TORONTO — Spanning the globe from Tokyo to Toronto and the calendar from March to November, one game will determine how these Dodgers will be remembered – as the first team in a quarter-century to repeat as champions … or as expensive disappointments who failed to live up to the demands of their outsized expectations.
Clinging to an early lead by their fingertips and white-knuckling through an unexpected nine clutch outs from their bullpen – ending with a game-saving defensive play by Kiké Hernandez – the Dodgers kept their season alive, beating the Toronto Blue Jays, 3-1, in Game 6 on Friday night, forcing a Game 7 to decide the World Series on Saturday night.
“Pretty epic ending there,” Dodgers second baseman Miguel Rojas said.
Even by World Series standards, that was true.
The Dodgers took a 3-1 lead into the ninth inning with Roki Sasaki pitching his second inning. But Sasaki hit Alejandro Kirk with a pitch and gave up a line drive to the center-field wall by Addison Barger – that stuck in the base of the wall.
Defensive replacement Justin Dean pulled up to play the ball off the wall but Hernandez, racing over from left field, threw up his hands. The left-field umpire saw that and the ball wedged in the wall and ruled a ground-rule double, stopping the runners at second and third.
“I put my hands up right away. I think I put my hands up before him (Dean), and then he put his hands up,” Hernandez said. “He put his hands up after I did, and I was just screaming at him to, like, get the ball and throw it in, because that’s umpire’s discretion. The fact that the ball stuck there doesn’t mean that they’re actually going to call a ground-rule double. And I was screaming at him, that’s kind of why I’ve lost my voice a little bit. But I was screaming at him to throw it in, and he never did. I’m glad the umpires made the right call.”
On came Tyler Glasnow, the presumptive Game 7 starter called upon to get the Dodgers there. He got Ernie Clement to pop out then Andres Gimenez lined a ball to left field. Hernandez charged in to make the catch and threw quickly to second base, doubling Barger off base to end the game – and prompting Mookie Betts to make a leap of relief into Hernandez’s arms.
“When he hit the ball, I thought there wasn’t a chance, but Kiké took an incredible jump. He could see that the bat broke and he was closing on it,” Rojas said. “I don’t know if another left fielder makes that play that easily. I think people will see he caught it easily, but that’s a difficult ball especially when it breaks off the end of the bat. He’s a player who just showed it again, that it doesn’t matter what happens, he’ll always be prepared.”
It was a fortuitous lull in the roar of the crowd that tipped him off, Hernandez said.
“With Glasnow’s stuff, I was anticipating him hitting the ball to the left side of the field,” Hernandez said, walking through the game-ending play. “I was playing shallow, tying run on second base, I just wanted to make sure that if he got a hit through the six-hole, I was going to be shallow enough to keep the tying run that was at second base, keep him at third, and the batter runner stay at first.
“But for a split second, as Glasnow threw the ball, the crowd got quiet. I was able to hear that the bat broke, so I just got a really good jump on the ball … and I felt that the guy on second took a little bit too big of a lead. Off the bat, he might have thought that the ball was gonna drop, so I felt that he was kind of off the bag. But I was coming in full speed, so I didn’t want to really throw hard, because I was probably going to throw it over his head. An unbelievable pick by Miggy. I didn’t give him the best of throws, but he was able to stay with it.
“And we forced Game 7.”
All of that happened faster than Glasnow could follow.
“Dude, I didn’t even have enough time to think about it,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Please don’t be a hit. Sweet, it’s not a hit. Nice, a double play.’ That was my thinking, I guess.”
The Dodgers forced a Game 7 despite getting just four hits in the game.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman used his splitter to extend the struggles of the Dodgers’ offense. He struck out the side in the first inning, throwing 11 splitters in his 16 pitches. The Dodgers swung eight times, missed seven and fouled off one.
Gausman tied a World Series record with eight strikeouts in the first three innings and got 17 swings-and-misses (most on his splitter), the most in the first three innings of a postseason game since pitch-tracking began in 2008.
