Yankees Improve to 4-0 Facing Series Sweep After Sunday's Win Against Dodgers
There may have been no bigger series this season for Yankees fans than this past weekend against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Even after losing Juan Soto, New York has demonstrated that it is a significantly better team this year than last, particularly on defense. They hoped to prove that against the defending champions in game one, as only three of the batters in the Yankees’ lineup on Friday night were regulars on the team in 2024 (Aaron Judge, Anthony Volpe, and Austin Wells).
The Yankees’ bats came out swinging against Dodgers starting pitcher Tony Gonsolin on Friday. He allowed four home runs (Judge, Wells, Trent Grisham, and Paul Goldschmidt) in the game’s first three innings, which is usually a recipe for disaster.
The battle of the stars intensified in the bottom of the first when Shohei Ohtani followed Judge’s first-inning blast with a solo shot of his own off Max Fried, who allowed a season-high six earned runs in five innings.
Yankees Starting Pitcher Max Fried (54) Pitches During the Second Inning Against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium: Jason Parkhurst-Imagn Images
Instead, the Yankees’ 5-2 sixth inning lead vanished after Ohtani’s second home run, RBI hits by Freddie Freeman and Andy Pages, and a bases-loaded walk allowed by reliever Tim Hill. Page’s two-run single in the bottom of the seventh helped secure the Dodgers’ 8-5 win.
It’s hard not to feel for Will Warren, who lasted just 1.1 innings after allowing seven earned runs on seven hits in Saturday’s ghastly 18-2 loss.
“It hurts. It sucks. I let the team down,” Warren told the New York Post. “Just let [the emotions] sit there and learn to hate that feeling. Then when you take the mound in five days, you don’t want to feel that again, and it’s on to the next one.”
The highlights of the game for the Yankees were two solo-homers by Judge, his 20th and 21st dingers of the year. The Dodgers collected 21 hits, including five home runs. Third baseman Max Muncy hit two three-run shots.
The Yankees avoided their first sweep of the season on Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN, as starting pitcher Ryan Yarbrough outdueled the Dodgers’ $325 million star, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, in the 7-3 win.
Yarbrough made Los Angeles’s hitters look foolish with his sweeper and changeup, striking out five with one earned run in six innings.
DJ LeMahieu led the Yankees’ offense by going 4-for-5 with two RBI, and designated hitter Ben Rice crushed a two-run shot off Yamamoto to dead center field. At the time, Rice’s blast gave the Yankees a 3-1 lead.
Yankees Infielder DJ LeMahieu Prepares for the Next Pitch Against the Los Angeles Dodgers: Harry How/GettyImages
“This team’s bounced back from whatever ‘tough’ losses we’ve had,” manager Aaron Boone said in his postgame talk with reporters.
“We’ve had a handful of them in the first couple months of the year. [Saturday], I don’t know if it was tough, it was noisy though, and I know a lot of people [were] making a lot of it. But that’s who they are and they went out against Yamamoto and Yarbs getting the ball and played a really great game to give us a really good trip going back home into an off-day.”
The Yankees must wait at least until, hopefully, October, to square off with the Dodgers again. By that time, they may have added trade reinforcements that amplified the roster ahead of the postseason.
Up Next
The Yankees are off Monday night after flying back from Los Angeles. They start a three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York.
Image Credit: Courtesy of MLB.com
More to come!