Unfathomable. Unwatchable. Unbearable.
Undone.
The richest team in baseball is splitting apart at the seams, tearing under stress, fraying beyond recognition, collecting on the floor of the 2025 baseball season in heaping piles of disappointment.
Soon, the supposedly greatest collection of players in Dodgers history could be history.
Soon, in another country and seemingly in another reality, the Dodgers could lose the World Series to the Toronto Blue Jays, a hearty band of overachievers who took a three-games-to-two lead Wednesday with a workmanlike 6-1 Game 5 victory at Dodger Stadium.
The series now moves to Toronto’s Rogers Centre for the final two games, if necessary, beginning Friday, and the former heavy favorites are now the decided underdogs. The Dodgers not only have to win both games at the American League’s toughest home field, but they will have to do so against a seemingly destined and strongly bonded franchise attempting to win its first title in 32 years.
The Blue Jays are the Glue Jays.
The Dodgers are in pieces.
Even with the seemingly unhittable Yoshinobu Yamamoto attempting to pitch his third consecutive complete playoff game in Game 6 for the Dodgers, their task is tall.
“Right now, we’re at elimination, and we’ve got to kind of wipe the slate clean and find a way to win Game 6 and pick up the pieces and see where we’re at,” said Dodger manager Dave Roberts.
We’re talking a lot of pieces.
The Blue Jays became the first team in World Series history to open a game with back-to-back home runs Wednesday against Dodger ace Blake Snell, then battled and brittled their way to another run in the fourth, two more in the seventh, and another in the eighth.
The Dodgers could only manage a Kiké Hernández home run in seven innings against Jays rookie Trey Yesavage, and then stumbled into the night.
Yesavage set a World Series rookie record Wednesday with 12 strikeouts. The Dodgers set some sort of record for embarrassment with three wild pitches in the decisive seventh.
The Blue Jays made every tough defensive play look easy in shutting down every Dodger offensive threat, highlighted by a diving catch by Addison Barger on a hitless Shohei Ohtani. Meanwhile, the Dodgers made two bad throws that led to extended innings and then allowed the Jays to score their third run after a terrible right field play in a season full of them, once again courtesy of Teoscar Hernández.
“Just not playing a clean game…I thought tonight we gave up probably three or four bases,” bemoaned Roberts.
In the end, the fans booed and the stands solemnly emptied and the team moved to the verge of arguably the biggest disappointment in franchise history. After winning the 2024 World Series championship, after spending around $500 million this winter to improve their roster and create the richest team in baseball history, after rolling through the first three rounds of this autumn’s playoffs looking unbeatable… they are on the brink of being beaten by a team that would be going from last place to first place while being populated by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer, Max Scherzer and a bunch of anonymous grinders.
“The series is almost over!” sang one loud spectator late Wednesday. “The series is almost over!”
Almost?
“One more game! One more game!” chanted several hundred Blue Jay fans who collected behind the Toronto dugout afterward.
Sounds about right.
Just to rub it in, the fans then broke into a rousing version of their favorite team’s national anthem.
Oh Canada, indeed.
“Crazy world, crazy world,” said Yesavage.
Snell, who gave up five runs in five innings in his first World Series start against the Jays, uncomfortably picked up where he left off, allowing long balls to Davis Schneider and Guerrero before many fans had left their cars.
After Yesavage had retired the first seven Dodger hitters, Kiké Hernández finally bit back by driving a fastball into the left-field pavilion for a home run that closed the gap to 2-1.
But minutes later in the fourth, any momentum from that blast disappeared when right fielder Teoscar Hernández inexplicably dove in front of a Daulton Varsho blooper and turned it into a triple. Ernie Clement followed with a flyout to center field to score Varsho.
It felt like it couldn’t get any worse.the game ended there. Turns out, it did, in the seventh, when rookie reliever Edgardo Henriquez and Anthony Banda combined on two wild pitches, two walks, and two runs that scored while they were on the mound.
Once again, for the third time in their three losses in this series, a Dodger bullpen that plagued them throughout the regular season had doomed them again.
“You look at the three games that we lost, it spiraled on us with guys on base,” Roberts said. “Guys got to be better.”
To add insult, in the bottom of the seventh, Edman ruined a rally for the second time in the game by grounding into a double play. For a second straight game, even though struggling Andy Pages was benched and scuffling Mookie Betts was dropped to third in the order, the Dodgers failed to get a hit with a runner in scoring position.
And, now, on to Toronto, where the Rogers Centre recently filled with 30,000 fans to watch the World Series… on television.
“We’re thrilled that we’re going back there to play… the fans kind of become a part of you, and you want to kind of do that for them too,” said Jays manager John Schneider.
The winner of Game 5 of a tied baseball series wins the series 67 percent of the time.
A Dodgers team that has been called baseball’s Brinks Truck is suddenly on the brink.
That 22-year-old Jays pitcher was right.
Crazy world, crazy world.
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