Through the first two innings, the Dodgers had produced a total of four runs over a 31-inning stretch. But they bunched three of their hits together to get to Gausman in that third inning.
Tommy Edman got a first-pitch fastball up in the zone and doubled with one out. Blue Jays manager John Schneider made the easy decision to intentionally walk Shohei Ohtani. This time, though, it was Will Smith who followed, not the slumping Betts. Smith went down below the strike zone for a 1-and-0 splitter and doubled into the left-field corner, driving in Edman.
A walk of Freddie Freeman loaded the bases and brought the game to Betts, despite his being dropped two spots in two days. Gausman made a mistake and left a 1-and-2 fastball up to Betts, who singled through the left side, driving in two runs with two outs – his first RBIs of the series.
Ohtani has walked eight times in the World Series, five times intentionally. But that was the first time he scored a run after being walked. The Dodgers didn’t have another hit until Ohtani doubled in the eighth inning, though, leaving Yamamoto seemingly as the last man on the wall to protect a 3-1 lead.
The Blue Jays got to him for that one run in the third inning after a leadoff double by Addison Barger. But they didn’t get another runner to second base until the sixth when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doubled with two outs and Bo Bichette walked.
Yamamoto struck out Daulton Varsho with a splitter, his 96th pitch of the night. Yamamoto threw 105 and 111 pitches in his previous two starts (complete-game wins) – and 138 in a complete-game win when his Orix Buffaloes faced this same situation in Game 6 of the 2023 Japan Series.
But 96 was all he threw Friday night.
“Yamamoto did his job for the night, in my opinion,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“It’s never good taking Yamamoto out of a game, certainly in a playoff game. But I think the way that Wrobo’s been throwing the baseball, his confidence – it’s a different look, and I trust him. I felt he was the right guy for that part of the order.”
Calling on his suspect bullpen at this point on Halloween night set up the possibility of a haunting outcome for the Dodgers. But Roberts went to left-hander Justin Wrobleski, who worked around another two-out double to retire the Blue Jays in the seventh.
They put their season in the hands of accidental closer Sasaki next.
He waded through the top of the Blue Jays’ order in the eighth, giving up a single to George Springer and walking Guerrero but stranding them both. That took 25 pitches and it was the last outs they would get from Sasaki.
“I just felt that Roki wasn’t as sharp, and I just felt we needed some swing-and-miss and Glasnow was the guy,” Roberts said. “I had him loose, kind of looming, and then just the situation, I was – the pop-up was huge, but I was looking for somebody that can get some swing-and-miss and some kind of elite stuff and that’s why I decided to go with Glasnow.”
Glasnow didn’t get any swing-and-miss. Known for his October heroics at the plate, Hernandez closed it out with his glove.
“We won. We won the game,” Wrobleski said when asked to summarize the drama. “It got a little hairy, got a little weird. But Kiké made a great play. Glas came in and did his thing.
“Game 7.”
The Dodgers are now 14-7 in elimination games in 10 seasons with Roberts as manager, including 6-4 on the road.
“We’re going to leave it out there,” Roberts said. “I don’t think that the pressure, the moment isn’t going to be too big for us. We got to go out there and win one baseball game. We’ve done that all year. Everyone’s bought in.
“I don’t know how the game’s going to play out. But as far as kind of the moment, winning a game, I couldn’t be more excited to get to sleep and wake up to play a baseball game tomorrow.”
PHOTOS: Dodgers edge Blue Jays in Game 6 to extend World Series
/*! This file is auto-generated */!function(d,l){“use strict”;l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&”undefined”!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll(‘iframe[data-secret=”‘+t.secret+'”]’),o=l.querySelectorAll(‘blockquote[data-secret=”‘+t.secret+'”]’),c=new RegExp(“^https?:$”,”i”),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display="none";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute("style"),"height"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):"link"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute("src")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener("message",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll("iframe.wp-embedded-content"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute("data-secret"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+="#?secret="+t,e.setAttribute("data-secret",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:"ready",secret:t},"*")},!1)))}(window,document);