This Is MLB's Last Shot to Beat LA Dodgers—And the Blue Jays Are Nailing It

The World Series isn't over yet, but what was unthinkable at the outset of 2025 is close to becoming reality: Somebody is going to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There will probably be hell to pay if it happens, but for now, you have to hand it to the Toronto Blue Jays. They are one win shy of claiming their first World Series championship since 1993 after grabbing a 3-2 lead in this Fall Classic with a 6-1 win at Dodger Stadium in Game 5 on Wednesday.

The capacity crowd at Dodger Stadium ended up being a studio audience for The Trey Yesavage Show. The rookie righty took back-to-back leadoff homers from Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and ran with them, permitting the defending World Series champs just one run over seven innings. He struck out 12.

Though the series will shift back to Toronto for Game 6, think of the Dodgers as a dead team walking at your own peril. They'll have Yoshinobu Yamamoto looking for his third straight complete game on Friday. And lest anyone forget, Shohei Ohtani is still the best player in this series and in the known universe.

The Blue Jays, though, sure look like the better team.

The Blue Jays Deserve to Win This Series

There was actually a time this year when the Blue Jays were not an especially good team, but it didn't last long. They were only 13-16 on April 29, but from there, they won more games (81) than every team except for the Milwaukee Brewers.

The whole world now has a better sense of what makes this Blue Jays team go, and the main engine is certainly an offense that led MLB in scoring after that slow start. It's designed not just to score, but to score in bunches.

The Blue Jays have now scored exactly 100 runs in this postseason, putting them one shy of the all-time playoff record. This is the best World Series team of all time putting the ball in play, and they're just one home run shy of the non-2020 playoff record.

A team doesn't have to be a run prevention juggernaut when it can keep the line moving like that on offense, but there are at least two lessons other teams can learn from the Blue Jays:

1. The split-finger fastball is good
2. It really helps to play lockdown defense

The splitter is what Yesavage and Kevin Gausman have in common, and it's because of them that the splitter has been Toronto's most valuable pitch in the playoffs. And that isn't even counting Game 5, in which Yesavage got seven whiffs on 10 swings at his splitter.

Toronto has otherwise made only four errors in October, six fewer than the Dodgers. It's in keeping with how they played the field during the regular season, not to mention an element of their identity that predates all the mashing.

This Is Not the Team the Dodgers Wanted

When you enter a season with a payroll that is ultimately going to cost about $500 million, anything less than a World Series title is a failure.

Rather than a shocking development, however, what's happening to the Dodgers right now feels more like confirmation that this team just isn't championship material.

The Dodgers were an NL-best 53-32 by the end of June, but that month proved to be the beginning of the end for an offense that fell well below expectations. Through May, the Dodgers were first in scoring. After May, they were 11th.

All the while, the Dodgers' bullpen never rose above being a mess. It ended up third from the bottom of MLB in wins above replacement.

Pretty much the only sure thing the Dodgers had going into the playoffs was their starting rotation, and it has lived up to the hype. Even after Blake Snell got stung by Schneider and Guerrero to start Game 5, he worked 6.2 solid innings to keep Dodgers starters' ERA for the playoffs at 2.54.

The offense, though, has produced 36 fewer runs than Toronto's, even though the Jays have played one more game in these playoffs. The bullpen has been downright vomitous, with a 4.56 ERA and a 1.23 K/BB ratio that ranks as the worst of this year's playoff teams.

With a 1.109 OPS and eight homers, Ohtani is doing his best to carry the offense. Roki Sasaki is doing the same in the bullpen, putting up seven scoreless outings in eight tries.

And yet, it already doesn't look like enough to win a World Series. And if that's the way the cookie indeed crumbles, MLB may not like what it sees next.

MLB Hasn't Seen a Truly Overpowered Dodgers Team

Given all the recent talk about the Dodgers "ruining" baseball with their relentless spending in pursuit of all the glories baseball has to offer, it's worth taking a step back to acknowledge something that ought to be hard to ignore:

Try as they might, they have not cracked the code for being truly unbeatable.

Though this is their fifth World Series appearance since 2017, they're about to be under .500 in these at 2-3. The title they won in 2020 has a big darn asterisk on it, and even their 4-1 drubbing of the New York Yankees in last year's Fall Classic can be dissected as a less-than-historic victory.

Clearly, the quest for a proper dynastic juggernaut is ongoing at Chavez Ravine. And if the Dodgers do fall in this World Series, the scary part for the rest of MLB will be this:

What lengths will they go to next?

The Dodgers won't need to do a whole lot this winter. Pretty much all of their core players will be back in 2026, and at least one figures to be on a revenge tour. This is Mookie Betts, who never really resembled his usual self offensively after battling through a bad illness back in spring training. His OPS finished about 150 points shy of his career norm.

Yet if Jon Heyman of the New York Post is to be believed, the Dodgers are already circling Kyle Tucker. He'll be the top free agent on this winter's market, and he's as good an upgrade as the Dodgers could ask for an outfield that was subpar offensively.

If not Tucker, then maybe Bo Bichette. If not him, then maybe Alex Bregman. If not him, then maybe Munetaka Murakami. And on and on you can go, as no prospective free-agent upgrade figures to be off the Dodgers' radar.

There should also be every expectation that the Dodgers will throw as much money at their bullpen as it takes to properly fix it. Edwin Díaz and Robert Suarez will be out there if they exercise their opt-outs, and Devin Williams could be worth a flier as a reclamation project.

As the Dodgers have won each of the last two offseasons, making it three in a row with yet another huge spending spree isn't going to clear away the dark clouds they're casting over the next round of CBA negotiations. Even if they haven't achieved total domination over the league, that is the goal and they don't seem interested in stopping until they accomplish it. And if they do, they'll finally take that leap from an arguable dynasty to an inarguable dynasty.

In other words, what the Blue Jays are doing to the Dodgers is to be enjoyed while it lasts. This may be the rest of MLB's last, best chance to really stand up to its resident bully and deny them the dynasty they crave... at least for one more year.