LOS ANGELES — Hype video after hype video, each obnoxiously louder than the last, touting the Los Angeles Dodgers’ singular greatness, if not invincibility, pulsed between innings over three hype nights in SoCal, where the Toronto Blue Jays tore apart the Hollywood hagiography.
The team that segments of the baseball world is being forced to recognize, that has given the defending champions more than they can handle thus far in this captivating World Series, is heading home on the cusp of a title, a reality that would have been met with incredulity, if not laughter, back when pitchers and catchers reported to camp on Valentine’s Day.
Yet this group of Blue Jays truly believed when others did not, and when obstacles emerged they found a way, and when they needed players to emerge they did, and it’s been the story of their season that was once again reflected in a crucial victory, this one 6-1 on Wednesday night.
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Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old who started the season in low-A and progressively has made bigger and bigger starts across five levels, dominated in a way the Blue Jays could only have imagined in their dreams during his biggest outing yet. Davis Schneider, leading off because George Springer couldn’t go, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit tone-setting home runs on the first and third pitches of the game from Blake Snell, the offence added on late and they all boarded the flight north up 3-2 in the best-of-seven.
Kevin Gausman starts against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 6 for a ‘ship Friday night at Rogers Centre as Toronto has two chances to rewrite L.A.’s 2025 coronation into a 2026 redemption story.
“Yeah, it’s a crazy world,” Yesavage said of his own personal journey. “Hollywood couldn’t have made it this good. Just being a part of this, I’m just very blessed.”
So, too, are the Blue Jays for drafting him 20th overall last year, carefully monitoring his innings and then leaving open the possibility for the unbelievable to become reality. Making his fifth post-season start but first on the road, Yesavage shook off the heckling of Dodgers fans as he warmed in the bullpen — pitching coach Pete Walker recalls him saying, “Isn’t this great? I (expletive) love this” — and then faced down Shohei Ohtani right out of the gate, inducing a weak chopper to the mound that showed immediately he was up to the task.
Over the next seven innings he overmatched the Dodgers, allowing one run on three hits with no walks and 12 strikeouts, establishing multiple bests for a rookie along the way.
“The fans were saying, I’m going to give up home runs, I’m only going to last an inning or two,” Yesavage said during a brief interview inside the Blue Jays clubhouse. “I just used it to fuel the fire. I was like, ‘This is so much fun. Everybody hates me and I have to go out here and prove them wrong.’”
Prove them wrong he did, with a performance that is among, if not the very best ever by a Blue Jays starter in the playoffs, right there with Dave Stieb’s gem in Game 1 of the 1985 ALCS versus Kansas City (eight shutout innings, three hits, one walk, eight strikeouts), Juan Guzman’s World Series Game 3 domination of Atlanta in 1992 (eight innings, eight hits, two runs, one earned, seven strikeouts) and Marco Estrada’s 2016 ALDS opener at Texas (8.1 innings, one run, four hits, six strikeouts).
Before the season began, Walker thought the best-case scenario for Yesavage this season would be simply “getting to the big leagues, getting his feet wet, as opposed to getting to the big leagues and dominating in a World Series.”
“I don’t think anybody would have necessarily believed that,” he continued. “There’s usually a little bit of a transition and he has just poured himself into the role. He’s taken on the weight of the world in some ways because of the pressure that could possibly be on someone at this point. And he has handled it all so well. He just knows what he needs to do and trusts his stuff.”
The Blue Jays’ offence, meanwhile, immediately began to rough up Snell the way Rufus Wainwright roughed up the singing of O Canada before a crowd of 52,175.
Schneider, atop the lineup as Springer ran and hit velocity but not well enough to move past his right-side injury, launched Snell’s first pitch, a 96.6 m.p.h. fastball, 373 feet to left field to open the scoring. He’d barely taken off the club’s home run jacket when Guerrero clobbered the game’s third pitch, a 96 m.p.h. heater, and lined it over the wall in left.
“(Snell) is going to come after you, he’s going to challenge you,” said manager John Schneider. “Those two swings from Schneid and from Vlad … we wanted to be aggressive on balls that were in the middle of the zone. Vlad was a little different, a little bit in, but that’s been our strategy against really good pitchers. There’s a time to grind them and there’s a time to be ready to hit. Pretty cool it worked out the way it did.”
Added Davis Schneider: “George always preaches be ready for the fastball first pitch leading off the game, and George has done it for numerous years, and I’ve got to take some advice when I can get it.”
After Yesavage’s one mistake, a fastball up and in that Kiké Hernández ripped over the wall in left in the third inning, the Blue Jays responded immediately, capitalizing on each and every Dodgers mistake.
Daulton Varsho opened the fourth by slicing a ball to right field where Teoscar Hernandez made an ill-advised dive and turned a single into a triple, a scene very familiar to his former club. Ernie Clement followed by lining a ball to centre, scoring Varsho easily to make it 3-1.
A two-spot in the seventh knocked out Snell, as Addison Barger opened the inning with a single, took second and third on wild pitches as Andres Gimenez walked and then scored on another wild pitch from Edgardo Henriquez that was Ball 4 to Guerrero. Bo Bichette followed with an RBI single that made it 5-1 while in the eighth, Clement led off with a single, took second on yet another wild pitch, advanced to third on Barger’s groundout to the right side and scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s RBI single through a drawn-in infield.
Vintage 2025 Blue Jays ball.
“We trust each other,” Guerrero said through interpreter Hector Lebron. “And one thing that we do here, there are no superheroes. Everybody’s got to do their part. Every time we go out there, taking the field, that’s what we do. Trust in each other and try to win a game somehow.”
Seranthony Dominguez pitched a clean eighth while Jeff Hoffman handled the ninth, closing out a spectacular pitching performance.
The seven innings for Yesavage marked his longest outing of the season, topping the six he worked for low-A Dunedin versus Clearwater on May 1. The 104 pitches he threw marked another season high, surpassing the 94 he threw Sept. 27 against the Tampa Bay Rays.
And after a good but not great Game 1 outing, when he allowed two runs over four innings and navigated enough traffic for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to say that “there were a lot of pitches that we missed,” Yesavage left them nothing this time out.
Ohtani included, as since reaching base all nine times up in the 18-inning, Game 3 thriller, he’s 0-for-7 with a walk and three strikeouts, a streak that started with Shane Bieber going after him in Game 4 and Yesavage doing the very same thing.
“It’s huge,” Bieber said of the way Yesavage got Ohtani to start the game and kept going. “Baseball, like a lot of other games, maybe even more so, is a game of momentum. It’s part of the reason that Shohei is batting leadoff, part of the reason we batted George lead off, you try to put the other team on their heels right away. So as a starting pitcher, you go out there and try to counteract that. Man, Trey did that from the get. It was special to watch.”
For Blue Jays fans for sure, less so for those cheering on the home side.
An eighth-inning video implored Dodgers fans to make some noise, to not let the opposition “think that they got us.” After a quiet bottom half, one lonely fan yelled, “the series isn’t over,” again and again, and he’s right. But the story the Dodgers have been telling their fans all year is facing a major twist, and the Blue Jays have two chances to make sure the ending is the one they’ve expected all along.
