Seven months after Walker Buehler struck out Alex Verdugo to end the 2024 World Series, the Yankees finally get to do what they were trying to do that night at Yankee Stadium:
They make it back to Dodger Stadium.
The Yankees were ahead, 5-0, going into the fifth inning of Game 5 that night. At that point they had every right to believe they were going to push the whole thing back to Los Angeles for Game 6 and, who knows, maybe even become the second team in baseball history to come from 0-3 down and win a postseason series. And not just any series. A Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series.
The Yankees had just won Game 4, 11-4. Now they were putting it on the Dodgers in Game 5. And what had been just faint hope for the home team the night before, playing in its first Series in 15 years, was now getting louder all around them until ...
Until Aaron Judge dropped a routine fly ball in center and Gerrit Cole didn’t get over to cover first base on a ground ball to Anthony Rizzo and Anthony Volpe made a throwing error trying to get an out at third. Just like that, 5-0 turned into 5-5 in Game 5. It would end up 7-6 for the Dodgers.
But now the Yankees are back. Back in Los Angeles, where they wanted to be on the last weekend in October. After that nightmare inning when everything went wrong for them, they show up for this weekend series with just about everything going right. Even in the season when they lost Juan Soto to the Mets in free agency and lost Cole to Tommy John surgery, they are playing as well as anybody, and over the last three weeks have looked better than everybody.
The Dodgers? They’ve seen Blake Snell get hurt, Tyler Glasnow get hurt. Roki Sasaki, who was supposed to be this year’s Japanese pitching sensation, has been on the IL as well. They’ve had so many injured relief pitchers -- Blake Treinen, Brusdar Graterol, Kirby Yates, Michael Kopech is just a partial list -- you started to wonder if there was enough bandwidth for everybody on the IL. On Thursday, Tanner Scott, a big offseason acquisition for Dave Roberts’ bullpen, got roughed up and the Guardians came from behind and beat the Dodgers in Cleveland before the Dodgers headed home.
The Dodgers remain in first place despite it all, if barely. The Yankees? They are currently running away with the AL East the way we’ve become conditioned to seeing the Dodgers so often run away with the NL West. It is the Yankees who will come into this weekend series against the Dodgers with the better record and – for now – doing almost as well without Cole and Soto as they did when they were still around.
After 55 games last season, the Yankees had a record of 37-18. Through 55 games this season, after last night’s 1-0 victory against the Angels, their record is 35-20. Aaron Judge, even without Soto batting in front of him, is currently batting .391, 18 homers, 47 RBIs and a 1.227 OPS. Trent Grisham, who came to the Yankees from the Padres along with Soto, has hit 12 homers to Soto’s eight, knocked in one fewer run than Soto has, and with a batting average of .255 is more than 30 points better than Soto right now.
Paul Goldschmidt, in New York on a one-year deal -- same as Cody Bellinger (eight homers, 32 RBIs, .258 average after a slow start) is -- has been a star at first base, is batting .347, and he scored the Yankees' only run against the Angels on Wednesday. Ben Rice has been one of the surprises of the season with 11 home runs. Max Fried has been brilliant replacing the Cole as the Yankees' ace, going 7-0 with a 1.29 ERA and 0.93 WHIP. Carlos Rodón is 7-3 with a 2.60 ERA and a WHIP of 0.94. Luke Weaver, taking the closer role back from Devin Williams, has eight saves, an ERA of 0.73 and is basically averaging a strikeout per inning.
The Yankees absolutely come into the Dodgers series on a heater, having won 16 of their last 20, and maybe they will come in with a little attitude after hearing some of the comments the Dodgers made after the World Series about their sloppiness with fundamentals and overall play across the five games.
Aaron Boone even talked about how he hoped his team would “handle things with a little more class” if the Yankees ever do win it all.
So we get Dodgers vs. Yankees again, first place against first place, as the calendar turns to June in baseball. It always feels like a lot when the two teams play. This time it feels like even more. We once again have Shohei Ohtani (20 home runs and getting closer by the week to becoming a starting pitcher again) and Judge on the same field. Sometimes, even before the official start of summer, you get a series like this.
“It will be great to see how we stack up against them,” Judge said.
It always is. Not the trip to LA the Yankees wanted so badly last October. Here they come, anyway. Coming in hot.