A Wonderfully Chaotic Game 7 Ends with the Dodgers as Repeat World Series Champions

If you’re a baseball fan — and presumably most people reading this are — Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was like the best buffet you’ve ever been to. There were no hotel pans full of lukewarm highlights sitting atop Sterno cans. This one had dramatic home runs, crazy defensive plays, a series of starting pitcher relief cameos, and even some questionable baserunning for flavor. Even Will Smith’s 11th-inning home run, which was the eventual difference, might have only been the fifth-most exciting moment in one of the best World Series games I’ve seen in my near half-century of existence.

We certainly started off with an entertaining matchup of starting pitchers. For the Dodgers, we got Shohei Ohtani, the player who has defined the 2020s. While Tyler Glasnow’s three-pitch save in Game 6 didn’t disqualify him — he appeared later in this game — Ohtani is tricky to use as a relief option since the Ohtani DH rule only works when he’s starting. On the other side, Max Scherzer got the start for the Blue Jays, and while the future Hall of Famer is nearing the end of his career and is no longer an ace, I wouldn’t dare get between Mad Max and a Game 7.

Ohtani started things off in the first with a liner to center, advancing to second on a Smith grounder after a terrific diving play by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to prevent the Dodgers from getting two on with no one out. Ohtani then advanced to third on a Freddie Freeman fly out, but he was stranded after a Mookie Betts groundout to Andrés Giménez.

The Blue Jays followed the top of the inning with a quick threat of their own. George Springer, continuing to play through a painful oblique injury, singled on a 99-mph fastball, but Ohtani recovered to strike out Nathan Lukes and Guerrero. The latter strikeout came amidst a rather odd sequence that saw Springer running on the 3-2 pitch to Vlad before seemingly pulling up when he was 60% of the way to second. I’m not sure if it was a blown hit-and-run (which would itself be odd to call given Springer’s compromised state), or if Springer believed Guerrero had drawn a walk, or if he simply thought there were two outs instead of one. Whatever the reason, Springer was tagged out to end the inning on what was officially called a caught stealing:

Despite going on three days’ rest, Ohtani threw his heater a tick harder than he had in his last start (98.9 mph vs. 97.5 mph). He came in throwing a lot of fastballs and fewer secondary offerings than normal, and continued to do so with runners on base.

Scherzer pitched two clean, efficient innings in the second and third, only throwing one first-pitch ball, a fastball inside to Tommy Edman. He needed just 18 pitches to get through those two frames, and didn’t allow any hits. It was as close to vintage Scherzer as he comes these days, but it still wasn’t the Scherzer of old. While he didn’t allow a baserunner, he wasn’t missing bats anywhere near as well as at his peak, and the Dodgers were rarely actually fooled by even his slider. Scherzer allowed eight ball hit into play with a triple digit exit velocity, so this was less domination than it was moxie or veteran grit or whatever other superlative normally gets you rolling your eyes.

Ohtani, on the other hand, had a much rougher time of it. He walked Bo Bichette on five pitches to lead off the second, then gave up a single to Addison Barger after the right fielder worked a full count. After getting Alejandro Kirk and Daulton Varsho to pop and fly out, Ernie Clement, now the record-holder for the most hits in a postseason, loaded the bases with a two-out single. A Giménez strikeout allowed Ohtani to escape the inning, but there would be no escape in the third.

Springer started things off with his second single of the game, advancing to second on a Lukes sacrifice bunt and to third on a wild pitch. Guerrero was intentionally walked after the wild pitch, a choice the Dodgers likely immediately regretted when Bichette, playing on a sprained PCL, blasted a three-run no-doubter to give the Blue Jays the lead:

Ohtani wasn’t especially wild, but his location was less sharp than usual to my eye (I made a note of this even before the Bichette at-bat), and the slider that Bichette crushed struck me as an objectively bad pitch. That was it for Ohtani, with Justin Wrobleski finishing off the frame.

