Yankees Made a Bold Statement Beating Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw This Weekend

Players Weekend provided us with a potential World Series matchup with the New York Yankees paying a visit to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was a series in which the two teams with the best records in baseball were set to duke it out.

Ahead of the series opener, it seemed like the advantage was squarely with Los Angeles. They had home field advantage and two aces on the bump in Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw, two guys who are nearly untouchable at home.

Um...about that.

The Yankees downed both of them with frightening ease, and in doing so made a bold statement about their strength moving forward.

It's one thing to take down one ace during a series. Grabbing just one win against either Ryu or Kershaw would have been more than satisfactory. But the fact that they managed to clobber both of them in a span of three days is awe-inspiring, putting up the type of numbers that just don't occur against those two.

Consider, for a moment, that on Sunday, the Yankees took Kershaw's legendary curveball deep twice in one game. Prior to the game, Kershaw had allowed just 10 home runs on that pitch in his entire career. This is a Hall of Fame pitcher throwing a Hall of Fame pitch, and the Bronx Bombers treated it like it was nothing special.

If that isn't enough to convince you, then perhaps their performance against Ryu will. The Dodgers' southpaw entered the game with a league-low 1.64 ERA. This, of course, was of no importance to the Yankees, who tagged him for seven earned runs, the same amount of earned runs that he had allowed at home all year long.

The Yankees went into the Dodgers' house and beat the best they had to offer senseless. If not for some questionable umpiring, they might have even taken home a sweep.

This is a Yankees team hungry for a title. They are a force of nature, and they have the talent to beat anyone they cross paths with.

And now you know.