The Dodgers vs. Yankees regular-season matchup at the end of May felt significant in one of the most anticipated series of the 2025 MLB season. In the first meeting between New York and Los Angeles since the Dodgers lifted the World Series trophy at Yankee Stadium in November, the three games felt significant even if they were worth the same as the other games in the yearly 162-game marathon.

Add in three nationally-televised games, numerous All-Stars and league MVPs, we had the makings of a series brimming with drama.

Here are three takeaways from the World Series rematch.

Aaron Judge is still frightening pitchers.
Against the Dodgers, the defending AL MVP did not let anyone down and appears to be as committed as he has been in ten seasons. In the three-game series, Judge hit three home runs and went 5-for-13 in Los Angeles. He still plays at a level that baseball hasn’t seen in a while.

Judge, who is currently hitting.391 on the season, is in rarefied air, which makes his pursuit of.400 all the more remarkable and genuine as June gets underway. Judge’s extraordinary power and hitting with that high of a batting average are unheard of in modern baseball and are more reminiscent of the period of Ted Williams, the last player to hit.400 in 1941, or Tony Gwynn.

Larry Walker’s.379 hitting average for the Colorado Rockies in 2000 was the highest in a complete season since Gwynn’s.394 in the strike-shortened 1994 season (110 games). Last season, Judge hit 58 home runs in 158 games, setting a career-high.322.

Shohei Ohtani vs. Aaron Judge in the MVP battle
This series included both theater and pyrotechnics. The two top talents in baseball, Judge and Shohei Ohtani, who are now the AL and NL MVPs, did not let the baseball community down.

Judge and Ohtani seem to have met before to the start of the series and decided to give the fans what they wanted. Judge started the celebrations Friday by hitting a home run in his first at-bat, and Ohtani followed suit with a home run in his first at-bat. It seemed almost predetermined. The Dodgers won 8–5 on Friday, and the three-time MVP had the last laugh with a two-homer performance.

Two defending MVPs hit home runs in the first inning of the same game for the first time in Major League Baseball history.

Judge said on Friday, “I feel like he was copying me, I started it off.” “He is remarkable. There’s a reason he’s one of the top players in the game.

In the Yankees’ 18-2 series loss to the Dodgers on Saturday, Judge, not to be outdone, responded with a two-homer game of his own, giving him a 3-2 series lead over Ohtani. However, the Dodgers defeated the Bronx Bombers two to three. Baseball has been waiting for a superstar to carry it for years, and this weekend’s three-game series demonstrated why.

Dodgers play against teams that are above.500 If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, and the Dodgers hadn’t been doing that much going into this series against the Yankees, going 10-9 against teams that are above.500. With series wins over the Cleveland Guardians and Yankees, it’s the first time L.A. has taken a series from a team that is.500 or better since they swept the Detroit Tigers to start the season in the United States. Although the Dodgers have the fourth-best record in Major League Baseball, they haven’t been making headlines in May.