Scherzer ran into serious trouble to start the fourth, allowing a double to Smith and a single to Freeman with no outs. After a Betts fly out, Max Muncy walked, which set up a Teoscar Hernández sac fly that scored Smith, a play that may have ended up quite notably worse for the Jays if not for a Varsho diving catch. Not to be outdone by his Gold Glove-winning teammate, Guerrero made his second terrific defensive play of the game, making a diving grab of an Edman liner for the final out. The Dodgers did get a run, but given their surprising offensive issues during the series, failing to do more damage after loading the bases with one out was a real disappointment:

With one out in the bottom of the fourth, Wrobleski almost hit Giménez, though the latter seemed to practically put his hand in the path of the pitch. Words were exchanged between the two when Giménez actually was hit by the next pitch, sending both benches and bullpens onto the field. But fisticuffs did not ensue, and order was restored relatively quickly.

After a one-out single in the fifth to Miguel Rojas, Scherzer’s night ended, with Louis Varland coming in to face Ohtani. Ohtani singled Rojas into scoring position, but Varland got the final two outs to prevent any insurance runs. Glasnow started the sixth for Los Angeles; Toronto only got a two-out single from Kirk, which came to naught.

Chris Bassitt came in for the sixth as the Dodgers again chipped away at Toronto’s lead. Betts drew a leadoff walk, then Muncy got his first hit of the game. Betts advanced on a grounder to Bassitt, and Edman got the Dodgers their second run with a sacrifice fly. Enrique Hernández kept the rally alive with another single, but Rojas grounded out to end the threat; one run was all they would get.

The Blue Jays got that run back in their half of the inning on a single by Clement and then a gapper double from Giménez to bring him in. Glasnow got Springer swinging through a 97 mph fastball to set him down, then retired Lukes and Guerrero to limit Toronto to just the one run.

Trey Yesavage, going on just two days’ rest after his stunning 12-strikeout performance in Game 5, was brought in for the seventh. Facing the heart of the Los Angeles order, Yesavage pitched very carefully, mostly nibbling the edges with sliders and splitters, and after a leadoff walk to Ohtani, a Smith flyout and a Freeman double play put the Blue Jays just six outs from their first championship in more than three decades. Emmet Sheehan came in and was effective, striking out Bichette and Varsho, with his only ding a fastball that Kirk took the other way into right for a single.

Yesavage was back out for the eighth. He got Betts to ground out before Muncy casually swatted a splitter that didn’t split off the right field stands to again make it a one-run game. After a Teoscar Hernández groundout, Toronto brought in closer Jeff Hoffman to try and get the final four outs. He got the first one, retiring Edman on a routine grounder to second.

Sheehan came out for his second inning of work, but another Clement hit, this time a double off a high fastball (this was the hit that set the postseason record) resulted in the Dodgers using the third member of their postseason rotation, Blake Snell, to finish off the eighth. Snell managed to do so without incident, punching out both Springer and Davis Schneider (pinch-hitting for Lukes) on breaking pitches; the stranded runner would loom large.

In the ninth, Enrique Hernández was unable to offer any of his usual October heroics, with Hoffman striking him out reaching for a slider. Next up was Rojas, who got his last hit before Saturday on October 1, during the Wild Card series against the Reds. But his second hit of the night came at just the right time, as he had what was likely the biggest moment of his career, lining a hanging Hoffman slider over the left field wall to tie the game:

In an age with what seems like a billion postseason games every year, it’s hard for individual moments to stand out, but I think the Rojas home run is one that ought to stick. Even though the game was generally pretty close, you could tell that the crowd tasted that championship, and was looking past Rojas to Ohtani on deck as the final boss. About one second into the ball’s flight, you could hear the crowds’ cheers turn into a near-unanimous groan. The change in the win expectancy graph was dramatic enough, but if we had a way to chart vibes, the ones in Rogers Centre would have resulted in a vertical line through the floor. Rojas turned the 2025 World Series around, and it’s a moment as striking as Carlton Fisk willing a homer to stay fair in 1975 through the power of fervent gesticulation, or Kirk Gibson pumping his arm during his home run trot taken on two bad legs in 1988. And it’s a pitch that, 30 years from now, Hoffman will still desperately wish to have back.

