The New York Yankees won’t make their Sunday Night Baseball debut until May this season, and in something of a twist, it will not be against the Red Sox. Instead, the Yankees will be on ESPN’s Sunday night national game to face off against another rival, and it will be just one of two times in the first half of the season they will be featured on the show, ESPN announced.
The Yankees will face their crosstown rivals, the New York Mets, in their first Sunday Night Baseball appearance on May 18. It will be the finale of a three-game series which will bring former Yankees’ right fielder Juan Soto back to the Bronx for the first time since he spurned them for the Mets. It is part of ESPN’s “Rivalry Week.”
Soto, of course, bolted to Queens after the most hotly-contested free agency battle earlier this winter. After spending one season in pinstripes, Soto turned down the Yankees’ $760 million contract offer and chose the Mets’ $765 million, 15-year deal.
The Yankees will also be on the Sunday night game on July 1, facing off against the Dodgers. It’s a rematch of the 2024 World Series, the finale of a three-game series at Dodgers Stadium, which is the only time the two teams will meet in the regular season. The Dodgers, of course, beat the Yankees 4-1 in that series. It will also be the first time the two teams have met since several Dodgers players have taken surprisingly candid shots at the Yankees after a Game 5, fifth-inning defensive meltdown. Since they claimed the World Series title, relievers Joe Kelly Michael Kopech and Chris Taylor made eyebrow-raising comments about the Yankees.
The Yankees have a long history of facing their rivals on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” but in the past, it was usually the Red Sox. In 2022, they faced the Red Sox four out of 19 regular-season meetings on Sunday night. In 2023, the two American League East rivals faced off on back-to-back Sunday nights on ESPN. It was enough that Red Sox manager Alex Cora, a former ESPN analyst, complained that ESPN was showing the rivalry too much.