Yankees-Dodgers World Series Intrigue Includes Anthony Rizzo, Freddie Freeman Matchup

The World Series features plenty of intrigue and star power with Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and Mookie Betts in the respective lineups for the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers

Perhaps one of the slightly off the radar storylines is first basemen Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rizzo facing each other in a postseason for the first time in careers that have totaled a combined 3,759 games in the regular season.

Perhaps what makes the Rizzo-Freeman storyline intriguing is both are playing through injuries and coping with them in varying degrees.

This season Rizzo is entering his second World Series appearance and first since securing the final out for the Chicago Cubs in 2016 with two broken fingers on his right hand. It is a new injury that occurred when Ryan Borucki’s slider hit him on the hand on a rainy afternoon in the penultimate game of the Yankees’ 94-win regular season.

Rizzo missed the ALDS when the Yankees ousted the Kansas City Royals in four games. While Jon Berti and Oswaldo Cabrera capably handled first base, Rizzo was getting treatment for the broken fingers.

The treatment worked well enough for Rizzo that he returned for the ALCS even while dealing with some swelling.

“The biggest thing is just getting the swelling out between games. It really blows up from the pressure,” Rizzo said Wednesday. “The bones are still broken, but just to be able to get the swelling out has been key. Hopefully, during the Series, we’ll be able to manage it as best we can.”

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Even with the swelling, Rizzo still went 6-for-14 in a series when the Yankees batted .250. Along with Gleyber Torres, Soto and Anthony Volpe, Rizzo was among four Yankees with at least six hits and his .429 average was his highest in a postseason series and continued his run of good at-bats after returning from missing 62 games with a broken forearm.

“Just take it one day at a time,” Rizzo said. “The adrenaline is real. We’re doing everything we can to keep the swelling out and wrap it between innings and in between at-bats. So you just take it really, one at-bat, one pitch at a time on defense. For what we’re playing for during a game, I don’t really feel much.”

Before the ALCS, Rizzo’s previous highest average in a postseason series was hitting .360 in the 2016 World Series when he helped the Cubs overcome a three games to one deficit to end their historic 108-year drought.

“I can’t even believe it, to be honest with you,” catcher Austin Wells said Wednesday. “It’s a pretty incredible thing, to have two broken bones in your hand and go out there and do what he’s been able to do. I think it just shows how tough he is, the character he has and his willingness to be out there, to go through whatever it takes to help the team win.”

Freeman heads into his second World Series appearance with a sprained right ankle sustained two days before Rizzo’s plinking. The injury hampered him during the six-game NLCS victory over the New York Mets and he has played eight times in the first 11 postseason games while hitting 7-for-32 in those games but he has no doubt about playing in the World Series.

“Right now, I’m not thinking about game-time decisions,” Freeman said. “I think with this time off, it’s going to be a 100 percent go for me in Game 1 and we’ll adjust off of that after Game 1. But I don’t think there’s any question in anybody’s mind that I will be in the lineup for Game 1.”

Rizzo and Freeman’s postseason appearances seemingly overlapped with each other despite them being born a month apart in 1989 when the Yankees won 74 games and the Dodgers made an unsuccessful defense of their surprising World Series title by winning 77 games.

“He’s a gamer and he’s putting it all on the line for his team and I wouldn’t expect anything less from him,” Rizzo said. “He’s a world champion as well. He’s so respected in our game, rightfully so. It’ll be fun to share the field with him on the World Series stage. We’ve played against each other a lot throughout our careers, pretty much the same timeline. So it’ll be fun to look across at first and see him there.”

Freeman’s first postseason series was in 2013 when the Cubs were still in their rebuilding phase with Rizzo and two years away from debuting Kris Bryant. Rizzo’s postseason debut occurred in 2015 when the Braves were a 95-loss team and his contributions to the Cubs’ title team came during a 93-loss season for Atlanta.

Freeman’s next crack at the postseason was 2018 when the Braves began a run of six straight NL East titles but Rizzo and the Cubs were eliminated in the wild-card game. Freeman and the Braves qualified again but a late-season collapse kept the Cubs from the postseason in 2019. In the pandemic-2020 season both Rizzo and Freeman were Division winners but the Cubs lost in the wild-card round while the Braves reached the NLCS.

When Freeman finally won his first title, Rizzo was already on the Yankees after the Cubs entered a rebuild. A year later, Rizzo made it further than Freeman when the Yankees were ousted in the ALCS while the Dodgers lost in the Division Series. Last year Freeman and the Dodgers were eliminated in the first round again while the Yankees cratered to 82 wins and were derailed by injuries including Rizzo’s concussion that cost him the final two months.

Freeman and Rizzo are two of the more prominent first names in the past decade and beyond, debuting within a span of less than a year apart.

Freeman debuted with the Braves on Sept. 1, 2010, when he was about to turn 21 after hitting .319 in Triple-A and being regarded as among Atlanta’s top prospects at the time.

Rizzo was a Red Sox minor leaguer at the time of Freeman’s debut, finishing up his first full season at Double-A by hitting .263. It was good enough for the Red Sox to include him a trade to the San Diego Padres as part of the package for Adrian Gonzalez.

Rizzo debuted with the Padres June 9, 2011, against the Washington Nationals but San Diego opted to send him to the Cubs for Andrew Cashner in Jan. 2012 and Rizzo made his debut for the Cubs in June 2012 against the same Mets, who Freeman has had countless big hits against.

They both drew attention in a light-hearted way in 2021 when Rizzo struck out Freeman as a mop-up reliever and shared some laughs about it. Now both are among the underrated storylines of the more serious matter of the first Yankees-Dodgers World Series since 1981 when the first base matchup was Steve Garvey against future Yankee general manager Bob Watson.