LA Dodgers hold on in Toronto to force winner-take-all Game 7 in World Series

The Los Angeles Dodgers stayed alive on Friday night, getting to Toronto Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman for three runs in the third inning to win 3-1 and even the World Series at three games a piece. Baseball fans around the world will be treated to a winner-take-all Game 7 on Saturday, when the Dodgers look to become the first team to win consecutive World Series titles since 2000. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, will try to play spoiler and complete the upset to win their first World Series since 1993.

After the Dodgers offense struggled in the first four games of the World Series, slashing just 201/.296/.354 as a team, manager Dave Roberts shuffled his lineup ahead of Game 5. But it failed, as the Dodgers managed just four hits against Blue Jays rookie Trey Yesavage and his bullpen. Roberts made a couple more minor changes before Game 6, however, inserting steely veteran Miguel Rojas into the lineup at second base while pushing Tommy Edman to center field, hoping to get more out of the bottom of his lineup. “I just felt, again, the net sum of having both those guys in there, that’s how we had to construct it, and I feel great about it,” Roberts said before the game.

While Blue Jays ace Kevin Gausman started the contest by retiring the first seven batters he faced, challenging hitters with his fastball while getting four straight strikeouts on his splitter, Edman jumped on a first-pitch fast ball in the top of the third inning and sent it over the glove of a leaping Vladimir Guerrero Jr for a stand-up double. The hit put a man on base for leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani for just the eighth time all series, when Blue Jays manager John Shneider intentionally walked the Japanese star. Will Smith made the Blue Jays pay, hitting a double to the left field wall and scoring Edman to put the Dodgers up 1-0.

Mookie Betts, meanwhile, was moved to the cleanup spot after hitting just 3-for-23 (.130) with no extra-base hits through the first five games of the Series. “I don’t want to speak on anybody else,” Betts said after Game 5. “But for myself, I’ve just been terrible.” After Freddie Freeman drew a walk, Betts jumped on a fastball and drove it through the infield gap to score two more runs, making it 3-0.

Addison Barger took back some of the momentum in the bottom of the inning, igniting the 44,710 Blue Jays fans in attendance at the Rogers Center in downtown Toronto with a leadoff double down before George Springer drove him in with a single to center field. But nobody else had much luck against Dodgers superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who had command of all six of his pitches while mixing them up throughout the game and keeping the Blue Jays hitters guessing. He finished with five hits and one run allowed with five strikeouts over six innings.

With the outlier third inning behind them, both Gausman and Yamamoto picked up where they started, throwing strikes and keeping hitters from both teams off the score sheet until the starting pitchers got hooked in the seventh. Neither team truly threatened again until the bottom of the ninth inning, when Dodgers closer Rōki Sasaki re-entered the game after throwing 25 pitches in the eighth and lost command of his splitter, hitting Alejandro Kirk on an 0-2 pitch. After substituting the speedy Myles Straw in for Kirk, Barger hit a line-drive double that wedged into the bottom of the left field wall, causing outfielder Justin Dean to give up on the ball and signal to the umpires that it was stuck. Straw and Barger both scored easily when Dean jogged to the ball, but the umpires determined that it was in fact stuck and therefore ruled a ground rule double.

Roberts once again seemed to push the right button as he gave Sasaki the hook in favor of projected Game 7 starter Tyler Glasnow, who got Ernie Clement to pop out on the first pitch before Gimenez hit a hard line-drive to left fielder Enrique Hernandez. Hernandez got a good jump on the ball and caught it on the move before throwing it to second base, where Barger had strayed too far off the bag towards third and was easily forced out for the game-ending double-play.

As the World Series continues to Game 7 in Toronto on Saturday night, the stakes couldn’t be bigger. The Dodgers and the biggest star in baseball, Ohtani, are hoping to go back-to-back for the first time since the New York Yankees won three straight titles from 1998 through 2000. At the same time, they could break baseball with the biggest payroll in the MLB affecting upcoming labor negotiations between the players’ union and the owners, some of whom believe that the lack of a salary cap has created an uneven playing field.

For the Jays, while the stakes might not seem as straightforward, it’s about the potential to unite a country of 40m people and to inspire a new generation of Canadian boys and girls to fall in love with baseball. It’s also a chance for their hometown hero, Vladimir Guerrero Jr, to etch himself into baseball immortality.

Buckle up: the winner of the 2025 World Series will be decided less than 24 hours from now.