LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers need to win or the season is over, adding clarity and immediacy of purpose after two home losses that followed frustratingly similar patterns.
A winnable start through six innings
goes south in the seventh inning with a shaky handoff to a struggling bullpen, and an offense not performing anywhere close to their capabilities making for lopsided final scores.
“It doesn’t feel great,” manager Dave Roberts said after Wednesday’s Game 5 loss. “You clearly see those guys finding ways to get hits, move the baseball forward, and we’re not doing a good job of it.”
The Blue Jays have outscored the Dodgers 29-18 in this World Series, with Toronto hitting .261/.341/.389 with a 105 wRC+ as a team compared to just .201/.296/.354 with a 79 wRC+. With runners in scoring position, the Blue Jays are hitting .282/.392/.436 with 51 such plate appearances in five games, while the Dodgers are 6-for-30 with no extra-base hits (.200/.286/.200) in only 36 PA.
“Hitting creates energy and we weren’t getting hits, so we weren’t really doing what it took to find that energy,” said Kiké Hernández, whose solo home run provided the Dodgers’ only run of Game 5.
Down 3-2 in the World Series, the Dodgers are facing elimination for the first time in 2025. But not only do they have to beat the Blue Jays on the road. They have to do it twice, something done eight times previously in a best-of-7 World Series:
- 1926 Cardinals (at Yankees)
- 1934 Cardinals (at Tigers)
- 1952 Yankees (at Dodgers)
- 1958 Yankees (at Braves)
- 1968 Tigers (at Cardinals)
- 1979 Pirates (at Orioles)
- 2016 Cubs (at Cleveland)
- 2019 Nationals (at Astros)
That 2019 World Series was an odd one, with the road team winning all seven games. Winning an elimination game is hard, doing on the road is even more difficult, and having to do so twice in a row is even more daunting. But the Dodgers have to first win Game 6 to earn the right to have to win Game 7.
“It sucks, but we get a day off, you go there and we just have to win one game. You win one game at a time, that’s what I keep saying all the time,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “It’s not going to be easy, but you can’t think about trying to win two games on the road. You just take it one game at a time, and we have to focus on the next game.”
Making the playoffs in all 10 seasons thus far under Roberts provides for many opportunities for playing in elimination games. They’ve done pretty well in such games, winning 13 of 20, while the rest of MLB since 2016 is 78-96 (.448) when facing elimination.
The Dodgers are 5-4 on the road when facing elimination, while the rest of MLB since 2016 is 27-47 (.365). The wins for Los Angeles in these games were the 2016 NLDS Game 5 in Washington D.C., 2018 NLCS Game 7 in Milwaukee, 2020 NLCS Game 5 “at” Braves (at Globe Life Field in Texas), 2021 NLDS Game 5 in San Francisco, and 2024 NLDS Game 4 in San Diego.
The 2025 Dodgers, as you might imagine, are leaning heavily on their experience from 2024, when they were down two games to one in the Division Series. They beat the Padres in San Diego in Game 4, and closed them out at Dodger Stadium in Game 5.
“We all know what we’re capable of, and we haven’t done it for two games. Maybe a day off will cool them down and reignite us,” Freeman said. “We’ve been here before. We were down 2-1 to the Padres last year and won two in a row. So we can do it again.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be on the mound for the Dodgers in Game 6 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, coming off two complete games in a row, facing Kevin Gausman who took a 1-1 tie into the seventh inning against Yamamoto in Game 2 before home runs by Will Smith and Muncy gave the Dodgers one of their two wins in this series.
“We’ve got to make some adjustments. We have seen Gausman a ton, a lot of our guys have seen him, so we just got to continue to — I just think we just got to come in fresh,” Roberts said. “We’ve been in elimination games, a core group of these guys, and we got to find a way to win a game. That’s it.”
“As a group it’s time to show our character, put up a fight, and see what happens,” Hernández said. “We’re a more talented team than we were last year. We found a way to do it last year, and I thought we were in a bigger hole given the situation with our pitching staff last year.
“Right guy on the mound at the right time for us in Game 6 in Yoshinobu. It’s time for the offense to show up.”
