TORONTO -- To win the pennant for the first time in a generation, only to be lined up against a defending champion with the sport’s most loaded roster, is to be simultaneously touted and doubted, as these 2025 Toronto Blue Jays can attest.
But the Jays knew there was a soft underbelly to the Dodgers’ $320 million machine, and they perfectly executed their plan to expose it in a World Series Game 1 on Friday night that both silenced the skeptics and cranked up the volume in a raucous Rogers Centre.
After forcing Dodgers starter Blake Snell out of the game with the bases loaded and none out in the sixth, the Blue Jays’ deep lineup then pounced on the iffy Los Angeles bullpen with a nine-run frame that sent them to an 11-4 victory in front of the cacophonous crowd of 44,353 that came for Canada’s first Fall Classic game since 1993.
“For us just to be able to grind out at-bats, knowing we needed to pass the baton to the next guy,” said Daulton Varsho, whose fourth-inning homer tied the game and whose hit by pitch helped spark the sea-changing sixth, “that's been our MO all year. And we trusted it.”
Addison Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam -- the first of its kind in World Series history -- was the highlight of a blistering barrage from a Blue Jays team that successfully shook up so much of what had been said and assumed about this Series coming in.
Teams to win Game 1 of any best-of-seven postseason series have gone on to win that series 127 of 196 times (64.8%). In series with the current 2-3-2 format, teams winning Game 1 at home have gone on to take that series 69 of 102 times (67.6%). And interestingly, teams that come out victorious in a seven-game League Championship Series, as the Blue Jays did, are undefeated in four previous World Series against opponents that swept their LCS, as the Dodgers did.
A Dodgers team touted as an all-timer prior to the start of the season had finally begun to play like it in this postseason, waltzing to the National League pennant behind a 1.40 ERA from its rotation of Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani. Between that sizzling starting work, the haul of probable Hall of Famers atop the lineup and the pedigree that comes with their recent ring, the Dodgers were clear favorites in this Fall Classic.
Not anymore.
“Tonight,” said Dodgers reliever Anthony Banda, “was just really bad.”
With Varsho tying this tilt with a fourth-inning swat to dead center and Barger and Alejandro Kirk both going deep in the stunning sixth, the Jays took control. They had set the tone early by working Snell for 29 pitches in a scoreless-yet-productive first inning that was a harbinger of things to come.
Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who for much of his career has powered his way past walks and rarely finished what he started, had been the absolute best version of himself this October. The walks were gone, the command was sharp, and Snell was a force of nature.
In this one, though, he struggled to find the zone, and the Blue Jays waited him out.
“If I’m throwing strikes,” Snell said, “they’re gonna swing. … I had walks and was just getting behind. I’ve just gotta be better, locate the ball.”
Though the Dodgers struck first in this one off Toronto rookie starter Trey Yesavage, the RBI singles from Kiké Hernández in the second and Will Smith in the third that made it 2-0 were mild output against a 22-year-old who surely didn’t have a feel for his signature splitter in what was just his seventh start in the Majors. Yesavage, who started the season pitching for Single-A Dunedin only to find himself facing Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in the World Series, lasted only four innings but kept the damage from getting out of hand.
That allowed the Blue Jays to keep sniffing out Snell. The surest sign that Snell did not have his best stuff came in the fourth, when Varsho connected on a first-pitch fastball for a no-doubter of a two-run blast off the center-field batter’s eye. Not only was that the first homer Snell had surrendered since Aug. 29, but it was the first he had given up to a left-handed hitter all season.
The homer that tied it at 2 was quite a representative of baseball’s connective tissue, too: Joe Carter’s Game 6 walk-off homer in what had been the most recent World Series game played in this building came with Darren Daulton – the catcher his eventual teammate Gary Varsho named his son after – behind home plate for the Phillies.
“It's kind of a surreal moment,” Varsho said, “kind of being full circle for me.”
It was, however, another Varsho plate appearance that really altered the ballgame. Bo Bichette, newly rostered and repositioned at second base after missing six weeks with a left knee issue, drew a leadoff walk from Snell in the sixth, and Kirk followed with a groundball single to right. Varsho drew the count full off a huffing and puffing Snell, whose payoff pitch plunked Varsho on the right shoulder.
Varsho winced in pain on that one, but it was the Blue Jays who brought the pain next. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Snell after that 100th pitch and turned to Emmet Sheehan with the bases jammed. It didn’t go well.
Ernie Clement continued his unexpected postseason hit parade with a groundball single up the middle to score pinch-runner Isiah Kiner-Falefa and give the Jays their first lead. Nathan Lukes followed with an excellent pinch-hit appearance in which he drew a walk on nine pitches to bring home another run, and then Andrés Giménez lined a single to right to score Varsho and make it 5-2.
By now, Rogers Centre was no place to take a phone call or meditate. But it’s doubtful even Game 6 in 1993 was any louder than the sound that came from the predominantly blue-clad crowd one out later, when Barger was summoned to face Banda and socked a 2-1 slider over the wall in right-center.
Not a bad way to make a World Series entrance.
“That's probably as good as it gets,” Barger said with a laugh.
Barger had not only broken open the ballgame but carved out his own special place in the World Series record books. In exposing the thinness of the Dodgers’ bullpen, the Blue Jays had also demonstrated what they boast on their bench.
“That's kind of how we roll,” manager John Schneider said. “So much credit to the guys up and down the lineup being ready to come into the game. … Those at-bats in that inning started with Bo's walk, then a knock, and it kind of just kept on going. Those were some pretty terrific at-bats from everyone up and down the order.”
The seismic sixth carried on with Kirk’s two-run insurance swat to make it 11-2, rendering Ohtani’s own two-run blast in the seventh a meaningless mash.
When Ohtani batted in the ninth, Blue Jays fans, fully aware of how close their club had come to signing the two-way talent in his pre-2024 free agency, chanted, “We don’t need you!” which evolved into "We don't need him!"
And on this night, they were right. All the Jays needed was to follow their plan.