World Series 2025: For once, a Blue Jays rally comes up short as Dodgers force Game 7 with wild ninth inning Jordan ShustermanNovember 1, 2025 at 3:22 AM 0 TORONTO — "Put the ball in play, and good things happen.
- - World Series 2025: For once, a Blue Jays rally comes up short as Dodgers force Game 7 with wild ninth inning
Jordan ShustermanNovember 1, 2025 at 3:22 AM
0
TORONTO — "Put the ball in play, and good things happen."
It's a classic hardball mantra that has proven especially poignant for the Toronto Blue Jays, the team that was the most difficult to strike out in the regular season and the one that has spent October tormenting pitchers. The Jays have consistently made contact via sizzling line drives and softly hit bloopers and every kind of batted ball in between, racking up runs en route to the doorstep of a World Series title.
But on Friday at Rogers Centre — in the final frame of a devastating 3-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in World Series Game 6 — the Blue Jays put two tantalizing balls in play, only to be left coldly unrewarded. Had good things happened on Addison Barger's laser beam to the outfield fence or Andrés Giménez's flare into shallow left field, the city of Toronto might very well be planning a parade right now. Instead, Toronto and its fans will prepare for the unrivaled drama of a Game 7 on Saturday.
No major-league team has authored more come-from-behind victories than the Blue Jays in 2025 — 49 in the regular season, plus another five in October — and Toronto appeared to be cooking up another comeback in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6. With a two-run lead, Dodgers rookie enigma Roki Sasaki was on the mound for Los Angeles seeking the final three outs after delivering a scoreless eighth inning. After getting leadoff man Alejandro Kirk into a quick 0-2 hole on fastballs at 99 and 98 mph, Sasaki uncorked a wayward splitter that hit Kirk in the left hand, giving him a free trip to first base. Myles Straw pinch-ran for Kirk, and Barger came up as the game-tying run with nobody out.
Barger fouled off two fastballs and watched two splitters that sailed outside, bringing the count to 2-2. Sasaki came again with the heat, and Barger didn't miss it, connecting with the 99-mph offering. The ball jumped off Barger's bat at 105.5 mph and soared toward the left-center-field wall.
What happened next was entirely novel to everyone in the Blue Jays' dugout, including those who have called Rogers Centre home for years.
As center fielder Justin Dean turned his back and raced toward the wall, it quickly became clear that the ball was not going to be caught. Rather than soaring into the seats for a home run or ricocheting off the wall for a run-scoring double, an unthinkable third outcome occurred: The ball crash-landed directly into the base of the fence, wedging itself between the ground and the padding that covers the wall.
When this happens — and it does happen on occasion at certain ballparks, though not at Rogers Centre to the recollection of any current Blue Jay — the rulebook states that the play can be blown dead and the hit declared a ground-rule double if the fielder puts his hands up upon seeing the stuck ball. Had Dean reached for the ball and attempted to play it from its stuck position, it could have been ruled a live ball. But left fielder Kiké Hernández immediately threw his arms up when the ball reached its unlikely landing spot, prompting Dean — who had entered the game as a ninth-inning defensive upgrade — to do the same. That led left-field umpire John Tumpane to signal that the ball was indeed a ground-rule double, meaning Straw could advance only two bases, rather than coming around to score Toronto's second run.
Tumpane's call did little to quiet the elation Barger's batted ball sparked among the 44,710 spectators. Not only had Straw seemingly come around to score, but also Barger — not seeing where the ball had landed — just kept running, racing all the way to home plate to amplify the chaos further. The bulk of the crowd believed Barger had just tied the game with an improbable inside-the-park home run and reacted accordingly. Then reality slowly set in as the ground-rule double was confirmed by the crew of umpires and understood by both dugouts, sending Barger back to second and Straw back to third.
[Get more Toronto news: Blue Jays team feed]
"I could tell the ball was gonna beat Dean. So I dropped my head, I picked up Carlos, and he waved me home," Straw recalled later. "I scored, and then I turned around. I was like, 'OK, Barger is probably gonna be at second.' I turned around and see Barger coming, and I was like, 'Oh, my gosh. What's going on?' …
"No one's ever really seen the ball do that here, myself included. It was tough, I was hoping they didn't put the arms up because I think that would have been a live ball if he grabbed it. But they did the right thing as an outfielder — you're supposed to do that, and that's the right call."
Said Barger: "I couldn't really see the ball, like trapped or anything. I just saw them wave their hands, so I'm just gonna keep running and see what they call it. That's pretty much it. I saw at the wall. I didn't really see after that. Just kept going, just in case."
"Been here a long time," manager John Schneider said postgame. "I haven't seen a ball get lodged ever. Just caught a tough break there. He put a really good swing on that pitch."
Daulton Varsho said it is "impressive" for a ball to get lodged under the wall in Toronto 😳 pic.twitter.com/rlMCqgYjaO
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) November 1, 2025
With that play finally resolved, Barger had done his part to keep the rally alive, but the two-run deficit remained. Thus concluded Sasaki's night, with his command clearly wavering as his pitch count climbed, prompting the entrance of Tyler Glasnow to try to clean up the mess and secure the final three outs.
Up came Ernie Clement with two runners in scoring position and zero outs. Glasnow's first pitch was a 96-mph sinker that ran up and in sharply on Clement's hands. Clement swung anyway and popped up weakly to first base, offering zero opportunity for either baserunner to advance.
For perhaps any other hitter on either roster, swinging at Glasnow's first pitch in this situation would come off as unnecessarily risky and overeager. But this ultra-aggressive approach has done wonders for Clement all month, as the fan-favorite infielder has racked up a whopping 27 hits, the third-most ever in a single postseason behind only 2020 Randy Arozarena (29) and his superstar teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (28). Seven of Clement's hits have come on the first pitch of an at-bat, and another five have come on the second. His result against Glasnow was untimely, but it's difficult to argue with the process that has yielded so much recent success.
