Dodgers Flex Muscles in World Series Rematch

After two gruesome nights, the Yankees played very well Sunday night and avoided a sweep in Los Angeles. It wasn’t the prettiest weekend, but they did finish with a nice 6-3 West Coast trip which is nothing to sniff at. Losing this series, though, did cut into the Yankees’ lead in the AL East as the Blue Jays, winners of five in a row, are now within 5.5 games. Lets get to it. 

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I don’t believe for a second that any of the Yankees know who Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella or Carl Erskine were because I would guess that about 80% of today’s players think MLB history began around 1995 or so.

But if they have ever heard of those great Brooklyn Dodgers players, and they know anything about the old history between the Yankees and Dodgers when both teams shared New York City, then perhaps they’re starting to understand how those ol’ beloved Brooklyn bums felt year after year when the Yankees would beat them in the World Series.

With the exception of 1955 - the year the baseball world tipped on its axis and Brooklyn finally didn’t have to wait ‘til next year - nothing the Dodgers did was good enough to beat Casey Stengel’s dynastic team as they met six times in the Fall Classic during his 12 years as Yankees manager and they lost five.

Well, the tables have certainly turned, haven’t they?

On the heels of getting stifled in five games during the 2024 World Series, the Yankees dropped an admittedly less important series over the weekend, losing the first two in rather horrifying fashion before salvaging the finale Sunday night at Dodger Stadium.

“This team has bounced back from whatever tough losses we’ve had. We’ve had a handful of them in the first couple of months,” Aaron Boone said Sunday. “They played a really great game to give us a really good trip going back home.”

I’m not going to argue with that; the Yankees certainly got up off the deck and delivered a nice punch to the Dodgers’ collective solar plexus, prompting DJ LeMahieu to say, “After that mess of a game (Saturday’s 18-2 humiliation), to come back like we did showed a lot.”

Still, it looked like boys against men in the first two games, particularly Saturday which was a bitter-tasting slice of humble pie that illuminated this simple fact for me: Regardless of what happened Sunday, if the Yankees are fortunate enough to win the American League, they’d better hope someone in the National League finds a way to exterminate the Dodgers.

What’s really scary is the Dodgers won this series without superstar Mookie Betts who stubbed his toe in his bathroom and missed all three games; without the bulk of their rotation as Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Roki Sasaki are all on the injured list; and without most of their best relievers as Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, Brusdar Graterol and Kirby Yates are also on the IL.

The Dodgers were the better team with a weakened lineup, and they are undeniably a better team if and when they ever get their guys back. That said, I also believe the Yankees are better in 2025 than they were in 2024, and I still think they’re the top dog in the AL, but they’re going to have to play much better than they did in this series if they end up rematching with Los Angeles in October.

“I think they’re beneficial, yes,” Boone said of playing in highly-hyped regular-season series such as this one. “We talk about these series - the Subway Series, obviously coming here and playing the Dodgers - the different big series that you face in the course of the year. The biggest thing is we do treat them all the same, but I think there’s benefits for our players to play in these environments and these heightened-up series. I do think there’s some benefit to that. It’s all part of gaining experience in the league.”

Lets hope the experience pays off in a few months and the series results are different.

May 30: Dodgers 8, Yankees 5

➤ If ever there was a good night for the Yankees to be starting a game at 10:10 p.m. on the East coast, and for it to be broadcast on Apple-TV, this was it. Well, that was until Saturday’s game which would have been an even better one to be played while we were all sleeping.

➤ The Yankees hit four home runs in the first three innings, had a 5-2 lead, and just like Game 5 of the World Series last October, they blew it as the Dodgers came roaring back to score six runs combined in the sixth and seventh innings, ending New York’s five-game winning streak.

➤ It turns out that Max Fried is mortal. He had allowed 10 earned runs in his first 11 starts as a Yankee, and then he got tagged for six in this one as the Dodgers’ offense - minus Betts - was relentless, led by Shohei Ohtani who hit two solo home runs. Fried allowed eight hits in five-plus innings and struck out only three; just a really poor outing.

➤ Things sure started well. Aaron Judge homered in the first, then Austin Wells and Trent Grisham homered in the second to make it 4-1. And in the third Paul Goldschmidt hit the fourth homer off Dodgers starter Tony Gonsolin, but from then on, the Yankees offense took the rest of the night off and you can’t do that against the Dodgers. They’re too good and no lead is ever safe.

➤ That third inning I think was the turning point in the game. After Goldy’s homer, Ben Rice singled but Anthony Volpe hit into a double play, part of a lousy night for him at the plate. But Wells walked and Jorbit Vivas was hit by a pitch, so there was another chance to tack on, but the useless Oswald Peraza struck out on four pitches to end the threat. The Yankees then went 1-2-3 in the next three innings against Gonsolin who suddenly found his groove, and the only two hits the rest of the game against the Dodgers’ bullpen were a Judge double and a Grisham single.

