BPrior to the opening throw of the 2025 Fall Classic on Friday evening, it had been 32 years and one day since the most memorable moment in Blue Jays history and the most recent occasion that the team staged a World Series contest.
On 23 October 1993, right fielder Joe Carter hit the second ever game-winning homer to clinch a World Series championship on a delivery that was being delivered to Philadelphia Phillies catcher Darren Daulton. On October 24, 2025, the initial Toronto homer slugged in a World Series game since Carter’s was by left fielder Daulton Varsho, whose father, Gary, gave his son the name after his former Philadelphia colleague … Darren Daulton. Two innings later, outfielder Addison Barger belted the initial pinch-hit bases-clearing homer in World Series records, the keynote of a nine-run sixth inning, which was the highest-scoring Fall Classic frame since the late 1960s.
Series Opener Timeline
Fixture
Best-of-seven series. All times Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4).
- Fri 24 Oct Match 1: Blue Jays 11, Dodgers 4
- Sat 25 Oct Match 2: LA Dodgers at Toronto Blue Jays, 8pm
- Mon 27 Oct Match 3: Blue Jays at Dodgers, 8:00 PM
- Tue 28 Oct Match 4: Toronto Blue Jays at LA Dodgers, 8pm
- Wednesday, October 29 Game 5: Blue Jays at Dodgers, 8pm*
- Fri 31 Oct Game 6: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8pm*
- Sat 1 Nov Game 7: Dodgers at Blue Jays, 8pm*
*if needed
How to Watch
- In the US, every matchup will be broadcast on the FOX network. If you have a cable/satellite subscription with FOX included, you can also stream via the FOX Sports app.
- North of the border, the English broadcast is on Sportsnet TV while the French broadcasts are on RDS and TVA. The games are also available online on Sportsnet Plus (in English).
- Throughout the United Kingdom, the official broadcaster is TNT Sports channels. A subscription to their platform or their application is required.
- In Australia, the rightsholder is the Australian division of ESPN and related platforms.
The Blue Jays sixth-inning outburst turned a close contest into a rollicking 11-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the opener of the Fall Classic. It wasn’t a game meant for baseball lore, but it proved that the Toronto squad might be historically underestimated against the strongly favored Los Angeles team.
Despite capturing their division with three playoff teams and topping all of MLB in team batting average and having home-field advantage, the 2025 Blue Jays started the World Series as significant longshots to a Los Angeles club that came into the matchup as one of the most dominant championship favorites of the past 15 years.
The Los Angeles squad aren’t seen as Goliath anymore as much as they are regarded as an certainty: They are the defending World Series champions who have made the playoffs since over a decade ago and have the top salary expenditure in the majors. They came into Friday night’s game with a 9-1 record in this year’s postseason and had allowed just five scores over their previous five matchups. The pitchers who began those contests (Ohtani, Snell, Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto) will make over $100m total in this year, which is greater than the total payrolls of five entire major-league teams. These earnings do not include what the team is paying three other former MVPs (shortstop Mookie Betts, starter Clayton Kershaw and first baseman Freddie Freeman).
Game won? The victor of the opener of the Fall Classic has gone on to win the World Series on 77 occasions (over 64 percent). That has been the case in 18 of the last 22 and 23 of the last 27 championship series beginning in the late 1990s.
In a pregame press conference, Los Angeles president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman was questioned to comment about the view that the Dodgers are “ruining baseball” with their aggressive spending. Friedman said that he believes it’s his responsibility to invest for the fans: The Dodgers welcomed 4 million spectators in 2025 and have an average nightly attendance (49,537) that is greater than the capacity of all other stadiums in the MLB.
“Our entire focus is about giving back into our fanbase and that relationship that we have with them. Friedman said. “So anything else that comes from it – and clearly, I’ve been aware of much of it – it’s just not front of mind for us because all efforts is focused on how do we put ourselves in the best position to win now and also to triumph down the road.”
What Los Angeles could not buy themselves on Friday night was dependable bullpen support. Even with investing over $100m in multi-year deals to bullpen arms in the off-season (two of whom are not on the World Series roster), the Dodgers relied on a converted starting pitcher (Emmett Sheehan) and a top bullpen option from the previous postseason (Anthony Banda) to attempt to maintain a 2-2 tie after starting pitcher Blake Snell (who signed a five-year, $182m contract last November) was removed in the sixth inning.
Sheehan and Banda soon discovered why the Blue Jays so dangerous and what could fuel the squad's initial title in three-plus decades if the LA pitching does not improve. The first reliever let three of the four hitters he confronted to get on base. By the time Banda exited the game, Toronto had hit two more homer and the Dodgers were losing by nine runs.
The pinch-hit grand slam highlighted the Blue Jays’ blitz of LA's hurlers to blow open what had been a tense affair through the initial frames. Then, Toronto put up nine scores on six hits and missed at only three deliveries in an frame where they sent 12 hitters to the dish. By the end of the game, nine Toronto players had crossed the plate.
This persistent approach has produced some of the best offensive performances by any club in the 2025 postseason: They scored 34 scores over four games in their demolition of the Yankees in the American League Division Series and bounced back from a 2-0 series deficit against the Seattle Mariners by scoring more than them 33-17 over the next five games.
In contrast to the Los Angeles, who ended up runner-up in home runs, RBI and slugging during the 162-game schedule, the Blue Jays don’t make power the main emphasis of their attack. Toronto entered the opener scoring nearly seven runs per game in the postseason and a collective average of over .300, which is over 50 points higher than the Dodgers in second. Even more impressively, the Toronto squad are striking out fewer than six times each game, something no other postseason club can boast. Over the span of the regular season, the Blue Jays had the second-lowest strikeout total of any lineup in the majors.
That approach is one apparently designed to challenge the Dodgers, who overpowered the Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and Brewers with long outings featuring high strikeout totals. Prior to the opener, LA starters had fanned at least seven hitters in nine of their 10 playoff starts. In the first game, the pitching staff didn’t record a strikeout after the fourth frame.
“It was crucial to pass the baton to the following batter,” said Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho after the game. “That's our approach {all year
