The New York Yankees had seven months to think about their fifth-inning collapse in Game 5 of the World Series last October. The Bronx Bombers dropped a 96.5% chance of winning the game, and the Los Angeles Dodgers rubbed it in their noses all winter. Los Angeles players said they were just waiting for the Yankees to make mistakes, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts felt that their challenging NLDS matchup against the San Diego Padres “was the World Series.”
This offseason, both pennant winners added to their dominance (and payrolls) while maintaining their momentum. The Yankees lost Juan Soto in free agency, but they responded aggressively. The Dodgers went on a spending spree, with their future salary commitments rising to nearly half a billion dollars.
The Yankees are hungry to avenge. The Dodgers are ready to defend.
That’s the backdrop to this weekend’s highly anticipated World Series rematch, set to kick off on Friday night at Chavez Ravine. It’s a new season, with fresh starts, and yet both the Yankees and Dodgers represent two of the top five teams in Major League Baseball.
There are the top storylines to keep track of as these teams meet again, and FOX Sports MLB writers Deesha Thosar and Rowan Kavner broke them down for you. Here are the six themes to watch this weekend.
Will the Juan Soto replacements be difference makers?
The Yankees wasted no time pivoting after they lost the Soto sweepstakes to the Mets this offseason as general manager Brian Cashman secured a huge haul —signing southpaw Max Fried, outfielder Cody Bellinger, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and closer Devin Williams in free agency. This year, the Yankees are actually a more well-rounded and complete team with those four stars on the roster than they were with Soto patrolling right field last year.
Despite ace Gerrit Cole’s season-ending Tommy John surgery, the Yankees have the fourth-best pitching staff in the major leagues, led by Fried’s MLB-best 1.29 ERA. They have the best offense in baseball, in terms of on-base percentage, slugging, walk rate, OPS+ and WAR. Goldschmidt’s 156 wRC+ is ranked 14th among all qualified major-league hitters, a huge boost from Anthony Rizzo’s 84 wRC+ last year. And Bellinger is playing nearly 40 points better (120 wRC+) than his predecessor, Alex Verdugo (83 wRC+), was for the Yankees last year. Their defense has been enhanced (more on that later) and their bullpen has rebounded from Williams’ early-season struggles to boast the fourth-best ERA (3.25) in the league.
Was losing Soto for the best? The Yankees team that walks into Dodger Stadium on Friday has a completely different look to it than the one that crumpled in the fifth inning of Game 5 last year. As of now, the Yankees have the advantage in several statistical categories, and the Soto replacements have the potential to bury Los Angeles this weekend. – Thosar
Will the Yankees’ defense cost them the series — again?
There is an argument to be made that the Yankees lost the World Series because of their own embarrassing errors in the field. At least, the Dodgers sure seemed to think so after they won the World Series, with players like Joe Kelly and Chris Taylor indicating they received scouting reports to just wait for the Yankees to get in their own way. That prophecy ultimately came true.
New York’s poor fundamentals were exposed throughout the Fall Classic. In Game 1, Shohei Ohtani took third base on Soto’s error, a bad throw to second base, and he instantly scored on Mookie Betts’ sacrifice fly. In Game 3, Giancarlo Stanton, who ranks in the 3rd percentile in sprint speed, was easily thrown out at home. In Game 4, Anthony Volpe should’ve scored from second base on a double off the wall, but he just advanced to third. It all culminated in Game 5, a fifth-inning meltdown that will haunt Yankees fans until the club wins a championship. The Yankees were in the driver’s seat with a 5-0 lead and two outs in the fifth when Aaron Judge dropped a can of corn in center field, Volpe committed a throwing error, and Gerrit Cole did not cover first base. The Dodgers, anticipating this, took full advantage and completed a five-run rally in the fifth before winning the championship that night.
Fast-forward to now, though, and the Yankees have improved from being ranked 12th in Defensive Runs Saved last year, to fifth in MLB this year. Max Fried leads the team with 4 DRS, and the sharp defense of Cody Bellinger and the currently-injured Jazz Chisholm has led to a needed boost on the field. Gleyber Torres had the team’s worst DRS (-11) last season, and it was no coincidence the Yankees didn’t re-sign him in free agency this offseason. Judge had the second-worst DRS (-9) last year playing center field, but he’s much more comfortable back in right field this year, sporting a 0 DRS that indicates he’s at least league average.
We’re not expecting the Yankees to meltdown this weekend in the World Series rematch, but it will be fascinating to see how their improved defense overall helps them with the finer details against the reigning champions. –Thosar
Aaron Judge’s gaffe in the outfield in Game 5 was a pivotal moment in the 2024 World Series. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Will Mookie Betts be a threat against the Yankees?
After the Dodgers captured the championship trophy last year, they asked Betts to transition from playing outfield to becoming their every-day shortstop (again), and this time, he’s going to stick there for good. But, ever since Betts turned his full attention to playing an above-average shortstop for Los Angeles, it sure looks like that focus on his defense has negatively impacted his presence in the lineup.
The 32-year-old’s batting average (.254), OPS (.742) and underlying advanced metrics are all below his career averages in 53 games this year. Most of the red popping up on his Baseball Savant page is for his higher chase, whiff, and strikeout rate, which is completely unlike what the 12-year veteran with all-time great numbers is used to seeing. He didn’t just rack up seven Silver Slugger awards, a batting title and an MVP award by accident, so it’s fair to expect Betts to return to his usual high bar at some point in the season. But can he do it against the red-hot Yankees, who enter the series on a five-game winning streak, having won 16 of their last 20 games?
