The Yankees have a simple problem in this World Series. Everything they do well, the Dodgers do better — power, patience, pitching.
And then there is so much the Yankees do not do well, from running the bases to executing on defense, at which Los Angeles also excels.
Heck, the Dodgers even have the advantage in areas like the way louder home crowd, deeper bench and far superior trade deadline.
It sounds like a mismatch, and so far the 120th World Series is just that. The Yankees waited 15 years to play in the World Series and with each passing game, it was like they were never even here. We will have to send in a CSI crew to search for fingerprints and DNA at this point.
Game 1 was a classic that the Yankees squandered from their defense to Aaron Boone’s decision making. And since Freddie Freeman’s grand slam decided that one in the 10th inning, the Yankees have not had a lead and have been lifeless on offense.
Clarke Schmidt followed Carlos Rodon’s lead by quickly creating a deficit from which the Yankees could not extract themselves Monday night, especially with Aaron Judge continuing to take an October wrecking ball to his legacy and the bottom half of the lineup persisting as a conveyor belt of automatic outs.
The final was 4-2 and dropped the Yankees into a three-games-to-none deficit.
At this point, perhaps you can convince someone dumb or dumber that the Yankees have a chance because once in 40 tries when a team trailed 0-3, it did come back to win a postseason series. That was the 2004 Red Sox, whose comeback against the Yankees was fueled by a Game 4 stolen base by current Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
The problem is that David Ortiz is on the field doing Fox’s pre- and post-game shows, not in a Yankee lineup that over the past 18 innings has four runs on nine hits — five of which have come from Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton.
In the first World Series game played in The Bronx since Nov. 4, 2009, Freeman’s third homer in three games — a two-run shot three batters into Game 3 — pretty much locked up his World Series MVP and tuned out a crowd of 49,368, that already was more anxious than vociferous.
The Yankees live by the homer. It is a strength that covers so many of their blemishes. But Freeman has tied the Yankees, 3-3, in homers — and the Yanks’ third homer was by Alex Verdugo with two outs in the ninth to cosmetically make this game look closer. The Dodgers have outhomered the Yanks, 5-3. Another strength is drawing walks. But it was Los Angeles turning its first two walks into runs. Shohei Ohtani, playing somewhat gingerly 48 hours after — in the Dodgers report — dislocating his shoulder, walked to lead off the game and came home on Freeman’s homer off Schmidt.
Schmidt walked Tommy Edman on four pitches to open the third, was running on the pitch and took second on Ohtani’s groundout and did what too few Yankees do — got a great read instantly that Mookie Betts’ looper to right was going to fall and scored easily. Gavin Lux stole a base in the sixth inning to position himself to score on Enrique Hernandez’s single for a 4-0 lead.
Meanwhile, the Yanks are the worst baserunning team in the majors. Stanton, who has hit like Babe Ruth this month, still runs as if he is carrying the weight of the franchise. He barely made second for what should have been an easy double with one out in the fourth and was thrown out at the plate by left fielder Teoscar Hernandez after Anthony Volpe’s two-out single. Stanton’s was the Yankees’ only extra-base hit, Volpe their lone with a runner in scoring position until Verdugo’s homer in the ninth inning.
Schmidt lasted just 2 ²/₃ innings with three runs against after Rodon managed 3 ¹/₃ innings in Game 2 with four runs. Thus, the expected Yankee rotation edge has not manifested. That Dodger starter weakness has, through Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler, held the Yankees to three runs in 16 ²/₃ innings. Flaherty, Edman and Michael Kopech — deadline acquisitions — have all impacted this World Series.
Judge, the most vital Yankee, has not. He went 0-for-3 with an eighth-inning walk to fall to 1-for-12 with seven strikeouts in this World Series, 6-for-43 (.140) this postseason and 42-for-214 (.196) in his playoff career. Judge has no hits in his last two World Series games and the Yanks are 17-34 (postseason included) when Judge does not have a hit in a game.
The two MVPs do not glimmer quite the same with that history. The Yankees often go as Judge does — and Judge has gone bad in October. It has continued into a World Series in which the Dodgers have unplugged him and really the whole Yankee offense — and with it a crowd that waited 15 years for this game.
The Dodgers are outplaying the Yankees in every way. Three-games-to-none feels right.