The Los Angeles Dodgers etched their names into baseball history by clinching their second consecutive World Series title with a stunning 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in 11 innings.
The championship-deciding contest featured nine different plays where title-winning odds shifted by at least 15%, making it the wildest game in MLB history given the context.
Down by a run with just two outs remaining, veteran infielder Miguel Rojas crushed a game-tying solo home run off Blue Jays reliever Jeff Hoffman in the ninth inning—his first extra-base hit of the entire postseason. Subsequently, Will Smith provided the decisive blow in the 11th frame, smashing a hanging slider from Shane Bieber to give the Dodgers their first lead of the game.
The Blue Jays threatened repeatedly. Following Rojas’ homer, Toronto loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the ninth. However, Rojas made another crucial contribution, ranging back to field Daulton Varsho’s hard grounder and making an off-balance throw home to retire Isiah Kiner-Falefa.
Ultimately, the contest ended on just the third Series-ending double play in history and first since 1947. With runners at the corners and one out in the bottom of the 11th, Mookie Betts fielded Alejandro Kirk’s grounder, stepped on second and fired to first, leaving Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stranded at third base.
How Game 7 Unfolded
Game 7 began as a tense pitchers’ duel with both teams remaining scoreless through the first two innings. The Blue Jays struck first, seizing a 3-0 lead in the third inning when Bo Bichette connected for a 442-foot home run that scored George Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.. Ohtani, pitching on three days’ rest, was pulled after just 51 pitches.
The Dodgers began their comeback in the fourth inning after Will Smith doubled to deep left-center field and eventually scored on Teoscar Hernández’s sacrifice fly. They added another run in the sixth inning when Mookie Betts crossed home plate on Tommy Edman’s sacrifice fly, cutting the deficit to 3-2. But Toronto responded immediately as Andrés Giménez doubled to right field, bringing home Ernie Clement to extend their lead to 4-2.
Max Muncy provided a crucial spark for Los Angeles in the eighth inning, launching a 373-foot solo home run to right field that narrowed the gap to 4-3. The ninth inning brought additional drama when Miguel Rojas—who hit only seven home runs during the regular season—connected for a game-tying 387-foot blast to left field off Jeff Hoffman.
Throughout the extra frames, both teams created scoring opportunities. But after a scoreless tenth inning, Smith delivered the decisive blow in the eleventh—a 366-foot home run to left field off Shane Bieber that gave the Dodgers their first lead of the night at 5-4. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitching for the second consecutive day, secured the championship by inducing Alejandro Kirk to ground into a game-ending 6-6-3 double play with runners at first and third.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto cemented his place in baseball history by becoming just the second Japanese player to earn World Series MVP honors. His historic performance included three wins across 17⅔ innings while allowing merely two runs. Most remarkably, after pitching six innings in Game 6, Yamamoto volunteered to throw 2⅔ scoreless relief innings in Game 7 with no rest.
“Yamamoto’s the GOAT!” exclaimed Dodgers manager Dave Roberts on the Fox broadcast.
“It will hurt for a few days, a few weeks, when you’re that close,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “The positive person in me will take some time to digest it … but I think right now you just have to kind of take in what happened. Going forward, the beauty of baseball is that it goes on. There will be spring training in February. That being said, you take away the sacrifices the guys made, the way they went about it, the performances everyone had, and kind of just the cohesiveness of the team.”
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