About Last Night: Dodgers 18, Yankees 2
- Andy Singer
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By Andy Singer
June 1st, 2025
The Big Story
The Yankees are going to want to forget they ever traveled to Los Angeles this weekend. After giving up a solid lead on Friday night, the Yankee pitching staff ensured that there would be no possible chance for the offense to make a game of it in last night's second game of a 3-game set against the Dodgers.
Will Warren, who had been so good over the last month, wilted against the team to beat in the National League. Wilted is too kind a word; Warren imploded. The Dodgers batted around not just in the 1st inning, but again brought 9 batters to the plate in the 2nd inning as well. Warren was gone after just 1.1 innings. The Yanks faced a 10-0 deficit at the end of the 2nd inning.
I wish I could say things got better, but you'd really have to squint. I guess I can say that the Yankees only got outscored 8-2 the rest of the way, and only 5 of the Dodgers' runs were scored against real pitchers. The Yankees' offense was bad, save for Judge, who belted his 19th and 20th homers of the season; the pitching staff was worse.
The Yankees were looking to get a little mental revenge for last season's World Series. Instead, it looked a lot like, to quote a great Yankee, "Deja vu all over again."
Player of the Game
No Yankee deserves that honor on a night where they got beat by 16 runs by the defending World Series champs.
Notable Performances
Aaron Judge swatted his 19th and 20th homers of the season, going 3-4, with 2 RBIs, though he did bang into a double-play in the first inning to kill what little threat the Yankees could have mounted
Better to Forget
Everything. Will Warren was awful. The bullpen was awful. The offense was awful. After last night, I'll bet even the Yankees' traveling clubhouse attendant had a bad night.
My Take
Most of us were taught in Kindergarten that if we can't say nice things to not say anything at all...I'm pretty close to that point after watching last night's game. The Dodgers are so deep in the Yankees' psychological closet that they're finding long-since forgotten Christmas presents. The team's body language was so bad by the middle of the 2nd inning that the game almost wasn't worth watching anymore.
Coming into this series, one could argue that the Dodgers were as vulnerable as they were going to get. They have seemingly dozens of injuries to their starting pitching staff, Mookie Betts broke his toe, and they came into the series on a bit of a slide. None of it mattered.
When the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the World Series last year, I argued that it wasn't necessarily a gap in talent. The Dodgers out-coached and out-fundamental-ed the Yankees to the point where it was difficult to compare the two. After last night, the Dodgers can puff out their chests and know that they own the Yankees.
I hope Will Warren watches the film and takes a lot of notes. The Dodgers hit him in the zone; they damaged pitches on the edges of the zone; and they sure looked like they got in Warren's head. This wasn't an issue of stuff. In fact, Warren's velocity was up significantly as was his spin and movement on his secondary pitches. The Dodgers just beat him in every way.
The only positive takeaway is that Aaron Judge worked to get the monkey off of his back after a poor performance in the World Series last year with a strong game, but given the result, it feels meaningless. This was as beatable as the Dodgers will likely be all season, and the Yankees have failed the test in brutal fashion.
The coaching staff, the players, and the front office will clearly need to go back to the drawing board with a plan to improve, as any hope of a World Series title in 2025 will almost certainly roll through Los Angeles.
Looking to Tonight
Ryan Yarbrough gets the start for the Yankees against Cy Young candidate Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Game time is slated for 7:10 PM. Let's hope for some life.
