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Before the postseason even began, I was rooting for the Mets because of Cedric Mullins. They didn’t even make it in, failing out on the last day. Among the actual postseason teams, my three picks were the Padres, Mariners, and Brewers, all of whom are in the “never won a World Series” club. Alas, the Padres stumbled in the wild card round, the Brewers were swept in the NLCS, and the Mariners were taken out in soul-crushing fashion in Game 7 of the ALCS last night.
That leaves us with a World Series matchup of the Blue Jays and the Dodgers. It’s tough for me to summon much in the way of positive feelings for either of these teams.
The Jays, whose last championship was 32 years ago, are the most sympathetic on my usual criteria. They also have a path to success that the Orioles can probably, sort of, follow. Even if Mike Elias gets more aggressive with free agent signings, they’re probably not climbing to a $240 million payroll like the Jays had this year, but I think that the O’s ought to be able to move up some from this year’s roughly $160 million.
On the other hand, the idea of actively rooting for any other AL East team is unpalatable. I am old enough, additionally, to know that Cito still sucks, and always will suck. More recent memories linger of the unlikeable duo of José Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion raining down homers on the Orioles. Their fans threw a beer can at Hyun Soo Kim and booed Adam Jones for being mad about it. The 2025 season in particular had Jays closer Jeff Hoffman carrying out a one-man beef against the O’s presumably because they didn’t sign him for medical reasons last offseason.
On the OTHER hand, there’s the Dodgers. Come on. I can’t root for these guys. They just won it all last year, and before that, they won in 2020. It offends me when teams with bad bullpens (the Dodgers 4.27 bullpen ERA was 21st in MLB) suddenly overcome that in the month of October. Their saves leader was Tanner Scott, who had a familiar season for Orioles fans, posting a negative bWAR.
On the OTHER hand, they have Shohei Ohtani, who deserves basically every baseball accolade that exists because he’s just that unique of a player. There’s nobody like him, and it’s been remarkable to see him on a real team over the past two seasons rather than wasting his greatness on a clown show organization like the Angels. The Dodgers also have Clayton Kershaw on his final ride, they’ve got Mookie Betts also doing amazing things with his transformation into a shortstop, and Freddie Freeman, who like the above is headed for a Cooperstown induction ceremony some day.
There is an undeniable aesthetic pleasure to the idea of the team with the great players winning it all, as long as you don’t think about the payroll aspect. But enough about me. Where does your heart lie for this series?
Let us know in the comments below what’s gone into your thought process.
