{"id":236672,"date":"2025-10-24T10:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236672\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T10:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:25:10","slug":"who-wins-the-epic-struggle-between-torontos-contact-hitting-and-the-dodgers-strikeout-pitching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/236672\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Wins the Epic Struggle Between Toronto’s Contact Hitting and the Dodgers’ Strikeout Pitching?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ernie Clement (R) was one of MLB\u2019s best at making contact; the Dodgers were the best at whiffing batters. (Kevork Djansezian\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The 2025 World Series, which finally starts tonight<\/a> in Toronto, is a study in contrasts in many regards. In the biggest-picture view, it\u2019s the U.S. versus Canada \u2014 and all of the feelings that entails<\/a> \u2014 or Shohei Ohtani\u2019s current team against the one he spurned in 2023<\/a>. But it\u2019s also the star power, rotation riches and salary of the Dodgers as big favorites<\/a> against the togetherness and resilience of the underdog Blue Jays. Plus, it\u2019s an L.A. team that\u2019s more rested and experienced<\/a> facing a Toronto club that\u2019s been hotter at the plate this postseason \u2014 and has outscored its opponents by more overall in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

But the most hyped-up referendum in the series, at least among the wonkier corners of the MLB punditariat, has been the strength-on-strength matchup between the Dodgers\u2019 strikeout pitching \u2014 with the league\u2019s No. 1 ranked K rate on the mound, 13 percent better than league average<\/a> during the regular season \u2014 and the Blue Jays\u2019 contact hitting \u2014 with the league\u2019s lowest K rate at the plate, 21 percent better than league average<\/a> during the regular season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the classic case of the unstoppable force versus the immovable object (or something like that). So who tends to prevail when these strengths collide in the Fall Classic?<\/p>\n

First things first, let\u2019s quantify where this battle ranks among the biggest battles of contact-rate will in the World Series since the 1994 strike. Here are the matchups with the biggest differentials like the one we have this year \u2014 great contact hitting<\/a> versus great strikeout pitching<\/a> \u2014 in FanGraphs\u2019 \u201cplus\u201d stats<\/a> for strikeout rate at the plate for an offense and on the mound for a pitching staff during the regular season in question:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ernie Clement (R) was one of MLB\u2019s best at making contact; the Dodgers were the best at whiffing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-236672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}