The 2024 American League Championship Series (ALCS) gets underway Monday night at about 7:30 PM EDT as the Guardians visit the Yankees. This round pits the top two teams in the AL against each other.
The following table offers a comparison of the offenses of the two teams:
| 2024 Batting (AL Ranks) | Guardians | Yankees |
| Runs per Game | 4.40 (7th) | 5.03 (1st) |
| Batting Average | .238 (8th) | .248 (4th) |
| On-Base Average | .307 (8th) | .333 (1st) |
| Slugging Percentage | .395 (7th) | .429 (2nd) |
| Home Runs | 185 (6th) | 237 (1st) |
| Stolen Base Percentage | 76.3 (11th) | 77.2 (8th) |
| BABIP | .271 (15th) | .283 (9th) |
The Yankees clearly stand as the better offensive team. Stolen base percentage stands as the only category in which they are close, and the Yankees still win that comparison.
The Yankees stand fourth in batting average but first in OBP because they draw a ton of walks, It helps that two of their players accounted for 262 walks. Even when Aaron Judge and Juan Soto are not dominating the game with the bat on the ball, they are still generating opportunities for others with the base on balls. So far, Giancarlo Stanton took advantage of those opportunities.
Cleveland’s strength comes from their ability to hit the ball out of the park. Note that with the worst BABIP in the AL, they do very poorly when they put the ball in play. They do not strike out very much, which mitigates that to a certain extent.
The next table looks at the two from a pitching and defense perspective:
| 2024 Batting (AL Ranks) | Guardians | Yankees |
| Runs Allowed per Game | 3.86 (2nd) | 4.12 (7th) |
| Earned Run Average | 3.61 (2nd) | 3.74 (4th) |
| Strikeouts per 9 IP | 8.9 (4th) | 9.0 (3rd) |
| Walks per 9 IP | 3.1 (8th) | 3.3 (9th) |
| Home Runs per 200 IP | 25.1 (6th) | 27.3 (8th) |
| Defensive Efficiency | .709 (2nd) | .703 (9th) |
This comparison strikes me as fascinating. The Guardians clearly rank as the better run prevention team. The stats that relate just to the pitchers, however, give Cleveland a slight edge. Looking at the team ERA, the Guardians stand 0.13 runs better than the Yankees. In terms of defense, however, the Guardians are much better at turning batted balls into outs, as demonstrated by the higher Defensive Efficiency (DER). Since errors bring down DER we see a gap of 0.26 runs in overall runs allowed per game.
The upshot is that the Guardians poor ability to generate hits on balls in play and the Yankees poor ability to turn balls in play into outs cancel each other. The Yankees get easier balls to field, and the Guardians may have a few balls fall in that might have been outs against better teams.
The series comes down to two evenly matched pitching staffs and one team with a somewhat better offense. The Guardians need to shut down the Yankees offense as much as possible and hope they can generate some home runs. If the Yankees get Soto and Judge bashing the ball again, the Guardians are in trouble.
I see the Yankees with a 54% chance of winning the AL pennant.