How the Blue Jays Turned the World Series Upside Down

So let’s review: At 3 a.m. Eastern Tuesday morning, the World Series looked over. Los Angeles had just won an 18-inning game of chicken on ANOTHER World Series walk-off home run by Freddie Freeman. They led the Blue Jays two games to one. The next two games would be at Dodger Stadium. Sandy Koufax would be in the stands! Shohei Ohtani would start the first of those games. Blake Snell would start the second.

Yeah, the series was over.

And the series might very well be over, but in exactly the opposite way that it looked in the moment. The Blue Jays have not only won the last two games; they’ve won them so easily — they only trailed for like six minutes in 18 innings of dominance. The Dodgers’ bullpen is a disaster. Their lineup of Hall of Famers looks old and lost. Mookie has gone into a full-blown Memo Paris slump. Freddie struck out three times on Wednesday. Even Shohei himself — who had reached such great heights that we wondered if he would ever see another strike — has gone 0-for-7 with three strikeouts.

And Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has decided to make this series his own. We’ve talked about how, when he’s right, Vladdy can almost singlehandedly win games. He blasted the homer off Shohei on Tuesday, which altered that game. He followed up Davis Schnedier’s first-pitch blast on Wednesday with a homer of his own to more or less end the Dodgers’ dreams.

And it’s Vladdy — not Shohei — who is now the guy too good to pitch to.

And the Blue Jays are on the brink of pulling off one of the most unlikely World Series runs in memory. This team finished last in the American League East last year. Their big offseason move was signing Anthony Santander, who blasted 44 homers for the Orioles — he was hurt this year and batted .175 when he could play. Their star shortstop and bounty hunter, Bo Bichette, got hurt and can barely walk. Their pitching mainstay, José Berrios, hurt his elbow and isn’t on the postseason roster. Their best player in 2025, George Springer, tweaked something during the 18-inning game and hasn’t been seen since. And so on. And so on. And so on.

And yet, here they are, one game from glory, heading back to Canada, where they were fantastic all year, and I think the only way to explain it is that they have just played better than the other teams. I know that’s both obvious and trite, but sometimes the obvious and trite explanations are the only things to break through.

The Yankees couldn’t get Ernie Clement or Daulton Varsho out in the Division Series. I’m not sure that’s something the Blue Jays could have counted on going into that series, but that’s what happened.

The Mariners had everything going for them, but they threw gopherballs to Andrés Giménez (!), Addison Barger, and Springer, and couldn’t find their way back.

The Dodgers have all the big names, all the huge stars, all the celebrities in the crowd — but they couldn’t touch 22-year-old Trey Yesavage. Alejandro Kirk has scored more runs than Freddie and Mookie combined. Addison Barger is hitting .471 and has, more than once, changed the direction of the game with his thunderbolt arm.

All the talk about matchups, about talent, about momentum, about strategies — it’s fine for sports talk radio and television argument shows and pregame banter and newsletters. Hey, we have to talk about SOMETHING, and baseball is the best of things. Can the Dodgers turn things around in Toronto? Can the Blue Jays find a way to hit Yoshi Yamamoto? Will Glenn Close show up in white and stand for Mookie? Will Dave Stieb be in the Toronto crowd? Will Dave Roberts ask Eric Gagné to pitch in the seventh?

So many questions. So much to think about.

But, look, if Addison Barger decides he’s going to turn into Roberto Clemente for a few days, well, that’s just what’s going to happen, and nothing anybody says about its unlikeliness matters at all.