No team karmically deserves a championship, though that sentiment is especially true this year. Neither the Dodgers nor the Yankees chalk up kindly on the moral scale of historic suffering, but on paper, they can make up for it by promising entertainment for the masses: a powerhouse vs. powerhouse matchup laden with stars. What, then, to make of the fact that one of the purported powerhouses not only currently resembles an ant, but one of those types of ant whose primary defense mechanism is literally exploding?
After falling to a 2-0 series deficit to the Dodgers to open the World Series, the Yankees spent their first game at home making their eventual 4-2 loss feel like a blowout. Now, as per the laws of arithmetic, the Yankees are down 3-0. The sweep alarms are going off! The spaceship is steering itself directly into the sun! The Dodgers have continued getting their postseason success from relatively unexpected corners. The "Three Batters Away"-style FOX chyrons for Shohei Ohtani (though also used for other stars, such as Juan Soto and Bryce Harper) weren't paying off even before people started making slow-motion videos of Ohtani's backpack-wearing range of motion. Then again, the Dodgers haven't needed them to. After all: Freddie Freeman.
While "more unexpected" might be doing a lot of work to describe Freeman's heroics in the context of his broader career, the man had a bum ankle and zero extra-base hits through the first two rounds of the playoffs. The expectations were low, through no real fault of his own. What that analysis failed to account for was that Freeman would simply turn into a home run-hitting machine—there's no need to run on a bum ankle if you take a leisurely home run trot. (Freeman said in the immediate postgame interview that free days before the series gave him time to heal up and practice his swing. Yet another win for the well-rested lobby.)
Freeman's first-inning homer gave him a streak of five straight games with a home run in the World Series, carrying over a two-game streak from his days with the Atlanta Braves. He combined with the Dodgers pitching staff to put the game out of reach in the first inning: After the homer, it seemed all that was left to learn was whether Walker Buehler had it that night. He did.
None of these facts are inexplicable. This is what a well-assembled team does, if enough things click. But they still do fall under the lenient umbrella of "more unexpected." The Dodgers have found three reliable starters despite having gone into the postseason with one and a half and another half, give or take half a starter. Post-TJ-surgery Buehler had a rough regular season; Yoshinobu Yamamoto was streaky but impressive, though he was also plagued by injury. It lends an uncanny effect to the Dodgers' 3-0 series lead, even if that lead is hardly undeserving. I guess Tommy Edman can be on base 90 percent of the time, but a 3-0 lead without one Ohtani homer? And, on that subject, a Yankees World Series without an Aaron Judge home run?
Judge has reached the unfortunate point this series at which putting the ball in play is a good sign, and a walk is a great one. After last night's game, he has seven strikeouts and one hit in 12 at-bats, figures made all the worse-looking by Juan Soto often being on base for these at-bats. It is a quintessential cold streak at the wrong time, and thanks to the current 3-0 state of it all, Judge has little time to turn it around. Not that it's all his fault. If Mark Leiter Jr. is out there in the third inning, something else has gone terribly wrong; if Giancarlo Stanton, partner-in-crabmeat with Freddie Freeman, is being sent around third to make the final out at home, things are breaking down terribly.
A win of sorts for the Yankees is that they managed to keep Game 3 close enough for Michael Kopech to come out in the ninth inning. A loss for the Yankees is that, even with Alex Verdugo's two-run, short-porch homer and attempted vibes-recapturing celebration in the bottom of the ninth, the possibility of a comeback was never real. Verdugo's home run came with two outs, and Gleyber Torres grounded out to lose the game. And thus, a 4-2 blowout.
Though it would be unfair to hold every single game in the series to the standard set by the first, it would be nice for the Yankees to at least put up a fight. Game 4 will be their best shot at doing so: Though the Dodgers have mustered three starters, they've failed to conjure a fourth, and will be trotting out the bullpen for Game 4. There are some caveats. The reliever familiarity penalty is real, though it has varying explanations for the cause; even in that light, Dave Roberts has done a decent job of distributing his relievers. Two of the Dodgers' bullpen best, Anthony Banda and Alex Vesia, have yet to even see the Soto-Judge-Stanton triad this series, but they, along with Kopech, have pitched in all three games so far.
And if the Dodgers are trotting out the bullpen for Game 4, the moral crown certainly does not belong to them. No matter your thoughts on the Dodgers or Yankees, it should be illegal for a team to win a World Series ring off the back of a bullpen game. In that light, the Yankees are, temporarily, the moral agents of Major League Baseball. Doesn't that feel good?
