After a playoffs filled with upsets, the World Series matchup was surprisingly predictable. Both the Yankees and the Dodgers came into the regular season with huge World Series aspirations. Each team made massive moves in the offseason to try and make up for highly disappointing seasons. The Dodgers entered the 2023 playoffs as the second seed in the National League and were among the favorites to win the World Series. They ended up not winning a single playoff game, getting swept in the divisional series by the eventual pennant winners, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Even with that big of a playoff let down by the Dodgers, the Yankees were much more disappointing. After being one of the best teams in the league in 2022 the Yankees were terrible in 2023 and failed to even make the playoffs. Coming off these seasons both teams knew they needed to do something major in the offseason to fix themselves teams, and neither team disappointed.
The Yankees traded with the San Diego Padres for superstar right fielder Juan Soto to pair up with two of the best power hitters in recent MLB history, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge. Even with that trade they still had some concerns as they lacked any great hitters outside of the top of the order. The Dodgers main signing over the offseason was signing one if not the most sought out free agent in MLB history, Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is definitely the face of that Dodgers free agent class but they had a few other key signings like pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto and outfielder Teoscar Hernadez who both ended up having great seasons for Los Angeles.
Going into the season the Dodgers were the clear favorite to represent the National League in the World Series and the Yankees were looked at as one of the favorites, but it was not nearly as easy of a choice as LA.
Even with the Diamondbacks, who went to the World Series the previous season and the Padres, who have a ton of great hitters in their lineup, in the same division as the Dodgers, pretty much everyone knew the Dodgers were going to win the division. Both the Dodgers and Padres made the playoffs this season, the Dodgers won the division and the Padres made it in through the Wildcard. Even though both teams were great, the division was never really close. The Dodgers took the lead in the division early on in the season and never gave it up. It did get scary at some point though for the Dodgers as they did not have a lot of good pitching but they fixed that at the trade deadline, adding starting pitcher Jack Flaherty. Flaherty had a great season for the Tigers and Dodgers after a few bad ones in a row, and was a staple of the Dodgers pitching rotation in the second half of the season and in the playoffs. The Padres however, did make a push for the division late in the season but never got all that close, falling five games short, winning 93 games as opposed to the Dodgers 98.
The Yankees had a much harder road to the playoffs than the Dodgers. Heading into the season it looked to be a two team race in the division between the Yankees and Baltimore Orioles, and it was. The whole season the Yankees and Orioles went back and forth for the lead of the division and at the end the Yankees won by three games. Going back to late in the first half of the season, the Yankees hit a major rough patch where they just looked awful. The offense outside of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto seemed non-existent and they were losing to some of the worst teams in the league. To make matters worse when their Ace pitcher Gerrit Cole finally got back from an injury that kept him out for the first few months of the season he looked terrible. In late July the Yankees were sitting a game behind the Orioles and decided to make a trade. They traded for one of the most electric players in the league, Jazz Chisolm. When he got to New York he turned his own disappointing season around and played great with the Yankees, while also seemingly rejuvenating the Yankees struggling offense. By the time the all star break came around in early August, the Yankees were back to playing like themselves. They played well the rest of the year and were able to hold off the Orioles and win the division.
Both teams had first round byes coming into the playoffs with them being inside the top two seeds of their conferences. The Yankees being the first seed in the AL and the Dodgers being the second in the NL. The Yankees played the Royals in the divisional series and won pretty easily. After the series was tied at one win a piece the Yankees beat the Royals in two straight road games to clinch the series and advance to the ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians. The ALCS was also relatively easy for New York. They won the first two games at home before losing an insane extra inning game in Cleveland. After that game it looked like the Guardians had some momentum and might be able to tie up the series, but the Yankees won the next two games. Officially punching their ticket to the World Series.
The Dodgers ran into a bit of trouble in the NLDS against their division rival, the San Diego Padres. The Dodgers won game one but immediately lost two games straight, meaning one more loss and they would be eliminated. To avoid elimination the Dodgers would have to win game four on the road then go back to Los Angeles and win game five. The Dodgers would blow out the Padres in game four winning 8-0, then head back home and shut out the Padres in the second consecutive game to win the series. The NLCS against the Mets wasn’t easy for the Dodgers but it wasn’t as scary as the Padres series was. The series was tied at one each after they traded blowout wins through the first two games. The Dodgers went on to win the next two games to take a commanding three to one series lead. The Mets tried to fight back, winning game five but the Dodgers eventually ended the series with a five run win in game six.
The actual World Series started with one of the best games in recent memory. The game was back and forth all game and ended with the Dodgers winning on a walk off grand slam by Freddie Freeman. In game two, the Dodgers jumped out to an early 4-1 lead and rode that all the way to the end winning 4-2, which was the same score of game three as the Dodgers took a shocking three game lead to open the series. After game three, the Yankees found themselves in a near impossible position of needing to overcome a three to zero series deficit. In World Series history no team had ever even forced a game six after being down three to zero, and in MLB playoffs history only one team has ever come back and won after being down by three games. Needing a win to stay alive the Yankees were desperate entering game four, and found themselves in an even deeper hole when the Dodgers went up 1-0 in the first inning on Freddie Freeman’s fourth home run of the series. The rest of the game however, was controlled by the Yakees as they outscored Los Angeles 11-3 the rest of the way for a final score of 11-4. With the newfound life the Yankees got off to a very strong start in game six, going up five runs in the first three innings. Unfortunately for the Yankees it was all for not as it all came crashing down in a disastrous fifth inning where the Yankees committed three errors and the Dodgers scored five runs, tying the game. The Yankees would once again try to stay alive, taking the lead again in the sixth inning. But again the excitement for New York was short lived, as the Dodgers would score two runs in the eighth inning and take the lead. The Yankees in what seemed to be their last gasp effort, loaded the bases in the bottom of the eighth inning but sadly for them couldn’t even get one run in.
The Dodgers finally closed the door on the series with a one two three ninth inning, claiming their eighth World Series title and their first since 2020.