The 2025 Major League Baseball season has many ingredients to make it unforgettable, one of them is thanks to the incorporation of theNew York Mets as title contenders and the two direct battles they will have, on the one hand, with the Los Angeles Dodgers for supremacy in the National League and, on the other hand, with the New York Yankees, for dominance of the Big Apple.
But this New York dispute includes the rivalry between Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, just a year after their partnership in the Bronx in which they came close to glory with the Yankees, but fell to the Dodgers in the World Series
The Judge-Soto duo was already being compared to the one formed by Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth between the 1920s and 1930s, but now it will be different, because they are heading for an unprecedented rivalry in New York. According to a count by the New York Post, the city had already had stars such as Keith Hernandez and Don Mattingly in the mid-1980s or Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider in the 1950s, with the difference that in none of these cases were the players teammates a year earlier.
The rivalry between Aaron Judge and Juan Soto is unique
The rivalry will be in the city to see which team gets more wins or goes further, but on an individual level their numbers will be under the microscope, in terms of home runs, average and offensive production. Soto was left with the thorn in his side after finishing third in the American League MVP race, a contest won by Judge, who was runner-up to Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals.
The Dominican’s fight for the 2025 MVP moves to the National League, although he will now have as his rival the Japanese Shohei Ohtani and, once again, he will have strong competition in his team with Francisco Lindor.
As for the statements, they already had what could be the first of many differences, after Soto said that with the Mets he will have a better chance of winning a title, something Judge did not hesitate to disagree with.
“He got what he wanted. He got a great deal there, so you can’t tell him no,” Judge said last week, adding what fans are already savoring: “It’ll be great to have him in town. We’re going to fight back and forth for several years.”
Read the full article here
