Click to open your invitation to the Haters’ Ball

It’s the Yankees versus the Dodgers in the World Series. Bah humbug! Here are five players who deserve most of your scorn.

If you’re a fan of the San Francisco Giants, the healthiest way to approach this Los Angeles Dodgers–New York Yankees World Series matchup is to ignore it. Both the event itself and the context surrounding it are simply too loaded.

On the one hand: the Giants feel years away from even providing hope that maybe someday they might have a chance of maybe being halfway competitive again. They are not the Yankees (41 World Series appearances in franchise history, 20 postseason appearances) nor are they the Dodgers (22 World Series appearances, 16 postseason appearances this century). On the other hand:

The Dodgers. The Yankees.

Most of us have been born and raised to despise the former (rightfully) while life experience has conditioned us to loathe the latter (deservedly). But hold on a minute! Before you take my advice and walk away, there are a few reasons to be invested in this matchup at all:

1. It’s the World Series. The last baseball of the year. And, folks, let’s admit that baseball is great. The best sport. Worthy of our time, even when it features two teams we’d rather not see in a competitive situation.
2. It’s Brian Sabean’s current team versus Farhan Zaidi’s previous team. If you yearn for Sabean to return, then maybe you want his team to succeed. If you hate the guy who ran the Giants for 6 years and transformed them from a last place team to a 4th place team, then you’ll love seeing New York stick it to the team who pawned him off on your favorite team.
3. To paraphrase the great Maria Bamford: If you watch for no other reason, please do it for spite.

There are so, so many reasons to spite these two teams. Of course, since the Giants aren’t playing these teams directly (which is a good thing, because both of these teams are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much better than the Giants), this is a spite by proxy situation. We will alternatively have to hope the Dodgers spite a Yankee for us and vice versa. Not a great situation to be in, but that’s where we’re at, unfortunately.

You know. Schadenfreude.

The joy of observing the suffering of others comes from the observer’s feeling that the other’s failure represents an improvement or validation of their own group’s (in-group) status in relation to external (out-groups) groups.

• “The Giants might not be in the World Series, but at least they’re not losing the World Series to the Yankees.”
• “Haha, the Dodgers spent all that money to buy a championship and they’re getting rinsed by Austin Wells and the corpse of Anthony Rizzo!”

And just to give you, Dear Reader, cover for succumbing to our basest human impulses:

Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude –aggression, rivalry, and justice.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

Aggression? Check. Sports are a healthier way (than, say, war) to channel aggression.

Rivalry? Check. BEAT LA. BEAT LA. BEAT LA.

Justice? The Dodgers are a criminal enterprise. They must not be awarded a trophy for winning it all in a regular-sized season.

So, here are the five players you should hone in on when conjuring sadistic desires for their failure — players you should take great pleasure in “hating,” wishing nothing but the worst for (on the field only, of course) and genuinely taking great joy in watching their downfall (again, on the field) — from weakest to strongest on the spite scale.

Teoscar Hernandez

A little over a week ago, his agent (Rafa Nieves), posted this to Twitter/X about his client’s offseason:

9 months ago every agent criticized me and Teo for taking a 1-year deal.

The truth is, the market was soft for everyone, and he was coming off a down year while playing in a very pitcher friendly environment.

We were looking for a 3-year deal, and while reading the market and realizing that deal might not exist, I asked him what his priority was and he said he wanted to win and play deep into October, so we pivoted and focused on getting the best short term deal on the best team interested.

Here we are 9 months later:

Career high HR ✔
Career high wRC+ ✔
Career high rWAR ✔
All-Star ✔
Home Run Derby Champ ✔
Best regular season record in MLB ✔
NLCS appearance ✔

He will win his 3rd Silver Slugger, and will probably get some MVP votes.

On top of that, he made more money this year than he would have made on that 3-year deal and now he will go back out on the market after a career year.

Who’s laughing now?

We can be sure that if the Giants actually did make some sort of multi-year deal (they were interested in trading for him last season, allegedly) they low-balled him, which prompted him to seek a 1-year deal elsewhere and compelled the Giants to offer Jorge Soler a lot more than $23.5 million (Hernandez’s 1-year deal with the Dodgers) in a 3-year deal. Now, do you need to have that much scorn for him because he turned down the Giants (if they made him a 3-year offer at all)? Probably not. Agents love to exaggerate and mischaracterize events in order to build up their client, but at the same time, spurning the Giants for the Dodgers is, well, exactly the sort of behavior that gets a player on a list like this.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Turning down a pitcher’s park and an organization that would prioritize his health over whatever it is the Dodgers do to their pitchers was certainly not the smartest choice, but then you realize that he was only following Shohei Ohtani around like a little puppy and you realize that this guy just doesn’t have the juice. Still, the Giants offered him a lot of money (allegedly) and he turned them down for the Dodgers. So, may his appearances be brief and filled with earned runs.