➤ Meanwhile, the Dodgers exploded in the sixth. Ohtani hit his second leadoff homer, Teoscar Hernandez and Will Smith singled, and Freddie Freeman - who has become the supreme Yankee killer - doubled in a run and ended Fried’s night. Jonathan Loiasiga immediately gave up a tying single to Andy Pages and after a fielders’ choice and an intentional walk, Loaisiga exited and Tim Hill walked Michael Conforto with the bases loaded for the go-ahead run.

➤ Then in the seventh, the Dodgers did what the Yankees couldn’t: They tacked on two insurance runs as Smith singled, Freeman doubled and Pages hit a two-run single off Yerry De los Santos.

➤ The Yankees fell to 3-12 in games where they have given up at least five runs; this was just their second loss by three runs or more since April 11; and they fell to 17-7 in games where they hit at least two home runs.

What they said in Friday’s clubhouse

• Fried: “Obviously, a big core group of them won the World Series last year. They know how to win games. The guys did a great job tonight putting up early runs. For the most part, I just didn’t do my job. Mostly, it was just execution, leaving balls in the middle of the plate. I wasn’t going to the locations I wanted to, and when you’re facing a good team with good hitters, they’re going to make you pay for it. The fact that we had a lead and I gave it up … it’s not going to sit well with me. But you’ve got to be able to use this as motivation to go out next time and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

• Judge on Ohtani matching his first-inning homer: “I feel like he was copying me - I started it. No, he’s impressive. He’s one of the best players in the game for a reason. What he can do in the box, on the basepaths, once he gets back on the mound, it’s special. But it’s really just about two good ballclubs going after it and we weren’t able to come away with the win.”

May 31: Dodgers 18, Yankees 2

➤ How bad was this catastrophe of a night? The Dodgers’ pitchers were better than the Yankees’ pitchers, the Dodgers’ hitters were way, way, way better than the Yankees’ hitters, and the Dodgers’ hitter who pitched was better than the Yankees’ hitter who pitched. My God, what an embarrassment for all the baseball nation to see on FOX.

➤ We’ve been lauding Will Warren’s turnaround in May, but pretty much all the good work he did in May was undone on the final day of the month in the span of 1.1 awful innings during which he faced 14 batters and allowed seven runs on six hits and four walks. Warren looked as if he was terrified to face the Dodgers, realizing from the moment he took the mound that this wasn’t the A’s, Mariners, Rangers or Rockies, the teams he had tamed in his last four starts. And clearly, the Dodgers got a sniff of blood and they attacked.

➤ Brent Headrick, fresh up from Triple-A, was then thrown into the lion’s den, and before the Yankees’ 7-8-9 hitters had even taken their first at bat, it was 10-0. During those first two innings against Warren and Headrick, Max Muncy had an RBI single and a three-run homer, Tommy Edman had a pair of RBI doubles, and Hyesong Kim had a two-run homer. Hell, it could have been worse but Warren somehow struck out Ohtani with the bases loaded to end the first, and Headrick struck him out to end the second.

➤ Later, Mark Leiter - who has been better this season than we realize - took a turn throwing meatballs. He faced six men in the fifth inning and four scored on a Freeman double and Muncy’s second three-run homer of the game.

➤ The final indignation came when Boone - tired of wasting relievers - had third baseman Pablo Reyes pitch the eighth. Turns out he’s as bad a pitcher as he is a hitter as he gave up five hits, one of which was a three-run homer by rookie Dalton Rushing, the first MLB homer of the kid’s career. Years from now, I’m sure he won’t share with his children that he hit it off a position player.

➤ Oh, the embarrassment wasn’t finished. The Dodgers used infielder Kike Hernandez to pitch the ninth, confident he could protect a 16-run lead, and he did, wonderfully. Jasson Dominguez led off with a double and Peraza, Wells and and LeMahieu all made feeble outs to end it. Just disgusting on every level

➤ Hey, Judge hit two home runs. One came with the Yankees down 10-0, the other when they were down 15-1. But hey, at least he did something productive compared to the rest of the team.

What they said in Saturday’s clubhouse

• Warren: “It hurts. It sucks. I let the team down. Left balls over the heart of the plate, didn’t get ahead and they capitalized. That’s a good team. When you make mistakes, they’re magnified. I was on my heels. I talk about executing and being aggressive in the zone, and today didn’t go that way for me. They took advantage of it. Just let it sit there and learn to hate that feeling. Then when you take the mound in five days, you don’t want to feel that again and it’s on to the next one.”

• Boone on Warren: “He has all the equipment to move right through this one and be excellent. It's no fun going through it … but it’s part of the game sometimes. He has learned a lot from every situation, from adversity through some success. This is a hard game, you know? You’re going to take your lumps sometimes, and he’ll be better for having gone through that.”

• Cody Bellinger: “It’s been tough. Obviously, a very good team over there. We’ve been playing good baseball. Definitely a tough few games here, but we haven’t lost confidence in the group of guys here. Only thing we can do is get after it Sunday and do everything we can to win.”

