The Toronto Blue Jays came heartbreakingly close to ending their 32-year championship drought, only to see the Los Angeles Dodgers complete a dramatic comeback to win the 2025 World Series in Game 7 at Rogers Centre. Los Angeles claimed a 5-4 victory in 11 innings, winning back-to-back titles for the first time since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees.
Toronto manager John Schneider, reflecting on the loss in a FOX interview after the game with Ken Rosenthal, said he had just held his first team meeting of the year tonight and had a two-word message for the players: “thank you” (h/t Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet).
Game 7 was a tense, back-and-forth battle, with the Blue Jays taking an early lead when Bo Bichette crushed a three-run homer off Shohei Ohtani in the third inning. The Dodgers chipped away on sacrifice flies from Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman to make it 3-2 before Andres Gimenez extended Toronto’s lead with an RBI double in the sixth.
Max Muncy’s eighth-inning solo homer cut the deficit to one, and Miguel Rojas tied the game in the ninth with a dramatic home run off Jeff Hoffman, sending the contest into extra innings. In the 11th, Los Angeles catcher Will Smith launched a solo homer off Shane Bieber for the first lead of the game, ultimately giving the Dodgers their third championship in five years and ninth overall.
Los Angeles right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto earned World Series MVP after a historic performance that ended with him closing out the championship. Pitching on zero days’ rest, Yamamoto entered Game 7 in the ninth inning in relief of Blake Snell and escaped a bases-loaded jam with a forceout and a game-saving catch by Andy Pages.
He retired the 10th inning in order and, after Will Smith’s go-ahead homer in the 11th, induced a World Series-ending double play off Alejandro Kirk. Across the series, Yamamoto pitched 17 2/3 innings, allowing just two runs (1.20 ERA) on nine hits, walking one, and striking out 14, finishing a postseason in which he went 5-1 with a 1.45 ERA over 37 1/3 innings.
Holding a 3-2 series lead wasn't enough, as the Blue Jays failed to win their first championship since 1993, as Los Angeles overcame multiple deficits and a bases-loaded ninth on Saturday night.