Giancarlo Stanton

Now, first of all, it didn’t have to be this way. As Grant Brisbee has pointed out many times, the Giants could have drafted Stanton (then “Mike Stanton”) in the 2007 draft with the compensatory pick they received when left-handed reliever Mike Stanton was signed by the Cincinnati Reds in the offseason.

Still, when presented with the opportunity to waive his no-trade clause to go to the Giants (in exchange for Heliot Ramos, Tyler Beede, Christian Arroyo, and Chris Shaw or possibly Joe Panik as well), he rejected it and eventually forced his way onto the Yankees.

There’s also the small matter of him growing up as a Dodgers fan and that’s where he wanted to go all along. At the time of the trade to the Yankees, Stanton’s agent told Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register:

“I will say that Giancarlo and I both grew up as Dodgers fans as kids,” agent Joel Wolfe said. “And I see this with the other L.A. kids that we represent; it’s a little bit harder to get your head around being a Giant.

Said Stanton:

“I wouldn’t base the decision on (the rivarly), but I wouldn’t want to go to the team that (the Dodgers) dislike the most,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if they were going to beat that team either. But at the same time, if they were in the right position I wanted, I would have done it.”

Okay, fine. He grew up hating the Giants. Fair enough. I hope his phenomenal postseason run comes to a screeching halt.

Shohei Ohtani

He spurned them twice! It’s remarkable how much the 2017-2018 offseason reflected this past offseason, with the Giants going all out for some heavy hitters only to very publicly be rejected by them. Again — Ohtani twice! To Buster Posey’s face — twice! He’s only ever wanted to play for the Dodgers, though, so he was happy to use the Giants as a stalking horse (smart, because that’s what everybody else does). He’s the face of the league, the only player who matters to the league’s media partners. The only Giant who is better than him is LHP Erik Miller (0-for-5 with 5 strikeouts!). It’s true he’s so fun to watch and that’s why watching him get stopped dead in his tracks or otherwise stymied is so exciting.

Aaron Judge

Using the Giants as a stalking horse is just good business. The self-made chumps of Northern California, soon to be the only game in town, kinda don’t have any business making a play for legitimately great players and it took this Paul Bunyon-looking m-fer from New York to remind us all of that. At the end of the day, the Giants are a second division organization.

Perfect execution. I applaud everyone on his team. I applaud the player for extracting the deal he wanted from Hal Steinbrenner.

But nobody should like the thought of being used, and everybody should hate the feeling of being used. Aaron Judge made a bet that he could get his favorite team from childhood to pony up a deal that would keep him in New York.

So, he’s already won. Why does he need a World Series? Barry Bonds never got one, remember, Giants superfan? That’s why I think we should all be rooting against Aaron Judge the most.

There are plenty of deserving players to loathe or “hate” in the fan kind of way and they’re all Dodgers: Max Muncy, Enrique Hernandez, and really, both of the these franchises, top to bottom are a reminder that the Giants are very far away from being any good. There’s also the Fox broadcast booth, the way they produce their telecasts — it’s going to be an awful week no matter how you look at it. So it’s easy to be bitter.

There are some notable exclusions here, though, in case you have any thoughts of adding to it (which you’re free to do in the comments below, of course):

• Brian Sabean and Carlos Rodon have beef with the Giants as both were run out of town. Why should we hold that against them?
• Juan Soto is probably the next Barry Bonds and he’s a free agent this offseason — why root against greatness (until he signs with the Dodgers)?
• Trent Grisham is a Giant killer, but he’s also hit 6 home runs in his career against the Dodgers. Wouldn’t it be nice to see him kill another team (he might not even make the WS roster).
• Gerrit Cole is Brandon Crawford’s brother-in-law, and as much as it might be fun for Crawford to gloat that he has 2 rings and Cole has zero (should the Yankees lose), wouldn’t it be better if they bonded over their mutual hatred of the Dodgers (and the thanks of a grateful Giants Nation for Cole defeating them)?

We’re all rooting for the Dodgers to lose the World Series, but above are the five we should hope fail the most.