NEW YORK — For a matchup with so much history — the most common World Series pairing, and the most storied as well — meetings between the Dodgers and Yankees have been curiously rare since the introduction of interleague play in 1997. It took until 2013 for Major League Baseball to bring the Dodgers back to Yankee Stadium for the first time since the 1981 World Series clincher, and until this past weekend they had made just one other visit (2016). The more balanced schedule adopted last year has made meetings between the two teams an annual occurrence, but even so, this still feels like the best kind of novelty that interleague play can muster. Particularly so to this scribe, for whom the 1978 and ’81 World Series were foundational experiences as a young third-generation Dodgers fan who never dreamed that he would one day cover baseball, let alone in the Bronx.
This was the first of the Dodgers’ three visits where I was able to enjoy games as both a fan (Friday night, from my ticket group’s regular seats in section 422) and a member of the media. Getting paid to have this much fun? I recommend it. With both teams leading their respective divisions, with national television on hand for all three games, and with Yankee Stadium filled with sellout crowds of 48,000-plus — including a substantial, colorful contingent of Dodgers fans, many of them decked out in Shohei Ohtani jerseys — this past weekend brought an electrified, playoff-like atmosphere to the Bronx. Not that the Yankees, who entered the series having won eight straight and who still own the AL’s best record (46-21), weren’t already doing their best to create one. Offsetting their sluggish play over the past few weeks, the Dodgers (41-26) rose to the occasion by taking two out of three tension-filled games, winning 2-1 in 11 innings on Friday and turning a tight game on Saturday into an 11-3 laugher. The Yankees avoided a sweep and rewarded their frenzied fans by winning a seesaw battle on Sunday night, 6-4, thanks to a well-timed three-run homer by Trent Grisham, who was only playing because Juan Soto spent the series on the bench due to inflammation in his left elbow; the go-ahead blast came off Tyler Glasnow as Yankees fans chanted “We want Soto! We want Soto!”
“This whole series has been fun,” slugger Aaron Judge told ESPN’s Buster Olney afterward. “I know they took the series, but these are the games you want to play in, back and forth like that and it comes down to an MVP with two guys on — those are the moments you live for right there.” Judge was referring to the game’s final out, where Clay Holmes struck out Mookie Betts chasing a low-and-away slider with runners on first and second. Unofficially, it may as well have been Teoscar Hernández Weekend. While the Yankees held the Dodgers’ 1-2-3 of Betts, Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman to a combined 7-for-35 performance with 11 total bases in the series, Hernández himself went 6-for-12 with two doubles and three homers while driving in nine of the Dodgers’ 17 runs. The 31-year-old left fielder snapped the seal on a scoreless game with a two-run double in the 11th inning on Friday night. His grand slam — his second home run of the night — broke open Saturday night’s game, and his double and solo shot on Sunday accounted for two of the three extra-base hits collected against Yankees starter Luis Gil, with the last of those hits temporarily giving the Dodgers the lead before Grisham’s home run.
Both teams played the series at less than full strength, with the Yankees not only missing ace Gerrit Cole — whose rehab from a bout of nerve inflammation in his elbow is progressing well — but also Soto. The superstar right fielder started each of the Yankees’ first 64 games, but he left Thursday’s contest against the Twins during a 56-minute rain delay due to lingering discomfort in his left forearm. Though it had bothered him for the past couple weeks, it apparently hadn’t prevented him from destroying opposing pitching; prior to his absence, his .603 slugging percentage, 190 wRC+, and 4.1 WAR ranked second in AL only to Judge, with the two outfielders ranking first and second in the majors in the latter two categories to that point. An MRI taken Friday revealed only inflammation in Soto’s forearm, much to the Yankees’ relief. In addition to fetching Cole Gatorade during an in-game interview with the Fox Sports booth on Saturday, Soto served as a decoy off the bench all weekend, though Dodgers manager Dave Roberts saw through the ruse. “Where they’re at in the standings, with how well they’re playing and what’s at stake this year, I really wasn’t too concerned about him being played this weekend,” he told reporters after Sunday’s game. Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who had hinted before Sunday’s game he might use Soto, said he expects the right fielder back in the lineup for the series against the Royals, which begins on Monday night.
As for the Dodgers, in addition to being without Clayton Kershaw as he recovers from shoulder surgery, they’ve been without third baseman Max Muncy since May 15 due to an oblique strain. Though hardly as central to the Dodgers offense as Soto is to the Yankees, Muncy is hitting .223/.323/.475 for a 123 wRC+, his best mark since 2021. What’s more, his fill-ins — mainly Enrique Hernández, with Miguel Rojas and Chris Taylor also chipping in — have combined to hit just .171/.241/.276 (52 wRC+) with two doubles and two home runs in 83 plate appearances. Hernández, who’s hitting just .207/.273/.314 (72 wRC+) overall, hit one of those doubles on Friday, and one of those homers on Saturday. Muncy is of particular importance to the Dodgers because his presence lengthens a top-heavy lineup that’s gotten just a 77 wRC+ (.210/.273/.334) showing from its 6-7-8-9 hitters this year (including seven games for which Muncy himself batted sixth). Without him, the Dodgers had gone 10-9 — all against sub-.500 teams (the Reds, Diamondbacks, Mets, Rockies, and Pirates) — from the time of his injury to the start of Friday’s series, scoring three or fewer runs in nine of those games, and averaging just 4.05 runs per game in that span, with two double-digit blowouts padding that average by three-quarters of a run.
On paper, Friday’s pairing of ace-in-the-making Yoshinobu Yamamoto and injury fill-in Cody Poteet (subbing for Clarke Schmidt, who’s out due to a lat strain) looked like a mismatch, but it turned into a pitchers’ duel. Each team collected just four hits through the first nine innings; five times, a half-inning ended with a runner stranded in scoring position. Yamamoto was phenomenal, holding the Yankees to two hits and two walks over seven innings while striking out seven, lowering his ERA to an even 3.00. He ended the first inning by striking out Giancarlo Stanton swinging on a slider in the dirt with a runner on second, escaped the second by whiffing Jose Trevino on a slider outside with runners on the corners, then retired the next 11 in a row before walking Judge with two outs in the sixth. Yamamoto followed by striking out Stanton again, this time by elevating a 97-mph heater. The closest the Yankees came to scoring was in the eighth, when reliever Anthony Banda notched two strikeouts, yielded back-to-back singles to Anthony Volpe and Alex Verdugo, and gave way to Blake Treinen, who has been absolutely dominant since returning from a nearly two-year absence due to shoulder woes, throwing 11 scoreless innings with 16 strikeouts and two walks. One of those walks was wisely issued to the red-hot Judge. Stanton followed, just getting under a sinker that was hit into the left-center gap but didn’t quite reach the warning track before Teoscar Hernández hauled it in. On the other side…
