TORONTO – In the end, they got most, but not all.
They won the American League East and then the American League. Then, on the verge of a third World Series championship, the final prize slipped through their fingers in the most heartbreaking of fashion.
First, Miguel Rojas hit a game-tying solo shot off Jeff Hoffman in the ninth. Then, in the bottom of the ninth, Rojas made a deft pick on a Daulton Varsho smash and threw out Isiah Kiner-Falefa by mere inches at home, before Andy Pages chased down an Ernie Clement smash at the warning track. After a miracle escape of their own in the top of the 10th, Will Smith clipped Shane Bieber for a two-out solo shot in the 11th. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Game 6 starter who helped force a decisive Game 7, closed it out in the bottom half, stranding Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at third base after he doubled and was sacrificed to third.
And so, the most crushing defeat for the 2025 Blue Jays, 5-4 in 11 innings against the Dodgers, came on a day with no tomorrow to bounce back from it.
Up until the Rojas homer, the Blue Jays were on the cusp of delivering on the promise of a core that had struggled to break through in years previous, and in a way, so many other talented groups before them left their potential unfulfilled.
Guerrero – the ALCS MVP and a force all post-season long – and Bo Bichette – the pending free agent who nearly secured a place in franchise lore with a three-run homer off Shohei Ohtani while playing essentially on one knee – remain without the championship legacy that has also eluded past franchise greats like Carlos Delgado, Roy Halladay, Vernon Wells, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson.
Over four hours and seven minutes, a Rogers Centre crowd of 44,713 fluctuated between angst and elation and agony, a fitting roller-coaster capper to one of the most remarkable seasons in team history.
Finding ways to max out not only their 26-man roster, but also their larger 40-man group, the Blue Jays recovered to win 20 more games after a last-place finish a year ago, dispatched the New York Yankees in the ALDS, rallied from deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 to eliminate the Seattle Mariners in the ALCS but couldn’t take down the defending champions, close as they came.
Three of their four losses in the World Series were gutting — the 18-inning, Game 3 thriller, Friday night’s Game 6 with a wild ninth and Game 7 with an even wilder finish — and will leave plenty to lament.
The Blue Jays had found ways around adversities all season long. They began the year with FanGraphs projecting their odds of winning it all at just 2.8 per cent. An early-season injury to Max Scherzer, the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer who threw 4.1 innings of one-run ball, threw their rotation into limbo. Anthony Santander, their prime free-agent signing, hurt his shoulder in May and essentially missed the rest of the season. Andres Gimenez missed time with injury. Yimi Garcia needed season-ending surgery. They nearly let their AL East lead slip away in the final week, needing to win their final four games to keep pace with the Yankees, taking the title by virtue of their tiebreaker.
Regardless, they kept finding ways to fill the various voids. Clement, who ended up setting a single post-season record with 30 hits, Nathan Lukes, Addison Barger, Davis Schneider, Myles Straw, Eric Lauer, Braydon Fisher and Mason Fluharty all emerged to play key roles. Trey Yesavage completed a five-level surge to provide a major spark at the end. A theme of their season was someone different every night.
Bichette put the Blue Jays on the board in a third-inning rally started by Springer, who opened the inning with a base hit, his second of the night off Ohtani. Lukes followed with a sacrifice bunt and Ohtani started pitching to Guerrero until a wild pitch advanced Springer to third led them to intentionally walk him.
That brought up Bichette, who demolished a first-pitch slider 442 feet into the second deck in centre field, stood and watched it, flipped his bat and trotted around the bases in what was his signature Blue Jays moment.
The Blue Jays bent but didn’t break thanks to their defence in the fourth as Scherzer allowed the first two batters to reach, issued a one-out walk to Max Muncy that loaded the bases and then needed Varsho to make a diving catch on Teoscar Hernandez’s sinking liner, turning a single into a sacrifice fly. Tommy Edman then ripped a liner down the first-base line that a diving Guerrero snagged before it hit the turf, ending the threat.
The benches emptied in the bottom half of the inning when Justin Wrobleski came in twice on Gimenez before hitting him on the hand, prompting the shortstop to bark at the lefty. Wrobleski barked back and players poured out of both benches and bullpens, separating them as calm was restored.
Scherzer exited after a one-out Rojas single in the fifth, tapping his heart and pointing to the fans as he walked off the mound, having allowed one run on four hits and a walk with three strikeouts. Louis Varland, making his post-season record 15th appearance, gave up a single to Ohtani but induced a pair of flyouts to centre to end the threat.
Gimenez got his revenge in the sixth when he doubled home Clement, who opened the inning with a single. And as the shortstop tried to bunt him over while Tyler Glasnow lost the zone, Clement stole second. Free to swing away, Gimenez ripped a double that made it 4-2.
Yesavage came on for the seventh and stood with his arms up as Guerrero turned a pretty and difficult 3-6-3 double play to end the frame. The rookie right-hander, dominant in a Game 5 gem that sent the Series back to Toronto with the Blue Jays up 3-2, gave up a solo shot to Muncy in the eighth that narrowed the lead and Rojas tied it in the ninth when he hooked a slider over the left-field wall.
