The 2025 MLB season wrapped up on Saturday with the Los Angeles Dodgers winning their second consecutive World Series. The Dodgers fought past the Toronto Blue Jays in seven incredibly intense games that featured a total of 10 extra innings, 19 home runs and several controversial calls.

Los Angeles handled the New York Yankees in five games in the 2024 World Series and looked bulletproof while doing so. Entering the 2025 season, it was a foregone conclusion that they would go back to back. They’re perhaps the most star-studded team in all of American sports with a payroll over $320 million. They brought nearly their entire 2024 roster back, plus some extra bullpen help, and never really suffered any setbacks all year. On the other hand, the Toronto Blue Jays seemed to be on a downtrend from their peak in 2022. From 2021-23, the Blue Jays finished with 89 or more regular season wins, but were unable to get past the Wild Card round. After missing the playoffs with a losing record in 2024, expectations were lower for Toronto this season despite keeping the core of players that brought them those strong seasons. However, after a bounceback 94-win regular season, the Blue Jays fended off a red-hot Seattle Mariners team to make it to their first World Series since their 1993 championship.

The 2025 series opened in Toronto on Oct. 24. After a relatively slow opening to the game, the score was 2-2 entering the bottom of the sixth. The Blue Jays loaded the bases causing Los Angeles to make some pitching changes, ultimately putting in Anthony Banda to face Addison Barger. Barger would crush a 2-1 pitch for a pinch-hit grand slam, the first of its kind in a World Series game. Toronto would rally and finish the inning leading 11-2, which the Dodgers were unable to catch up to. Toronto takes the lead 1-0.

The second game of the series was the last home game for the Blue Jays before the Dodgers hosted the next three, the best opportunity to extend their lead. After another slow first half, the score was 1-1 entering the seventh inning. After a leadoff groundout, Dodgers’ third baseman Max Muncy would launch a solo home run to put Los Angeles in the lead 2-1. Two batters later, catcher Will Smith followed suit with another solo homer to extend their lead. Ultimately, Los Angeles would tack on another two runs while pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto held the Blue Jays to one run to seal his complete game. 

The teams headed to Los Angeles for a series tiebreaking Game 3 with a 5 p.m. local start time. The Dodgers opened the scoring with a pair of one-run homers from Teoscar Hernández and Shohei Ohtani, to which Toronto’s Alejandro Kirk responded with a three-run bomb of his own, with Andrés Giménez adding another run with a sacrifice fly later in the inning. In the fifth, Shohei Ohtani struck again with a double that scored Enrique Hernandez all the way from first base. Ohtani himself scored after a single from veteran first baseman Freddie Freeman, bringing the game to a 4-4 tie. After a run-scoring single from Toronto’s Bo Bichette and another Ohtani home run in the seventh inning, the game was at a 5-5 stalemate. The game would crawl on for another 11 innings before Freddie Freeman broke the tie with a leadoff bomb in the bottom of the 18th, ending the game after a grueling six hours and 39 minutes. When all the dust finally settled, Game 3 finished with multiple players getting eight at-bats, a combined 18 pitchers seeing the field and a 2:39 a.m. bedtime for the east-coast Blue Jays fans who stayed up to watch all the way through.

Games 4, 5 and 6 all featured a far more typical nine innings each. Toronto was able to even the series at 2-2 with a big road win in Game 4 featuring a four-run seventh inning, which was more than enough to outrun the Dodgers with a final score of 6-2. Game 5 was another momentum-shifting road win for the Blue Jays, partially thanks to home runs from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Davis Schneider that brought the series lead — and home field advantage — back to Toronto. At this point in the series, the Dodgers needed to figure out something big if they wanted to extend the series. A Halloween-night Game 6 began with a one-run double from Will Smith followed by a two-run single from Mookie Betts to bring the Dodgers into a 3-0 lead. This proved to be all the Dodgers needed to bring the series to a Game 7 after only allowing the Blue Jays one run all night.

Toronto got to host the last game and the first two-and-a-half innings went by without any scoring. The Blue Jays came up in the third inning with the top of their batting order preparing to face Shohei Ohtani. George Springer survived a 1-2 count with a single to left field, and after a bunt groundout and an intentional walk, Toronto found themselves with runners on first and third. Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette came up and crushed the first pitch he saw from Ohtani for a home run. The Dodgers pulled Ohtani from the mound and had Justin Wrobleski finish off the inning. Los Angeles punched back immediately in the top of the fourth with a Teoscar Hernández sacrifice fly to cut their deficit slightly with the score at 3-1. After one run for each team in the sixth inning, Los Angeles’ Max Muncy came up to bat in the eighth and homered off of Trey Yesavage to give the Dodgers the momentum they needed and to bring them within one run of the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays were held scoreless in the bottom of the inning, presenting the Dodgers with a do-or-die ninth inning. After an Enrique Hernandez strikeout, Miguel Rojas battled to a 3-2 count against reliever Jeff Hoffman. On the payoff seventh pitch of his at-bat, Rojas took the swing of his life and tied the game with a home run on a slider, completely silencing the home Toronto crowd. Toronto held the game to a tie long enough to get a chance to win in the bottom of the ninth but were unable to get anything going, bringing the teams to extras for the second time in the series. The Dodgers loaded the bases in the top of the tenth, but the Blue Jays were able to escape their bind with a double play at first. Rojas led off in the top of the 11th, but was unable to find the same magic he used in the ninth. Catcher Will Smith would play hero with a solo bomb off of Shane Bieber which the Blue Jays couldn’t match, ending the game at 5-4.

Even though the Dodgers were pretty likely to win the World Series, it would be hard to predict that it would come against a team that was supposedly on their way out of relevance and feature a game with nine extra innings. Dodgers’ ace pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto won the World Series’ “Most Valuable Player” after pitching all nine innings in Game 2 and finishing off Game 7. Sports have a tendency to be overdramatic and this series is a fantastic example. On paper, the historically dominant team winning the world series sounds boring. On the field, their win was anything but.