Aaron Judge doesn't appear to be the main threat to the Dodgers in World Series

The stage is set for the first Dodgers-Yankees World Series matchup since 1981, and it's everything MLB could've asked for. Not only is it a coast-to-coast matchup between two storied franchises who have seen each other more in the World Series than any other pairing, but the Dodgers and the Yankees represent home to Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the two faces of Major League Baseball and odds-on favorites for NL and AL MVPs this year.

In all of the times these teams have met, dating back to 1941 when the LA Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Yankees have walked away with the title eight times. The last time they saw each other, the Dodgers took just their third World Series championship against the Bombers.

MLB has already started making a massive deal of the Ohtani-Judge matchup, which makes sense; when you have two generational players and most recognizable faces in the game going (kind of) head-to-head and you want record-breaking ratings, it tracks that you'd put them on every piece of marketing possible.

However, when it actually comes time for Game 1, the Dodgers' biggest concern in the Yankees lineup won't be Aaron Judge. He'll be far from it, really.

Overblown Aaron Judge-Shohei Ohtani World Series matchup ignores bigger problems for the Dodgers

There are Dodgers players who are no strangers to postseason performance threatening to become a stain on potentially Hall of Fame careers: just ask Mookie Betts. Betts has cleaned up his act a lot this year — he and Kiké Hernández lead Dodgers hitters in RBI so far this postseason — but he can probably empathize with Judge's plight. Judge batted .139 in the 2022 postseason as the Yankees lost out in the ALCS, and even with a clutch homer against Emmanuel Clase in Game 3 of the LCS this year that eventually went to waste, he's still batting .161. The Guardians even dared to intentionally walk Juan Soto to get to Aaron Judge in Game 2 (and probably should've in Game 5).

There's always the chance that Judge getting to the World Series for the first time in his career will open the floodgates, but based on what we've seen so far this year, the bigger concerns are Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, and even Gleyber Torres, who's batting .297 and has come up in clutch situations for the Yankees multiple times this month.

On the other hand, the Yankees will very much have to worry about Ohtani, who's batting .782 with runners in scoring position since Sept. 19. We get why the Ohtani-Judge dichotomy exists, but don't let it fool you: the Dodgers will have bigger fish to fry this weekend.