Whicker: Yesavage dominates Dodgers in Game 5, Blue Jays one win from World Series title

Thanks largely to a record-setting performance by 22-year-old starter Trey Yesavage, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-1 in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday. Photo: Blue Jays

October 30, 2025

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

If you’re surprised by all this, imagine how the San Diego Padres feel.

Or how the Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks feel.

Members of the National League West all bear the shrapnel of too many L.A. nights, when the stars come out and shine, particularly in the bottom of the ninth. They wake up sweaty from the image of another Max Muncy late-night home run, another four-run rally that began with a leadoff walk, and it takes them a while to determine whether it’s real or just the same old nightmare. The Dodger Stadium crowds know it’s coming, just as the victims do. Ned Colletti, the former general manager, used to say the games were just a “little too long” for everybody else.

Toronto didn’t know anything about that. When Game 5 arrived Wednesday, and the local fans settled in to watch the Dodgers impose familiarity, the Blue Jays took the lead before they could text their agents.

Davis Schneider, the 28th-round draft choice who was signed by John Schneider, the unrelated scout who is now his manager, led off because George Springer is hurt. He wasn’t going to let Blake Snell impose his patterns and build his sequence. He let it rip when he saw the fastball coming, and the ball landed in the leftfield stands, a fan catching Snell’s pitch before catcher Will Smith could. Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Montreal, Que.) did the same thing. The Blue Jays handed a 2-0 lead to a 22-year-old who, 16 months ago, was pitching East Carolina to an NCAA regional upset of Wake Forest. Trey Yesavage had already faced the Dodgers once, without trauma. This time he struck out 12 of them in seven innings and got 23 swings and misses.

Asked to describe the rookie, D. Schneider simply said, “Dog.” Actually Yesavage pitched like a Pirate, his alma mater’s mascot in the BBQ haven of Greenville, N.C., and closer Jeff Hoffman, another ECU alumnus, finished up. The Blue Jays dominated, 6-1, and they have two chances to win this World Series at home, although Yoshinobu Yamamoto stands in the way on Friday.

“I don’t think he missed a single spot,” Muncy said of Yesavage, “except down in the zone, which is what he was trying to do.”

“When he’s right, he can make anybody in the game look stupid,” teammate Max Scherzer said.

Dave and Cheryl Yesavage were in the seats, of course, reveling with every crackling slider. Cheryl wore a T-shirt that proclaimed “Trey Day.” They live in Pottstown, Pa., on the Schuylkill River, in the Philadelphia exurbs. Pottstown is the home of legendary NBA referee Earl Strom and also outfielder Howie Bedell, whose final RBI in the major leagues broke Don Drysdale’s record scoreless streak of 58 ⅔ innings in 1968. Please, nobody tell Dave and Cheryl that it might not ever get better than this, that baseball has a way of crushing souls, along with tendons. But they seem to be savoring each tick-tock of this October, and their son is anything but surprised.

“When I can throw two different pitches for strikes,” Yesavage said, “I know I’m in control.”

The Dodgers have a right to feel ambushed. Certainly the Yankees did. They ran into Yesavage in the Division Series, when he had posted three major league starts that, together, lasted 14 innings. The Blue Jays did win all those games, and Yesavage didn’t give up a home run, but suddenly he was belching fire. He gave up no hits and struck out 11 Yankees in 5 1/3 innings, and was one walk short of perfection when Toronto removed him. Since then he has pitched an elimination game against Seattle that Toronto won, and he started Game 1 of the World Series, and Toronto won that, too. Now Yesavage squared off with a two-time Cy Young Award winner and was clearly superior.

In terms of unforeseen brilliance, the clearest equivalent for this was Mark Fidrych, the Detroit sensation of the 70s, but even though The Bird pitched 24 complete games and went 19-9 as a rookie in 1976, he didn’t do it in the rocket’s red glare of October. But maybe Yesavage is Toronto’s Fernando, without the cultural impact. Valenzuela had pitched only 30 professional games before the Dodgers gave him the call in 1980.

To point out the Dodgers’ continued lassitude is not to chip away at Yesavage’s night. You just don’t see anybody deal an 0-for-11 to Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. But it ran deeper than that. Everyone in the Dodgers lineup struck out at least once, and nobody walked except ninth-place hitter Alex Call, who had a two-out walk in the eighth off Seranthony Dominguez.

It wasn’t just execution. Addison Barger singled in the seventh and was able to score because Snell threw two wild pitches and Edgardo Henriquez threw another. More critically, right fielder Teoscar Hernandez took a strange angle and then missed a sliding try to stop Daulton Varsho’s base hit in the fourth. Varsho turned it into a triple and scored on Ernie Clement’s run-scoring fly ball, as Vin Scully would have called it. The Blue Jays thus could lead 3-1, after Kiké Hernandez’s homer had cut the lead to 2-1 and given some voice to the crowd. Otherwise, the fans seemed as crestfallen as their team.

Toronto is also changing the context of offensive strategy. For years, the emphasis was on driving up pitch counts, being confident enough to take pitches even if one of them is strike three. The Blue Jays don’t worry about launch angles or working the count. They have resurrected the see-ball, hit-ball concept, which pressures shaky defences and also makes the game simple. In this postseason, Toronto is hitting .366 when making contact in the first three pitches of a plate appearance, and it is slugging .606.

The Dodgers’ startling sweep of Milwaukee, built on brilliant pitching, concealed some flaws. But those who had watched all summer already knew where to look. The champs hit .228 in July, and they got pretty good at leaving the bases loaded, and their bullpen, of course, was a smoking husk. Obviously, no Series is out of Ohtani’s reach, but the Dodgers’ ability to intimidate now rests solely on Ohtani and Yamamoto. Everyone else is waiting for history to repeat, with the exception of the Blue Jays, who are safely up North but didn’t find Dodger Stadium such a dangerous place at all. Not after they raided it, like Pirates.