The Los Angeles Dodgers will renew one of baseball’s most historic rivalries when they take on the New York Yankees in the 2024 World Series, with Game 1 set for Friday night at Dodger Stadium.
The teams are set to face off in the Fall Classic for the 12th time in MLB postseason history and first since 1981.
New York won the first five head-to-head meetings before the then-Brooklyn Dodgers broke through in 1955. L.A. also won in 1963 and their most recent matchup.
The Dodgers and Yankees don’t often play each other, but they did meet for three games at Yankee Stadium this past June. L.A. took the first two contests before dropping the series finale.
“They’re a great ballclub. They’re a complete team,” Aaron Judge said. “You can talk about their offense, where they start off with three MVPs back-to-back-to-back. I know Freddie is a little banged up with that ankle, but Shohei, Mookie and him, that’s a tough three to go through to start off the game.”
“They’ve got a great pitching staff and added a couple bullpen pieces. Just a complete team. They’re fast, they’re athletic, they can hit the ball out of the ballpark. Just a really dynamic team. It was definitely a fun series. I know it didn’t go the way we wanted, but definitely fun always playing them.”
Yankees vs. Dodgers season review
June 7-9
The first meeting of the 2024 season featured a pitching matchup between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Cody Poteet. Both starters turned in excellent outings, but it was Yamamoto who stole the show with seven shutout innings.
The score remained 0-0 until the top of the 11th, when Teoscar Hernández drove in a pair of runs with a double. The Yankees answered back with an RBI single from Judge in the bottom of the inning, but the Dodgers held on for a 2-1 win.
Gavin Stone took the mound in the second game and also found success despite having to navigate through traffic on the base paths. He gave up just two runs on eight hits and collected six strikeouts in 5.2 innings of work.
Hernández put L.A. on the board with a solo home run off Nestor Cortes in the top off the second. He later provided the dagger by hitting a grand slam in the eighth inning to finish with a game-high six RBI en route to an 11-3 win for the Dodgers.
The final matchup of the regular season saw the Yankees turn the table on the Dodgers. With L.A. holding a 3-2 lead in the sixth, Trent Grisham delivered a go-ahead three-run homer off Tyler Glasnow.
The Dodgers trimmed the deficit to one run in the eighth, but the Yankees immediately got it back when Judge led off the bottom of the inning with a solo blast. New York salvaged the series with a 6-4 win.
“I talk every now and then about fun series in the course of the regular season, whether it’s a division rival or big series that has that juice and they’re good games, going to London, Field of Dreams stuff,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “We’ve been to L.A. a couple times in the regular season since I’ve been here, and those are always really cool series. The same rang true here in the Bronx.
“Obviously they beat us two out of three, felt like three really competitive games; think Juan was out in all of them. Obviously know you’re up against a great opponent, but just looking back on that series, it was just a cool regular season summertime in the Bronx, Dodgers coming in and hadn’t been here in a long time. Cool weekend.”
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