Next Giménez came to the plate, with the ever-dangerous George Springer looming large on deck. Glasnow again attacked with a sinker, this one running away from the left-handed Giménez. Giménez swung at the pitch on the outer half and connected poorly with the end of his bat, splintering a small piece of lumber on contact and sending the ball floating toward left field.
Hernández, playing notably shallow in left field, bolted toward the ball as it parachuted to the grass. Barger, watching the flight of the ball to see if it would land and allow him to score the game-tying run or at least advance to third, was stopped roughly halfway between second and third. As Hernández sprinted in at full speed and closed in on the ball, Barger realized, though not quickly enough, that he needed to get back to the bag.
Hernández caught the ball in stride and threw quickly to second base, where Miguel Rojas made a nifty snag on the throw, which skipped off the dirt, just a blink before Barger's hand made it back to the bag.
Double play. Game 6 over. Game 7 Saturday.
"I was being too aggressive, trying to score, you know, trying to tie up that game if that ball drops," Barger said afterward. "He got a good read on the ball and made a good play."
Said Schneider: "It's a tough read. Kiké playing shallow and one out, you're thinking score. He made a really good play. It's such a tweener. He made a good play, good throw. Good play by Rojas, too. Wild. Wild way to finish it, for sure."
The Blue Jays had done what they do best, putting the ball in play when they needed to most with a World Series title within reach. But as it turns out, good things don't always happen.
"Ultimately ended up second and third with nobody out with guys that make contact, and just didn't get it done," Schneider said.
Toronto's fateful failed rally in the ninth was the dramatic end to a ballgame that featured few other run-scoring opportunities and was the first game of this World Series without a home run from either team. For three hours, the Dodgers and Blue Jays engaged in an ultra-tense affair befitting the high-pressure stakes of any Game 6, with one team one win away from a championship and the other desperately trying to stave off elimination.
Coming off a sensational complete-game performance in Game 2, right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto took the mound with the task of extending the Dodgers' season and once again rose to the occasion. While Toronto did a better job of inflating his pitch count to ensure Yamamoto's exit after six innings — an awfully early departure by his recent standards — the Blue Jays' bats mustered minimal offense against the Dodgers' righty outside of Springer's two-out RBI single in the third. Otherwise, Yamamoto repeatedly and masterfully dodged trouble, coaxing inning-ending double plays in the first and fourth and striking Daulton Varsho out with a nasty splitter to strand two baserunners in a scoreless sixth.
Yamamoto's final line from his two World Series starts: 15 innings, 9 hits, 2 runs, 1 walk, 14 strikeouts. Pretty good.
Meanwhile, Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman mostly matched Yamamoto's effort, tying a World Series record with eight strikeouts through the first three innings, thanks in large part to his spectacular splitter that was racking up whiffs. But things got away from Gausman in the third. After Shohei Ohtani was intentionally walked with a runner on second and two outs, Will Smith made Gausman pay with a double to left field to open the scoring. A five-pitch walk to Freddie Freeman loaded the bases for Mookie Betts, who finally found the big hit he's been looking for with a two-run single on a poorly located fastball from Gausman to make it 3-0 Dodgers.
Betts' single, Smith's double and Tommy Edman's double earlier that inning accounted for three of Los Angeles' four hits in Game 6, with Ohtani adding a double in the eighth. That's two straight games for the Dodgers producing four total hits following their ugly offensive showing in Game 5 that pushed their season to the brink. But on a night when the Blue Jays bats couldn't find a way to break through, three runs on four hits turned out to be enough to extend Los Angeles' season another day.
Now all that's left is Game 7, a game that guarantees great theater in any context but promises to be especially enthralling given the expected starting pitchers: 41-year-old future first-ballot Hall of Famer Max Scherzer going up against, in all likelihood, Ohtani on short rest for the first time in his career. Both will have the chance to add to their extensive legends, but it feels just as likely that the game will be decided by whatever combination of arms enters after them.
With Saturday's outcome, a season that began for these teams in Glendale, Arizona, and Dunedin, Florida, in mid-February will end in Canada on the first day of November. It will be the 2,477th game of 2025, the largest combined total between the regular season and postseason in MLB history.
"It's going to be fun," Schneider said. "It's going to be three or four or five hours of mayhem and great baseball. But these guys are going to be ready for it. Hopefully they get to slow some things down but enjoy it.
"It's Game 7 of the World Series at your home stadium. I mean, what the hell else do you want?"
Source: "AOL Sports"
Source: Sports
Published: November 01, 2025 at 11:27AM on Source: ASHER MAG
#ShowBiz#Sports#Celebrities#Lifestyle
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Love-Is-Blind-102925-e382df8682734fd18b20e5b7600de6d4.jpg "Vampire Diaries boss Julie Plec explains why Klaroline could never happen today")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Samantha-Highfill-author-photo-091725-4112e875604542d49744a27de908d183.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Vampire-Diaries-aee4f4e73bd94619afa99327d514929d.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/TVD-Pedro-Pascal-bf35b07bf1c34bd8b6bcc048491587eb.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/TVD515B_0653b-d0f8246f55cd400b8799d95688105f08.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/The-Vampire-Diaries-1-5917384b62324ff4b88153e134e269d6.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/TVD701C_0356b-5ffd37663cb047c183d18af7b21a3d01.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/TVD-2-77f9391cee864c0f94657bb1e87a211e.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Joey-Nolfi-author-photo-ba4923fec03a4027868306485696ef41.jpg)
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/EW-Binge-02dc9c9f933c45b18c9773b58f3bc6ea.jpg)