Betts deserves a ton of credit for playing shortstop at an excellent level after learning the intricacies of baseball’s most demanding position in the big leagues. That’s a lot to take on, and his selfless attitude to make the shift to short, which was asked of him in part to allow the club to re-sign Teoscar Hernandez, is something not a lot of superstars in the game would agree to do. Still, Betts’ bat is just as important as his glove. The Dodgers, though equipped with the second-best offense in baseball, need all the boost they can get against New York, and this weekend sure would be a terrific time for Betts to reclaim his groove at the plate. – Thosar
Do Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández continue tormenting the Yankees?
The swing lives in Dodgers lore…and Yankees nightmares. Freeman’s walk-off grand slam to end Game 1 of the World Series, after hobbling his way through the first two series of the postseason, will go down as one of the all-time memorable moments in playoff history. But the World Series MVP was far from finished after that iconic blast. He went on to homer in each of the first four games of the series and became the first player in MLB history to hit a home run in six straight World Series games (dating back to the last two games of the 2021 World Series, when he was with the Braves).
Of course, he is not the only player in the Dodgers’ lineup who gave the Yankees headaches last year. Teoscar Hernández had already endeared himself to Dodgers fans in his first season with the club last year long before a June trip to the Bronx, but that series in New York helped build his clutch reputation and set the stage for October. He won the opener of that mid-season series by knocking in the first two runs of the game in the 11th inning, blasted two home runs the following day to spark a victory and finished the series with six hits and three home runs. Including the postseason, Hernández recorded a hit in all eight games he played against the Yankees last year. He hit the go-ahead home run in Game 2 of the World Series and the game-tying double in the five-run onslaught in the deciding Game 5 during the Yankees’ fifth-inning unraveling.
Now back with the Dodgers after re-signing this offseason, Hernández enters the weekend as the club’s RBI leader. Even if the Yankees manage to limit Ohtani, Betts and Freeman, life doesn’t get much easier with Hernández lingering. – Kavner
Freddie Freeman’s production hasn’t missed a beat since his World Series performances. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
How do the former Dodgers now wearing pinstripes impact the series?
It’s a customary gesture from the reigning World Series winners: When a visiting player who contributed to their championship run returns to Dodger Stadium, that player picks up his ring. It happened for Jack Flaherty in March. It happened for Ryan Brasier in April.
If or when it happens this weekend, though, it might be a little more awkward.
Ryan Yarbrough pitched in 32 games in relief for the Dodgers last year before getting traded to Toronto. He signed with the Yankees this March, helped lift a depleted New York rotation earlier this month — he shifted from reliever to starter and has a 2.25 ERA in four May starts — and is now in line to start Sunday in Los Angeles. At some point before then, he will likely receive his World Series ring… from the team that beat his current team in the World Series.
Yarbrough is one of a handful of new Yankees players with ties to the Dodgers as the teams prepare to run it back. Most notably, this will be the third series back at Dodger Stadium for Cody Bellinger since the team non-tendered the 2019 MVP after the 2022 season.
He made his first two trips back count.
As a member of the Cubs, Bellinger went 3-for-11 with a home run, a double, two walks and two stolen bases at Dodger Stadium in 2023 and then went 4-for-11 with two homers and four walks at the venue last season. In addition, Yankees backup infielder Jorbit Vivas was a Dodgers prospect before getting traded to New York in December 2023. This will mark Vivas’ first big-league action against the team that dealt him away. – Kavner
Do the Dodgers have enough arms to contain the Yankees’ attack?
Many of the Dodgers pitchers who helped best the Yankees last October won’t be around in the rematch. Walker Buehler is in Boston. Flaherty is in Detroit. Brasier is in Chicago. Blake Treinen, who went 2.1 innings in the deciding game of the World Series, has been out for more than a month. Neither Michael Kopech nor Brusdar Graterol have thrown a big-league pitch this year, though Kopech appears close to a return.
After a year in which they were down to three reliable starters last October, they sought to remedy their issues by again spending lavishly this offseason. Needless to say, it hasn’t gone to plan. In addition to Treinen and Kopech, the bullpen is also without Evan Phillips and newcomer Kirby Yates, while three starters from the season-opening rotation — Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki — are already on the shelf. You could field a competent big-league staff using only the pitchers on the Dodgers’ injured list.
They have piled up wins despite the absences, but their starters rank 22nd in ERA while their relievers rank 17th. Their bullpen has thrown the most innings in MLB, and they’re coming off a series finale in Cleveland in which they coughed up a late three-run advantage. The task ahead gets harder against a Yankees offense with the highest OPS in MLB, one that features a mostly different cast from last year’s World Series squad.
Having Yoshinobu Yamamoto helps. The best start of Yamamoto’s debut season last year came in New York, when he went seven scoreless innings on June 7. His best postseason start also came against the Yankees, when he held them to a run on one hit and two walks in 6.1 innings in a Game 2 win. He has carried that late-season form into the 2025 season. By the time he goes Sunday, though, how much damage will the Yankees’ lineup already have done? – Kavner
Dave Roberts on managing Shohei Ohtani and what he brings to the Los Angeles Dodgers | The Herd
Dave Roberts joins Colin Cowherd on The Herd to discuss managing Shohei Ohtani, the greatest player in baseball, and what he brings to the Los Angeles Dodgers both on and off the field.
Deesha Thosarcovers Major League Baseball as a reporter and columnist for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at@DeeshaThosar.
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at@RowanKavner.
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