The Toronto Blue Jays will enter Friday night’s Game 6 with a chance to win their first World Series title in 32 years, but they will have to defeat Los Angeles Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto if they want to avoid a Game 7.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider made a case that Toronto must be stingy at the plate in order to best the All-Star and close out the 2025 Fall Classic.
“Man, hopefully he's a little tired,’’ Blue Jays manager John Schneider told Bob Nightengale of USA Today, “throwing that many innings. He's unique because he's got what seems like six or seven pitches, and can kind of morph into different pitchers as the game kind of goes on.
“You got to be stubborn, you have to be ready to hit, and you have to be stubborn with what kind of swings you're taking. That's what it comes down to. He's not a guy you can kind of wait out. He's going to pound the zone, so sometimes you got to force some action on him.’’
Yamamoto was the driving force behind the Dodgers’ Game 2 win. The 27-year-old helped Los Angeles tie the series at a game apiece by tossing a four-hit complete game. He retired the final 20 batters of the contest, and was the first to do so in a World Series game since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956.
The Blue Jays have won two straight games, but Yamamoto and the Dodgers will be motivated to extend the series and continue their title defense.
“It's fight or flight, it's whatever adage or saying you want, to leave it all out there,’’ Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It's certainly not war. I'm not trying to compare that to war. But in our world, in our small world of baseball, it is war.
“So that's the mindset.’’
