8 pivotal players who could decide World Series

In baseball, no one player can win or lose a championship: This isn’t the NBA. Every roster spot is its own cog, every matchup is just one man against another man — you can’t hit a six-run homer. Neither Ted Williams nor Barry Bonds, we remind you, won a World Series.

But one player still can make a huge difference in a series — and it’s not always the guys who are the headliners. We all know that the Dodgers need Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts to perform, and the same goes for the Yankees with Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. But it’s the other guys, the ones who don’t show up in every game promo, who will be the players on which this series hinges.

Here’s a look at four players on each team who could prove the most important in this series, and we’ve broken them down into four categories.

Dodgers: 1B Freddie Freeman
There probably isn’t anyone on either of these teams more appreciative of having this time off between series than Freeman. The 2020 NL MVP clearly hasn’t been himself since spraining his right ankle back on Sept. 26, and for good reason: That’s an injury that typically takes about four weeks to heal. He’s 7-for-32 this postseason, with no extra-base hits, though he does have one very scary stolen base.

Obviously, having one of the best hitters in baseball in the lineup and healthy would be a big deal, particularly against the Yankees, who aren’t flush with left-handed starters and are not exactly stacked with lefty monsters in their bullpen, either. But more than that: It just feels wrong not to see a player of Freeman’s caliber at his best and healthiest with all these stars around. Keep that thing elevated, Freddie: We all want to see you back.

Yankees: DH Giancarlo Stanton
Stanton is pretty awesome! It’s perhaps understandable that this has been somewhat forgotten over the past few years. He has struggled mightily with injuries since coming to the Bronx from Miami, and as big and unmissable as he is, this is still New York City. There’s a lot going on, and if you’re not on the field, people will turn their attention elsewhere — perhaps, most notably, toward Judge and Soto.

But Stanton has always been an excellent postseason hitter, and when he’s healthy, he’s as terrifying as anyone in baseball. So combine “health” with “October” and you’ve got a monster. Stanton is a bit one-dimensional at this point in his career, but what a dimension it is: He had only four hits in the ALCS, but all of them were homers, and every single one of them was crucial. He’s not a superstar at the level of Soto and Judge, not anymore, but he can hit the ball every bit as far and hard as either of them. Hitting behind them, he’ll get plenty of opportunities to launch. How much advantage he takes of them may decide this whole series.

Dodgers: RHP Walker Buehler
There are big question marks about Jack Flaherty and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, too, but there is no more fascinating pitcher for the Dodgers right now than Buehler. The two-time All-Star had an absolutely miserable season and is only in the rotation because the Dodgers have no other options, thanks to an avalanche of pitching injuries. It sure looked like the postseason was going to be more of the same for Buehler, after he gave up six runs against the Padres in the NLDS without getting a single strikeout.

The Dodgers had no choice but to send him back out for NLCS Game 3 against the Mets … and he was actually terrific. He threw only four innings, but he struck out six, gave up only three hits and held the Mets scoreless. The Dodgers might want a few more innings out of him this series, but all told, Buehler picked a great time to have his best start of the year. The Dodgers would love a couple more of those.

Yankees: RHP Luis Gil
You may not remember now, but over the first two months of this season, when Gerrit Cole was hurt and the Yankees were scrambling for pitching, there was no better story in the Bronx than Luis Gil. He was 6-0 with a 0.70 ERA in May and looked like a shoo-in for the AL Rookie of the Year Award. Gil then endured a rough June, but still: He settled in as a key rotation fixture, someone the Yankees generally felt they could count on more than the typical rookie.

But then came injuries, as you might expect from a guy who has thrown 155 2/3 innings this year, including the postseason (his previous high was 96, back in Single-A in 2019). Gil ended up not pitching for three weeks after his final regular-season start, and he got through only four innings against the Guardians in his lone postseason appearance so far, in ALCS Game 4. With Cole and Carlos Rodón, the Yankees have a significant top-of-the-rotation advantage over the Dodgers. If Gil can give them anything resembling what he looked like in May, the Dodgers will be scrambling.

Dodgers: LHP Anthony Banda
There may be no hitter more important to get out in this series, particularly late in games, than Soto. The best way to do that is to have a wipeout lefty in the ‘pen. The Dodgers have one of them in Banda, who has given up just one run in six postseason appearances and held left-handed batters to a .218/.282/.269 line during the regular season. The problem is that they only have Banda — at least if Alex Vesia remains out with an injured intercostal muscle.

That means Banda may end up being almost exclusively on Soto duty in this series, coming in to face him at the biggest moments. You may remember, though, that there is now a three-batter minimum, which means he may get some Judge duty too. One thing seems clear: We’re going to see a massive late-inning at-bat with Banda facing Soto in this series. We may see several.

Yankees: RHP Luke Weaver
Over the final month or so of the season and the first week of the postseason, it looked like the Yankees had stumbled into their next Mariano Rivera. After the team struggled with the closer spot all year, it was Weaver, of all people, who solidified things. This was a guy who hadn’t recorded a save in his nine-year career prior to Sept. 6 and was a year removed from getting released by the Reds. But suddenly he was a shutdown closer, even throwing multiple innings! Forget Mariano Rivera — this guy was Andrew Miller, too!

Then came the ALCS. Weaver gave up a run in one inning in Game 2, but that was just the canary in the coal mine for what Cleveland’s Jhonkensy Noel would do to him in Game 3, smacking a game-tying two-run shot. Weaver recovered to throw two scoreless innings (and earn the win) in the ALCS clincher, but we now see that he is, in fact, mortal. Can the Yankees keep using him the way they’ve been using him for the last month? What do they do if they can’t?

Dodgers: SS Tommy Edman
It should be said: The NLCS MVP has a much tougher assignment at the plate this series. Edman is a vastly better hitter when swinging from the right side of the plate than he is from the left; he put up MVP numbers in the NLCS largely because he got to face too many lefties. The Yankees don’t have nearly that many — just Rodón, Nestor Cortes (who has a chance at making the roster) and a couple of stray relievers. It’s fair to say you’ll only see him batting cleanup against Rodón.

But Edman is still exactly what the Dodgers needed when they acquired him from the Cardinals at the Trade Deadline: a versatile defender (crucial, given the injury to shortstop Miguel Rojas) and a smart, savvy, talented player who fits in wherever you need him and does whatever needs to be done. He just had a series that will make sure Dodgers fans love him forever. One more would make him a legend.

Yankees: 3B Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Chisholm was one of the happiest stories for the Yankees after coming over from Miami before the Trade Deadline, locking down third base, coming up with several late-game clutch hits and launching 11 homers in 46 games. (His 24 this season is a career high.) He, for the first time in a couple of years, looked like the All-Star and video game cover man we once knew.

But in the postseason, Chisholm has mostly vanished. He’s 5-for-34 (.147) so far, and if you add in his previous October experience with the Marlins in 2020 and ’23, he’s now 6-for-45 (.133) with a .449 OPS. Chisholm is incredibly talented and the sort of big personality that would seem likely to thrive in both pinstripes and the postseason. The Yankees would very much appreciate it if he began doing so.