It’s here. The rematch.
Dodgers. Yankees. Los Angeles. New York. Two powerhouse teams who are set to meet for the first time since last fall’s World Series.
The Dodgers defeated the Yankees in five games for their first full-season World Series championship since 1988. As they defend their title, the Yanks, who reached the Fall Classic for the first time in 15 years, are still seeking to return to baseball’s pinnacle after an unusually long absence at the top for the Bronx Bombers.
Whether it’s in late October or late May, this matchup has it all. And in the land of stars, the stars will be all over the field at Dodger Stadium when the series opens on Friday night at 10:10 p.m. ET/7:10 p.m. PT on Apple TV+.
The game’s two greatest players, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, will face off. But they’re not the only luminaries here. In fact, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, if the starting lineups include the usual starters for each team, it will be the first time in MLB history that there are three former MVPs in each lineup in the same game.
Ohtani, the reigning National League MVP, along with Mookie Betts (2018 American League MVP) and Freddie Freeman (2020 NL MVP) will lead the way for the Dodgers. On the other side, the Yankees feature Judge (the reigning AL MVP), Cody Bellinger (2019 NL MVP) and Paul Goldschmidt (2022 NL MVP).
Judge and Ohtani are each off to incredible starts at the plate in 2025, with the former flirting with a .400 batting average with 18 home runs as we near June, and the latter picking up where he left off last year, when he became the first player in MLB history to hit at least 50 home runs and steal at least 50 bases in the same season -- Ohtani currently leads MLB with 20 homers and he’s also swiped 11 bases.
Freeman, the MVP of the 2024 World Series who launched the first walk-off grand slam in Fall Classic history, is off to a tremendous start himself, leading the NL with a .359 batting average and a 1.044 OPS.
Amid a resurgence at the plate, Bellinger will be facing the club with whom he was named the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year and with whom he won the NL MVP Award in 2019.
The scheduled starting pitcher for the Yankees in Friday’s opener, Max Fried, returns to Southern California, where he was born and raised. Fried is off to a historic start in pinstripes, owning a 7-0 record with an MLB-best 1.29 ERA through his first 11 starts for New York.
Fried’s counterpart on Friday will be right-hander Tony Gonsolin. On Saturday, the scheduled matchup on the mound will be the Yankees’ Will Warren against the Dodgers’ Landon Knack (7:15 p.m. ET/4:15 p.m. PT on FOX).
The Yanks have not named a starting pitcher for Sunday (7:10 p.m. ET/4:10 p.m. PT on ESPN), but the Dodgers will have their ace on the mound. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has dazzled over his first 11 starts this season, with an NL-leading 1.97 ERA and 75 strikeouts to just 20 walks.
It promises to be a series of titanic proportions in Los Angeles this weekend. Each game between these historic franchises will be nationally televised. Each game has the potential to create unforgettable moments and deliver epic drama.
And it all starts on Friday night.