Neither scout saw much of an edge in the managerial department either, emphasizing the adept analytical departments both between Dave Roberts and Aaron Boone are bolstered by.
“There are probably no two organizations that have as much information as these two,” Scout A said. “Neither one is sitting there using their gut feel to make decisions. Every move, pitching move, lineup decision, how long they stay with a pitcher, are all calculated and preplanned.”
World Series picks?
Scout A: “If I gambled, I would put 50 cents on the Dodgers. Their lineup is so good. And they’re experienced.”
Scout B: “The Yankees have the advantage as far as starting pitchers go. Even if all of the Dodgers perform to their ability, I would still argue that Gerrit Cole is better than [Jack] Flaherty and [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto. And then another huge part of that hinges on [Yankees No. 2 starter] Carlos Rodón … The lineups are fairly equal. The Dodgers have the advantage in the bullpen. But I’ll take the Yankees in six.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
