The Toronto Blue Jays, with a 4-3 win in Monday night's American League Championship Series Game 7 over the Seattle Mariners, are headed back to the World Series for the first time in more than 30 years.
Their opponent: the $340 million buzzsaw known as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With the biggest payroll in baseball, the Dodgers are baseball's most successful franchise in recent years, with two World Series titles and five National League pennants over the past nine seasons. Now, they are four wins away from becoming the sport's first repeat champions in a quarter century.
The Blue Jays emerged in July as one of the best teams in baseball and ended the season 94-68 on top of the AL East, a remarkable turnaround from 2024's last-place finish in the division. In the ALDS, Toronto's bats overwhelmed their division rival New York Yankees, pouring on 34 runs over four games.
Still, Toronto needed all seven games of the ALCS to return to the World Series. The Mariners took the Blue Jays to the brink with 14 home runs and some dominant pitching performances that helped them jump out to a 2-0 series lead.
But the Mariners, the only MLB franchise to have never reached the World Series, cracked as the pressure mounted late in the series. With a 3-2 series lead, needing just one win for their first-ever pennant, the Mariners committed three errors in a Game 6 loss, then, after taking a 3-1 lead in Game 7, allowed a late three-run home run by Toronto's George Springer to dash their hopes again.
"It was never a doubt that one of these guys was going to come through. It was just a matter of when," said Toronto pitcher Jeff Hoffman in a TV interview with Fox after the game. "We kept it close enough for long enough, and they did."
It is Toronto's first trip to the World Series since 1993, when the Blue Jays won back-to-back titles.
By contrast, the 93-69 Dodgers stumbled at times during the regular season, including several late-game collapses by a shaky bullpen and a humbling September sweep by the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates.
But in the postseason, Los Angeles has looked unstoppable. In the NLDS, the 96-66 Philadelphia Phillies managed only a single win over the Dodgers. And in the NLCS, Los Angeles swept the 97-65 Milwaukee Brewers.
The Dodgers' crown jewel, the two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, single-handedly powered Los Angeles to their Game 4 NLCS-clinching victory with three home runs as a batter and, as starting pitcher, 6.1 shutout innings with 10 strikeouts — a performance so herculean that it was instantly in the conversation for the greatest individual game of all-time.
In other words, the Dodgers are firing on every cylinder — and they will be an even bigger challenge for Toronto than Seattle. The Blue Jays excel at putting balls into play, which worked to their advantage in the ALCS. But Los Angeles is a better defensive team than the Mariners, and their starting pitchers are a level above, too.
But Los Angeles does have a weakness: their bullpen, which lost plenty of games for the Dodgers in the second half of the season. The Blue Jays could have an opportunity there if they can put more pressure on the Dodgers' starters than the Brewers did (just two earned runs over four games).
Game 1 of the World Series is set for Friday, Oct. 24, in Toronto.
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