June 1: Yankees 7, Dodgers 3

➤ How do you figure this crazy game that we all love? After those two terrible games, the Yankees had to face Yoshinobu Yamamoto, not only the Dodgers’ ace but one of the best pitchers in MLB who started the night leading the NL in WHIP (0.916) and sitting third in ERA (1.97). It felt like sweep city, but nope, that didn’t happen. The Yankees knocked the $325 million Japanese star who chose the Dodgers over the Yankees last year out of the game before he could finish four innings as they strafed him for four runs on seven hits and three walks. Yeah, didn’t see that coming.

➤ And then on the other side, Ryan Yarbrough was fantastic, again. What a story this guy has become. He went six innings and locked up the Dodgers, holding their explosive lineup to one run on four hits with no walks and five whiffs, the run coming on an Edman homer. He left with a 6-1 lead, and after Loaisiga worked a lousy seventh where he allowed LA to sneak back into it by giving up solo homers to Pages and Muncy, Devin Williams and Hill closed it out with a pair of perfect innings.

➤ Thanks largely to Yarbrough who generated 17 swings and misses, the Dodgers’ top four in the order - Ohtani, Hernandez, Freeman and Smith - went 0-for-16 with five strikeouts. Again, baseball is sometimes such a random game.

➤ It capped a nice weekend for Yarbrough. He spent most of the 2024 regular season with the Dodgers before finishing with the Blue Jays, and that earned him a World Series ring which the team presented to him on Friday.

➤ The first run was a bit of a gift as Grisham singled, took second on a Rice walk, then raced home on a Dominguez single but if Pages hadn’t air-mailed the throw, Grisham would have been out by a mile. But, he did air mail it and the Yankees were up 1-0.

➤ After Edman’s tying homer, the Yankees answered right back in the third as Judge walked and Rice hit a two-run homer, then after Volpe and Wells singled, Volpe scored on a wild pitch for a 4-1 lead. In the fifth, Dominguez walked and stole second, Wells walked and they came home on singles by LeMahieu and Peraza. That was the indication this was the Yankees’ night because those two have been utterly horrendous at the plate. Peraza is hitting an anemic .159 while LeMahieu came into the game in a 3-for-29 slide, but he raised his average nearly 60 points to .239 with four hits, the last being an RBI double in the ninth. That was his first four-hit game since 2021.

➤ Unfortunately, there was injury news. Dominguez jammed his thumb stealing that base in the fifth and he had to leave the game, and we’ll have to wait for x-rays to see if he’s going to miss time. And then Boone shared the news after the game that the reason Luke Weaver warmed up but didn’t pitch the ninth wasn’t because it was no longer a save situation; he felt something in his hamstring so they shut him down. If Dominguez is out, the Yankees are fine in the outfield. If Weaver misses times, that would be a huge problem.

➤ In the end, the Yankees went 6-3 on the West Coast trip, so while the first two nights against the Dodgers were troublesome, that’s a damn good trip.

What they said in Sunday’s clubhouse

• Yarbrough: “I just had a really good game plan going into it, seeing what they’ve done really well this series,” Yarbrough said. “I’m just trying to understand what I do well and keep them off balance. That was the biggest thing.”

• Muncy on Yarbrough: “He might only be throwing mid-80s, but it feels so much harder than that. He’s a tall guy; he’s got long arms, so he’s got good extension. He’s got the funky delivery with the low slot, so it always makes his ball feel a lot harder than what it actually is.”

The Yankees are off Monday while traveling back home where they start a three-game set with the Guardians. This is a tough stretch of games having to play the Dodgers and Guardians, then they host the Red Sox, go to Kansas City, then go to Boston over the next two weeks.

The Guardians took two of three when the teams met in Cleveland in April, and Carlos Rodon saved the Yankees from a sweep with seven innings where he allowed one run, and it was unearned. He gets the start in the opener as the Yankees try to recover from seeing their streak of winning series end at seven in Los Angeles.

Here are some of the Guardians top players to watch:

➤ 3B Jose Ramirez: He’s a machine at the plate as his slash line is now .327/.384/.555 for an OPS of .939.

➤ LF Steven Kwan: The ultimate pest at the top of the order has an on-base percentage of .370 while playing great defense.

➤ DH Kyle Manzardo: He’s hitting just .210 but he has 10 homers and 28 RBI and his lefty swing is tailor-made for the short porch.

➤ 1B Carlos Santana: His on-base is a solid .371 and he’s tied with Ramirez for the team lead in RBIs with 29.

➤ RP Emmanuel Clase: He had some poor outings early which is why his ERA is 3.96, but in his last 14 appearances his ERA is 1.32 with nine saves so it appears he’s back to his dominant form.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Tuesday, 7:05, YES: Carlos Rodon (2.60 ERA) vs. Tanner Bibee (3.86) whose 2.38 strikeout-to-walk ratio leads Cleveland’s rotation.

• Wednesday, 7:05, Amazon Prime: Clarke Schmidt (3.95) vs. Luis Ortiz (4.40) who came to Cleveland this year after three seasons pitching to a 3.93 ERA with the lowly Pirates.

• Thursday, 7:05, YES: Max Fried (1.92) vs. Slade Cecconi (5.28) who has made only three starts this season.