Somehow Andy Pages, A Little-Known Second-Year Player, Became a Main Character In 2025
Last month the Los Angeles Dodgers won their second consecutive World Series. They were led by four-time MVP Shohei Ohtani, who, for the first time in the National League, worked his magic with his bat and his arm.
They also fielded former MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. The team was anchored by sluggers Max Muncy and Teoscar Hernández, and stalwart catcher Will Smith. The pitching staff included (in addition to Ohtani) Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki.
But there was one other player who found himself at the center of attention multiple times during the season. A player who failed so badly towards the end of the playoffs that he was benched. And yet, years from now, when we watch videos about the 2025 season, this guy may be the main character. I am talking, of course, about Andy Pages.
Pages made his major league debut in 2024, and he was a perfectly average. He played in 116 games, slashed .248/.305/.407, for an exact 100 OPS+. In 2025 the Dodgers named him their Opening Day center fielder, and he rewarded their faith by slashing .285/.325/.479 with 17 homers in the first half. His second half was more pedestrian (.252/.293/.435). But, no matter, he played 155 games, and jogged out to center field when the playoffs began.
Through Game 1 of the NLCS against the Brewers, the 24-year-old from Cuba was 1-for-27 with six strikeouts and no walks. He did manage a single in each of Games 2 and 3 of the NLCS, before going 0-fer in Game 4 and Game 1 of the World Series. An eighth inning single in Game 2 of the fall classic off Louis Varland would be the sum total of the offense that Pages would provide before Los Angeles celebrated their Game 7 victory at Rogers Centre.
But none of that ineptitude mattered. Here is why – and here is why Andy Pages was the Dodgers main character (non-Shohei Ohtani division) for this remarkable year.
When the story of 2025 is written, there will be four main plot points: (1) Cal Raleigh doing things no catcher and no switch-hitter has ever done before; (2) Shohei Ohtani continuing to do things no player has ever done before (including pitching six scoreless innings while hitting three home runs in the same game, which just happened to be the pennant winner); (3) the Dodgers being the first team to win back-to-back World Series this century; and (4) the betting scandal that ensnared Guardians’ pitchers Emanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz.
Let’s start with the last one. Not that anyone reading this needs a primer, but if you do, Clase and Ortiz are accused of intentionally throwing pitches out of the strike zone so that people could bet (and win) that a specific pitch would be a ball. They are alleged to have done this on numerous occasions, all to successful outcomes. Except…
On May 28th, Clase came in to the pitch the ninth inning against the Dodgers, and he faced Pages to start things off. His first offering was a slider that bounced two feet in front of the plate – very much a ball. But Pages swung anyway. That swing cost some bettor $4,000. The entire story (including Pages’ four-figure flail) did not come out until after the World Series, so Dodger fans could not use this to ridicule the slumping outfielder, but the video of that at-bat is probably the second-most watched of his career.
The most watched at-bat happened in Game 4 of the National League Division Series against the Phillies. The Dodgers led two games to one, and were on the verge of losing their second straight game and having to head back to Philadelphia to try to win a deciding Game 5. In the bottom of the eleventh inning of a 1-1 tie, they loaded the bases with two outs against Orion Kerkering. At that moment, Pages was 1-for-18 in the post-season. True to form, he hit a soft grounder back to the mound. Kerkering fumbled the ball off the bat, and rather than throwing to first base (where catcher JT Realmuto was pointing) to record the final out and push the game to the 12th inning, he got flustered and threw the ball to the backstop, allowing Hyeseong Kim to score from third with the game and series-winning run. All because of Pages’ weak contact. The video of that at-bat may have been removed from YouTube in the City of Brotherly Love, but it still has been watched thousands of times at this point.
And there will be no re-telling of the Dodgers World Series victory without the story of Andy Pages and Kiké Hernández in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7. Just to set the stage: After replacing Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto hits Alejandro Kirk with his second pitch, loading the bases with one out of a 4-4 game. With the bases now loaded, and the World Series-winning run 90 feet away, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts replaces Tommy Edman in center field with the recently-benched Pages, who has a better throwing arm (98th percentile per Statcast). After Daulton Varsho’s ground ball to second resulted in an out at home (very close!), the bases remained loaded with two outs. On the next pitch, the light-hitting Ernie Clement hit a ball 101-mph and 364 feet to left-center. Hernández, playing a little shallow (as he had done the night before to great effect) turned and dashed towards the wall. He was either going to make a Willie Mays-type catch or the World Series would end – those were the only two options. That is, until Pages came out of nowhere – he covered 121 feet at 29.2 feet/second – to bulldoze Hernández and make the catch at the wall to push the game into extra innings.
A few feet to the left of where Pages made that catch Joe Carter once hit a World Series walk-off home run, and the announcer, Tom Cheek, proclaimed: “You will never hit a bigger home run in your life.” Well, Pages will never make a bigger catch in his life.
The 2025 World Series will go down as one of the greatest ever. And the Dodgers 2025 season will be remembered for a long time. It is incredible that on multiple occasions, with all of their stars and all of that star power, it was a little-known second-year player who found himself in the spotlight time and again.
PLAY BALL!!
