Dodgers can’t stop trolling Yankees: One player became our ‘running joke’

The Los Angeles Dodgers can’t seem to bask in their World Series glory without making fun of the New York Yankees.
Nearly one month after they dispatched the Yankees after a catastrophic fifth inning of Game 5, the list of haters is still growing. On Sunday, Dodgers reliever Michael Kopech acknowledged that one Yankee (who’s now a free agent) became the butt of their jokes for mound visits that seemed performative.
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“Man, I really didn’t want to say names here,” Kopech told the “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast on Sunday. “I’m just gonna say it,” Kopech said. “(First baseman Anthony) Rizzo made hundreds of mound visits in the World Series games. You can almost see the pitchers’ faces, just like, ‘What could they be talking about right now?’
“We had a running joke in the bullpen of ‘Rizzo visits remaining.’ Every time there was a visit, it was Rizzo.”
Kopech was speaking to host Rob Bradford about the importance of mind visits from infielders — and for them to be strategic and heartfelt, otherwise they seem like a waste of time. As someone who can hit 100 mph and pitches with a lot of emotion, Kopech respected how Max Muncy and Miguel Rojas came to him to “settle him down” at times in the postseason, to “be good teammates in that moment.”
But he felt that Rizzo did it way too many times that it lost effectiveness.
“It was like our guys were doing it at the right time, and they were doing it because they cared about putting everything in the right perspective,” Kopech said.
Kopech is the latest in a line of Dodgers to rip the Yankees — reliever Joe Kelly (“talent over fundamentals” ); Rojas (“lazy defense” ) and utility player Chris Taylor (“Yankees kind of (expletive) down their leg”) all shared some pointed words in the last month, too.
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