Hoffman managed to prevent any additional damage, and got the job done against two considerably better hitters, Ohtani and Smith, but the champagne and cigars were put on hold.

Snell returned in the bottom of the ninth, and after a Guerrero fly out, Bichette got things going with a single to left. Isiah Kiner-Falefa came in to pinch-run. Snell walked Barger, and in came the fourth and final starting pitcher for the Dodgers in Game 7, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, after throwing six innings and 96 pitches the night before.

Yamamoto hit Kirk in the hand with his second pitch, loading the bases with one out. With a long fly ball losing the game, Andy Pages and his very strong arm (98th-percentile arm strength in 2025) replaced Edman in center. Unfortunately for Blue Jays fans, there was another baserunning blunder, this one far more consequential than the incident in the first. Kiner-Falefa was extremely conservative with his lead off the third base bag, which proved disastrous when Varsho hit a hard grounder to Rojas at second:

So. Are we ready to talk about this lead?

— Alex Stumpf (@alexjstumpf.bsky.social) 2025-11-02T04:23:14.337Z

Rojas stumbled slightly before his throw to the plate, and Smith was just barely able to get his foot down ahead of IKF to get the force out at home. It looked like we might get our first World Series championship walk-off replay review, but the out call was confirmed. Had Kiner-Falefa been tiny bit less passive (or had opted to run through the base, or at least slid head-first), the game would have been over.

The choice of putting Pages in center turned out to be prescient one pitch later, as he grabbed a very deep fly hit by Clement, one that he saw more clearly than Enrique Hernández in left. Unfortunately for Hernández, Pages practically flattened him like a cartoon steamroller, but Kiké was able to get up quickly and run off the field.

Seranthony Domínguez got the ball for the Jays in the 10th, and after Freeman flied out, the Dodgers loaded the bases after a Betts walk, a Muncy single, and then another walk, this one to Teoscar Hernández. In what was practically a rerun of the prior inning, Pages hit a hard grounder, and Giménez got the force at the plate to keep the game tied. Enrique Hernández grounded out to end the inning after Domínguez just barely beat him to first on a 3-1 putout, giving the Jays their second opportunity for walk-off magic.

Staying in the game, Yamamoto got Giménez on a chopper to second, and after allowing Springer to get to a 3-0 count on three pitches not even close to the plate, came back to strike him out flailing at a splitter. An unlikely Myles Straw walk-off homer did not occur, taking us to the 11th.

Shane Bieber came in for the top of the 11th, pitching on normal rest, and only needed three pitches to get Rojas and Ohtani out on grounders. However, Smith wasn’t tempted on two low-and-outside pitches, and on a 2-0 count, an utter disaster of a slider ended up in the left field stands, giving the Dodgers their first lead of the game. Bieber retired Freeman, but the damage was done:

Now, at this point, my biggest concern was that Dave Roberts would try to go for the cute storybook ending, and bring out Clayton Kershaw to close out the Jays and finish his career (the left-hander had been warming). But Roberts trusted the tired Yamamoto to continue fighting. With his command looking increasingly spotty, Yamamoto allowed a double to Vlad on a full count. Kiner-Falefa sacrificed bunted Guerrero to third base, and Barger walked on four consecutive splitters. Kirk came up with a chance to end the World Series with one swing of the bat. He did, though not in the way Joe Carter had, hitting an 0-2 splitter from Yamamoto into a double play.

And thus ended the 2025 season. The Dodgers are the first team to win consecutive World Series in the 21st century, bolstering the team’s dynasty claims. It’s a disappointing ending for the Blue Jays, but this was still a phenomenally successful season after they finished 2024 in last place in the AL East. Kershaw walks off into the sunset with another ring, and will certainly be giving a speech in Cooperstown in just over five years. And while it would be poetic for Scherzer to join him, he seems a lot more interested in coming back for 2026.

Was this one of the greatest World Series? I personally think so, but history always gets the final word.