It’s a 108-win team that eliminated two other 100-win teams – including last year’s champion – vs. last year’s runner up, a team that at one point was 10 games under .500 and needed an extra game just to win its division. That’s the 2018 World Series in a nutshell. But it’s so much more than that. Two teams with so much history, but not much of it shared. The Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers have made 33 appearances in the World Series but are facing each other in the Fall Classic for just the second time – and the first one was in 1916. Back then the Sox swept the Brooklyn Robins for their fourth title, while the team that would become the Dodgers and move west to L.A. was left still looking for their first title. Strangely enough, Boston is aiming for its fourth title since breaking “the curse” in 2004, while the Dodgers have been title-less since 1988. A win would give them their seventh championship and the Red Sox their ninth overall. So there are parallels. But while some experts might be thinking sweep, most know that it’s never as easy as it looks. So let’s see what they have to say, shall we?
Scoreboard Page: Dodgers in 6. It’s not that we like to go against the grain, but we just have a hard time picking the Red Sox in their ever-more-frequent “team of destiny” seasons. We didn’t believe in 2013 when we were doing weekly power rankings, and now that we pretty much just compile prognosticators three times a year, we haven’t learned our lesson. Call it a hunch. (Like the Royals in 2015.) Call it faith in a team that lost the previous year in seven games returning to the World Series and winning it all before it gets that far. (Like the Royals in 2015.) Or maybe we just like the royal blue caps with interlocking white letters. (Like the Royals in 2015.) Or maybe it’s just that when so many people are picking one team, we just want to be different. Or a mix of all four. The Dodgers shocked the World Series in 1988, why not do it again 30 years later?
USA Today: Red Sox 6, Dodgers 1
CBS Sports: Red Sox 6, Dodgers 0