Elephant Rumblings: Jays Head Home with a 3-2 Series Lead!

SB Nation

There’s a reason why it’s so rare that teams win back-to-back World Series. It’s Not Easy! The New York Yankees were the last team to pull off a repeat (actually their most recent was a three-peat) in 1998-2000.

The last National League team to do it was the Big Red Machine in 1975-76. Diehard A’s fans will remember that the Oakland A’s had won three in a row in 1972, 1973, 1974. Since the first World Series in 1903, only seven franchises have won back-to-back series, but many baseball fans expected the Dodgers to add their name to that list in 2025. The Jays seem to have other plans.

This series is far from over so I’m certainly not anointing the Toronto Blue Jays as World Series champs, but the underdogs are looking good right now. Wednesday night they defeated the Dodgers 6-1 at Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine. Jays starter Trey Yesavage earned the win in addition to breaking a few World Series records along the way. He struck out twelve Dodgers in Game 5 which broke the MLB record for most strikeouts by a rookie in a World Series game. The record previously belonged to Dodgers great Don Newcombe, who struck out eleven Yankees in a complete game loss in Game 1 of the 1949 World Series. He also became the youngest hurler to toss double digit K’s in a World Series game.

It wasn’t just the Jays starting pitcher who made it into the record books last night. Toronto hit the first back-to-back homers to begin a game in World Series history when Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. connected on two of the first three pitches of the game by Dodgers starter Blake Snell. Vlad’s home run was his eighth of the post season and provided all the scoring the Blue Jays would need to be victorious.

When play resumes Friday at the Rogers Center in Toronto, Yoshinobu Yamamoto will take the mound for the Dodgers against Kevin Gausman for the Blue Jays. Yamamoto has been phenomenal in his second MLB post season with a 3-1 record and a 1.57 ERA in 28.2 innings with twenty-six strikeouts. Gausman has been more erratic but still quite effective with a 2-2 record and 2.55 ERA in 24.2 innings. An exciting series is winding down and should be a lot of fun for baseball fans across the country! It’s only fitting that the potential clincher is on Halloween as one team could end up shocked and tricked while the other sure will consider a “W” a treat.

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