“When you combine good stuff with your misses being off the corners, it’s really good and it’s really tough to hit those guys,” Muncy said.

The Yankees’ offense, the highest-scoring lineup in baseball, toppled the Dodgers’ two best starting pitchers, Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu, and extended its major league record for home runs in a calendar month to 61 with three off Kershaw on Sunday: by first baseman Mike Ford, who began the game on the bench and was a part of that depth that Ottavino highlighted; right fielder Aaron Judge, who has been heating up of late; and LeMahieu.

“I don’t know if facing them gives you more or less help” for the playoffs, Kershaw said. “But hopefully we can find out in October. That would be great."

It was hard not to think of the postseason while watching two of the most iconic franchises in baseball play over the weekend. The Dodgers, who regularly lead Major League Baseball in attendance, had larger crowds than normal, averaging nearly 54,000 fans a game in the series.

“That was a good test,” Judge said. “That was one of the best teams in the game. That was a fun series. You could tell from the crowd, the fans were loving it. We were loving it.”

But the Houston Astros can’t be forgotten. They moved aggressively at the July 31 trade deadline to improve their roster while the Yankees and the Dodgers did not. The Astros, who won the 2017 World Series by taking Game 7 at Dodger Stadium and were already contenders this season before the trade deadline, remain a threat: They completed a three-game sweep of the Angels on Sunday, giving them seven wins in eight games, and woke up Monday with the same record as the Yankees.

“We match up well,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said of the Yankees. “I don’t think that this series changed my thought that these are two very good ball clubs. But we both have a lot of work to do if there is, at all, a potential matchup again.”