LOS ANGELES — The 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers have always had the benefit of time being on their side. When their starting rotation was in flux earlier this season, they just needed time to get healthy. When their bullpen was frustratingly inconsistent, they just needed time to figure things out. When their offense wasn’t performing coming into the postseason, they just needed time to get rolling.
Now, as they trail the Toronto Blue Jays 3-2 in the World Series following their 6-1 loss on Wednesday in Game 5 and face elimination in Toronto on Friday in Game 6, time is no longer on the Dodgers’ side.
“They’ve just played better baseball the last two days,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said of the Blue Jays after his team’s second straight loss. “It’s just plain and simple: They played better than us today.”
The Dodgers looked lifeless in their Game 4 loss, as Toronto clearly had all the momentum. And from the first pitch of Game 5, the Blue Jays showed that they hadn’t let go of it. Blake Snell needed to be at his best for the Dodgers to keep their season from being pushed to the brink. Instead, he got ambushed.
Toronto’s leadoff man, Davis Schneider, unloaded on Snell’s first pitch of the game, depositing it into the Dodgers’ bullpen for a 1-0 deficit. Two pitches later, Blue Jays superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr. did the exact same thing, launching his second no-doubter in as many days.
Snell had allowed three home runs in the entire 2025 regular season. And three pitches into Game 5, he had surrendered two. Dodger Stadium was stunned, and so were the Dodgers.
Throughout their run to the World Series, L.A.’s greatest strength has been the starting rotation. But in this Fall Classic, for the first time in months, the Dodgers’ starting pitching (aside from Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s gem in Game 2) has been far from spotless. Combine that with an offense that is struggling mightily to produce runs, and the Dodgers suddenly find themselves with a formula that doesn’t work.
Just like Shohei Ohtani in Game 4, Snell wasn’t bad in Game 5. His final line — 6 ⅔ innings, 6 hits, 5 runs, 4 walks and 7 strikeouts — looks worse than his performance deserved. But mix in spotty defense, such as Teoscar Hernández’s fourth-inning miscue that turned a triple into a run, and walks that come around to score, as 9-hole hitter Andrés Giménez did in the seventh, and that’s how a game — and a series — can slip away.
And with another L.A. loss in the books, the story of Game 5 and, frankly, much of this postseason has been that the Dodgers’ offense has gone ice cold. Manager Dave Roberts seemed to acknowledge as much when, in search of a spark, he changed his lineup ahead of Game 5. But against dominant Blue Jays rookie right-hander Trey Yesavage, it didn’t matter.
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On Wednesday, Yesavage looked much different than he did in Game 1 at Rogers Centre. He kept L.A. off-balance from the start, recording 12 strikeouts and taking advantage of the Dodgers’ inability to put innings together. And once the 22-year-old got into a rhythm, it was impossible to slow him down.
“We gotta hit the ball. We gotta hit the ball,” third base man Max Muncy, who was 0-for-3 in Game 5, said afterward. “You look at what they’re doing — they put the ball in play a lot, and it’s finding spots. We’re not putting the ball in play a lot, and when we do, it seems to be finding the glove, so we gotta find a way to put the ball in play a lot more.”
Pitching with an immediate lead thanks to the leadoff blasts, the young rookie looked like a seasoned veteran, setting the Dodgers down in order in four of his seven frames. He finished the game having allowed just one run on three hits while striking out 12 and logging 23 swing-and-misses. It was the most whiffs a starter has generated against the Dodgers in this series.
“It was just a complete 180 from Game 1,” Freeman said of Yesavage. “His command was pinpoint tonight. We were fighting that lane, and he was still getting his slider and splitter down in the zone for strikes.”
Reflecting on the Dodgers’ struggles against Toronto’s pitchers, Freeman had this to say: “Baseball is a hard game. It’s been hard for us these last two days.”
Something making things infinitely harder for the Dodgers on offense is the lack of production from superstar shortstop Mookie Betts. He is hitting just .234 this postseason, with zero home runs. And things have gotten worse in the World Series, where he’s 3-for-23 (.130).
With other typically reliable bats such as Muncy (.188 average this postseason), Tommy Edman (.232) and Freeman (.237) also underperforming, the ugly trend for the Dodgers’ offense has created an over-reliance on Ohtani to carry them. This is surprising because prior to his epic performance in Game 4 of the NLCS, the three-time MVP was dealing with some offensive struggles of his own.
But at this point, the fact of the matter is that when the best player in the world doesn’t look like Superman, the Dodgers are struggling to score. This postseason, L.A. is averaging 6.3 runs in games in which Ohtani homers. In games he doesn’t, including Game 5, they’re averaging 3.5 runs. It’s a stark contrast to the way Toronto’s offense has been wearing down the Dodgers’ rotation and bullpen, which was L.A.’s biggest concern coming into the World Series.
“It doesn’t feel great. You clearly see those guys finding ways to get hits, move the baseball forward, and we’re not doing a good job of it,” Roberts said postgame of the two offenses. “I thought Yesavage was good tonight mixing his fastball, slider and the split.
“You still have to use the whole field and take what they give you, and if they’re not going to allow for slug, then you’ve got to be able to kind of redirect [and] take competitive at-bats. … You know, those guys are doing it.”
