The Labatt Blue is on ice, and the Dodger blue dynasty is on thin ice.
The World Series returns to Rogers Centre for Game 6 on Friday, with the Blue Jays getting two shots to win one game against the $400 million Dodgers and dethrone the defending champs.
The Dodgers, who entered the Fall Classic as heavy favorites and seemingly on the verge of becoming the first team to win back-to-back championships since the 1998-2000 Yankees, are on the brink of having it all fall apart, facing elimination in a playoff game for the first time since winning the final two games against the Padres in the 2024 NLDS.
“I think that there’s a fight in there. There’s a compete that — I think there’s more in there,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I know there’s more in there. We’ve won two games in a row, but again, it just comes down to one game.”
The Dodgers will surely not go down without a fight, especially with Yoshinobu Yamamoto — author of two straight complete-game gems — on the mound. But the Blue Jays have been going toe-to-toe in every fight that has come their way this postseason, now one win away from securing the franchise’s first title since 1993.
“Job’s not finished, as Kobe Bryant always said,” Blue Jays outfielder/second baseman Davis Schneider said after sparking Game 5 with a leadoff homer against Blake Snell. “There’s seven games for a reason. You got to win four of ’em. And they’re a good ballclub over there. You can’t really take ’em lightly. Yamamoto is going to pitch Friday. He’s such a good pitcher, so you can’t really take anything for granted. And baseball’s a funny game. You never know what you’re going to see that day, and we just got to win one more, and hopefully, we don’t have to go to Game 7.”
Most teams use the against-all-odds narrative during the course of a season or playoff run, but for these Blue Jays, there actually is some legitimacy to it. Though they have the fifth-highest payroll in the game — still roughly $100 million short of the Dodgers — they were not exactly supposed to be here.
On the eve of Opening Day, FanGraphs’ playoff odds gave the Blue Jays a 2.8 percent chance to win the World Series. They did not even have favorable odds to make the playoffs (43.6 percent), never mind winning the ALDS (13.8 percent) or ALCS (7.0 percent).
Of course, even once the Blue Jays won the AL East with the AL’s best record (with a tiebreaker over the Yankees), they got a bye into the ALDS where they were … underdogs against the Yankees, whom they handled easily. It was the same story in the ALCS, where the Mariners were favored and took a 2-0 lead in the series, only for the Blue Jays to dispatch them in seven games.
And then the Dodgers entered the World Series as strong favorites but are suddenly at risk of suffering the same fate as the Yankees and Mariners, who found the Blue Jays’ relentless, contact-heavy lineup to be too much — not to mention a rotation that has largely risen to the occasion.
That lineup could get another boost from the return of George Springer. He missed Games 4 and 5 after leaving Game 3 with right-side discomfort, but manager John Schneider said Thursday he hopes to have the playoff veteran back Friday.
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The Blue Jays will counter Yamamoto with Kevin Gausman, who was just as dominant as the Dodgers ace for much of Game 2 until the seventh inning rolled around.
And they will be back on their home turf, which they have defended in the biggest games so far this postseason, with another raucous environment awaiting them Friday.
“I’m just excited as hell to see what this place is like [Friday],” manager John Schneider said Thursday. “The guys are too. They’re talking about it as well. We can’t wait. You kind of want the game to start right now. But it should be fun.”