Will the Dodgers Be Boosted by Rest, or Dragged Down by Rust?

Los Angeles swept its way into a weeklong break before the World Series — but is “rest vs. rust” anything more than a statistical toss-up?

Shohei Ohtani and manager Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers look on from the dugout during the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

As the ALCS was wrapping up in dramatic fashion on Monday night with the Blue Jays outlasting the Mariners in Game 7, the other side of the postseason bracket had been devoid of drama for, let’s be honest, a while now. Contrary to my belief that the Brewers could hang with the Dodgers, L.A. unceremoniously swept Milwaukee out of the playoffs by a combined score of 15-4, with Shohei Ohtani putting an exclamation on the clincher last Friday night by having arguably the greatest game any single individual ever played in baseball history.

Now the Dodgers are in the middle of a seven-day layoff between the end of the NLCS and the start of the World Series this Friday. And thus, we get the eternal sports debate between rest and rust — is it a blessing, or a curse, to wrap your previous series so early that you sit around and wait an absurd amount of time to play again?

This comes up so often that I might as well do a baseball version of it here. Previously, I looked at it in hockey ahead of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final, when the Florida Panthers went into the championship round on a 10-day gap (which was tied for the third-longest layoff in best-of-seven NHL playoff history):

Will Rust Affect The Panthers?

There, I found that teams coming off extended breaks (9+ days) didn’t actually fare terribly overall — they won about 53 percent of their series — but they did slightly underperform what we’d expect based on their pre-series strength. The effect technically wasn’t statistically significant, though it hinted that long layoffs might shave a few percentage points off a favorite’s odds of advancing.

Now we get another case study in the phenomenon, courtesy of the Dodgers’ sweep — plus a weirdly planned-out MLB playoff schedule, which also built 4 days of rest in even after a 7-game ALCS, longer than 63 percent of all pre-series waits since the Fall Classic ditched ties and permanently became best-of-seven in 1923.