Kiley McDanielOct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseESPN MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency. Has worked for three MLB teams. Co-author of Author of ‘Future Value’ Follow on X
Jeff Passan’s keys for Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series (1:28)Jeff Passan focuses on stars Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ahead of the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series. (1:28)
The Los Angeles Dodgers are the overwhelming favorites to win the 2025 World Series and become the first repeat champion in a quarter century.
In fact, the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays feature two of the top three players heading into the series and nearly half of our top 20.
Guerrero had a big regular season — 3.9 WAR despite the sixth-worst ball-in-play luck in the league — but has been white-hot in the playoffs, leading postseason players in most major offensive categories.
All four of the Dodgers’ starting pitchers are on a heater, but Yamamoto was the best of the group in the regular season by a lot and one of the top five pitchers in baseball.
Snell missed the first two-thirds of the season with shoulder inflammation but came back looking as good as ever. He might be on the best run of his career right now, with a 0.86 ERA in three playoff starts and the second-best underlying numbers (xFIP and xERA) in the playoffs among starters, behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.
Betts, a clear future Hall of Famer, is 33 years old and has lost the standout power from his peak years but is still an impact player.
One of the most consistently elite hitters of this era, Freeman just keeps performing — and he has a history of coming up large in the playoffs.
Kirk was quietly the second-best all-around catcher in the league this year behind Seattle’s Cal Raleigh, but isn’t a huge star since his value is largely driven by on-base skills and pitch framing.
Muncy is surprisingly solid as a baserunner and a defensive third baseman, and he’s always been a dangerous hitter.
Smith hasn’t been very good offensively in the playoffs but had the third-best WAR amongst catchers in the majors this season, behind only Raleigh and Kirk.
Varsho is above average at basically everything on the baseball field but isn’t truly elite at much. He missed time with shoulder and hamstring issues this year but was on track for a career-best 4-ish WAR season.
Gausman posted the 10th-best pitcher WAR in baseball this season but has one of the lowest fastball velocities of pitchers in that range and has been hit around in the playoffs, though his career playoff performances are close to his regular season quality.
Edman is a good defender at almost any position but had the 12th-least lucky ball-in-play outcomes this regular season. That luck has turned around in the playoffs.
Like Gausman, Yesavage’s splitter is his best secondary pitch, and he doesn’t have standout fastball velocity or breaking ball quality. That said, Yesavage’s splitter has been confounding hitters in his six career big league appearances, half of which have been in the playoffs.
It sounds like Bichette will be able to return to the Jays’ lineup for the World Series, but he’s been out the past six weeks with a knee injury and it’s hard to know what he’ll look like in the short term.
Barger is usable defensively at a number of positions and broke out this year to be an above-average hitter, mostly due to his power.
Sasaki narrowly wins this matchup with the hardest-thrown pitch among these teams in the playoffs at 100.8 mph, and he’s fresher than Louis Varland (100.7 mph) and can go more max effort than Ohtani (100.3 mph).
Sheehan’s slider was, per pitch thrown, the best pitch on the Dodgers’ staff this season. It doesn’t have a gaudy spin rate or crazy movement but he throws it hard and hitters can’t seem to track it.
Yesavage offers a unique combination of movement profile (his slider moves to his arm side), a very high arm slot, and short extension which brings his release even higher. Hitters haven’t seen something like this before, then add in a killer splitter (which he barely threw at East Carolina, where he was last season) and hitters don’t know what to do.
Snell has been red-hot in the postseason (I explain why here) and should get two starts, but there’s a number of strong candidates for this.
The odds for this are as close to 50/50 as you can get. Guerrero (120.4) and Ohtani (120.0 mph) were second and third in max exit velo during the regular season behind Cincinnati’s Oneil Cruz (122.9). Ohtani has a slight edge in playoff max EV at 117.7 to Vlad’s 116.0. I’ll lean to Vlad because he’s been running hotter at the plate and thus will get a few more chances to smoke one at a gaudy number, but Ohtani will be facing a weaker pitching staff, so this is still a coin flip.
The other main candidates are part-time players who might get only some chances to open it up on the bases, but I expect Clement to be on base often in the series.
If you consider framing to be a part of defensive value (you definitely should) and also factor in positional difficulty (I think you should), then Kirk is the answer. He’ll be impacting roughly half of the pitches in the series and he was the second-best framer in the league behind San Francisco’s Patrick Bailey this regular season.
Jeff Passan’s keys for Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series (1:28)Jeff Passan focuses on stars Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ahead of the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series. (1:28)
Jeff Passan focuses on stars Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ahead of the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series. (1:28)
CloseESPN MLB Insider Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency. Has worked for three MLB teams. Co-author of Author of ‘Future Value’ Follow on X
That doesn’t mean they’ve cornered all the talent in this year’s Fall Classic.
Fastest pitch of the World Series will be thrown by: Roki Sasaki
Best breaking pitch will be: Emmet Sheehan’s slider
Others in the mix: Yariel Rodriguez’s slider, Braydon Fisher’s slider, Brendon Little’s curveball, Jack Dreyer’s slider, Glasnow’s curveball, Shane Bieber’s curveball
Best changeup/splitter will be: Yesavage’s splitter
Others in the mix: Yamamoto’s splitter, Gausman’s splitter, Snell’s changeup
Others in the mix: Hyeseong Kim, Edman, Myles Straw
Others in the mix: Clement, Nathan Lukes, Betts, Freeman, Springer