Series! Recap of World Series of the 2020s

It’s time for our quinquennial recap of recent World Series. (As you might recall, previous installments go back to 1940.) This one covers the first half of the 2020s, a decade dominated (so far,anyway) by teams with huge payrolls.

2020

This was the Covid season, with a 60-game season of fanless games, followed by an NBA-like 16-team tournament. Given the amount of randomness introduced, it’s surprising that the World Series did consist of the two best teams, the 43-win Dodgers and the 40-win Rays. Corey Seager, Joc Pederson, and Justin Turner had OPSs over 1.000 and Clayton Kershaw (for once) had a good Series, so Dodgers in six.

2021

The big story in the National League was the 107-win Giants nosing out the 106-win Dodgers in the West. But neither team made it to the Series; instead the 88-win Braves, who’d won a weak NL East, faced Houston. The Braves were hot, and got excellent hitting from Jorge Soler and Freddie Freeman and superb relief pitching from Will Smith (not the pugilist), while Houston’s offense was anemic (.224/.298/.299) Braves in six.

2022

This was the first year of three wildcards, abandoning the idea that being the wildcard should be a big disadvantage (the bottom division winner and top wildcard both have home field for the first round) in the interest of more playoff games. Amusingly, in the NL the bottom seed won every round, so the 6th-seed Phillies, who wouldn’t even have been in the postseason in any prior year, went to the World Series. In the AL, sanity prevailed, and their representative was the top-seeded Astros. The Astros won a pedestrian Series, for their second championship in four appearances in six years. (This beats the Big Red machine, who needed seven years to accomplish that.) For manager Dusty Baker it was his first, probably cementing his Hall of Fame case.

2023

The NL again sent their bottom seed, this time the Diamondbacks,not seen since their championship in 2001. Against them were the Rangers, who had tied for first in the AL West, who had lost in both 2010 and 2011 (one of the closest Series ever). Texas handled Arizona in five mostly offense-filled games to complete a 13-4 posteason. For the second year in a row a former Giants manager won the Series, this time already Hall-bound Bruce Bochy (does anyone have Felipe Alou’s number?)

2024

This time the two top seeds made it, leading to a highly anticipated matchup. The first game lived up to that, being won with a come-from-behind walkoff grand slam by Freddie Freeman in the 10th. The next two games were Dodger victories, both 4-2. (Historically, no World Series having a 3-0 lead had ever gone beyond 5 games.) The Yankees won a laugher in game 4 and led 5-0 in game 5 and then …
in an absolute horror of an inning featuring two errors and a brain-dead failure to cover first base on a ground ball, the Yankees gave back all five runs, and eventually lost the game and Series. Freeman would up with an unreal 1.364 OPS and the MVP.

Recap: The Dodgers were 2-0, the Astros 1-1, Texas and Atlanta 1-0, and Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, New York, and Arizona 0-1.