Dodgers World Series strategy had so little respect for Aaron Boone and the Yankees

Often times in sports, disillusioned fans expect talent to equate to success. At the professional level of any sport, the difference in talent level between two teams is more marginal than it appears. Ultimately, the organizations that win games are the ones who build a team instead of simply collecting talent.

The batting lines of the 2024 World Series would suggest that the New York Yankees may have emerged victorious over the Los Angeles Dodgers. New York finished with a .212 average, nine home runs and 24 runs. Los Angeles finished with a .206 average, seven home runs and 25 runs.

But in the end, the World Series wasn't decided by those numbers. It wasn't decided by the money spent on the rosters. It wasn't even decided by Shohei Ohtani. The deciding factor was the fundamental difference between the two clubs: While the Yankees collected talent, the Dodgers built a team.

Dodgers expected the Yankees to beat themselves

The Dodgers told their players in scouting meetings that the Yankees were built on talent rather than fundamentals, Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported. Los Angeles knew that the Yankees would beat themselves with self-inflicted errors. All they had to do was put the ball in play and watch the Bronx Bombers implode.

The Dodgers noted that the Yankees were the worst baserunning team in the Majors by nearly every metric. The team's analytics also found that the Yankees had the worst-positioned outfield in the majors. There was no command on relay throws, and players like Jazz Chisholm Jr. were often just standing still.

Ultimately, these sorts of details are what made the difference. Even after the Yankees took a five-run lead in Game 5, all the Dodgers had to do was wait for New York to ruin it for themselves. Aaron Judge dropped a routine line drive to center field. Chisholm was unable to grab a bounced throw from Anthony Volpe on an attempted force out at third. Gerrit Cole stopped his pursuit to first base after a grounder from Mookie Betts.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers suffocated the Yankees.

"Baseball comes down to execution, right?" Nestor Cortes said after Game 5. "If you don’t execute and the other team does it better than you, then they’re obviously going to win. And that’s what we ran into in the series, where they execute a lot of plays. And I’ve said since Game 1 and 2, it felt like they did everything right. They have Mookie Betts in right field and every ball off the wall, he kept it to a single, and just stuff like that, it’s like you can’t capitalize on them and when we made [mistakes] they capitalized, so that’s massive."

“It comes down to what it always comes down to — you have to limit mistakes,” Judge said. “You don’t give your opponent a chance to breathe.”

After a rollercoaster season, it was execution and fundamentals — along with a magical performance by Freddie Freeman — that helped the Dodgers secure their eighth World Series championship.