The Blue Jays flipped the World Series script on baseball’s biggest spenders

Before the first pitch of the 2025 World Series on Friday night, it had been 32 years and one day since the greatest day in Toronto Blue Jays history and the last time that the franchise hosted a World Series game.

On 23 October 1993, outfielder Joe Carter hit the second ever walk-off home run to clinch a World Series championship on a pitch that was being thrown to Philadelphia Phillies catcher Darren Daulton. On 24 October 2025, the first Blue Jays home run hit in a World Series game since Carter’s was by outfielder Daulton Varsho, whose father, Gary, named his son after his former Phillies teammate … Darren Daulton. Two innings later, outfielder Addison Barger hit the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, the keynote of a nine-run sixth inning, which was the highest-scoring World Series inning since 1968.

The Blue Jays sixth-inning outburst turned a nailbiter into a rollicking 11-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 of the World Series. It wasn’t a game destined for baseball lore, but it proved that the Blue Jays might be historically underestimated against the heavily favored Dodgers.

Despite winning a division with three playoff teams and leading all of Major League Baseball in team batting average and having home-field advantage, the 2025 Blue Jays started the World Series as enormous underdogs to a Dodgers team that entered the series as one of the most overwhelming championship favorites of the past 15 years.

The Dodgers aren’t seen as Goliath anymore as much as they are seen as an inevitability: They are the defending World Series champions who have not missed the postseason since 2012 and have the highest payroll in Major League Baseball. They entered Friday night’s game with a 9-1 record in this year’s postseason and had allowed five runs over their past five games. The pitchers who started those games (Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto) will earn over $100m combined in 2025 alone, which is higher than the total payrolls of five entire major-league teams. Those salaries do not include what the team is paying three other former MVPs (shortstop Mookie Betts, pitcher Clayton Kershaw and first baseman Freddie Freeman).

During a pregame press conference, Los Angeles president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman was asked to comment about the perception that the Dodgers are “ruining baseball” with their aggressive spending. Friedman said that he believes it’s his responsibility to spend for the fans: The Dodgers welcomed four million fans in 2025 and have an average nightly attendance (49,537) that is higher than the capacity of every other ballpark in the major leagues.

“Everything for us is about pouring back into our fans and that partnership that we have with them. Friedman said. “So anything else that comes from it – and obviously, I’ve heard a lot of it – it’s just not front of mind for us because everything is around how do we put ourselves in the best position to win now and also to win in the future.”

What the Dodgers could not buy themselves on Friday night was reliable relief pitching. Despite committing over $100m in long-term contracts to relievers this offseason (two of whom are not on the World Series roster), the Dodgers relied on a converted starting pitcher (Emmett Sheehan) and one of their best relievers from the 2024 playoffs (Anthony Banda) to try and hold onto 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 quickly learned what makes the Blue Jays so dangerous and what may anchor the team’s first championship in three-plus decades if the Dodgers’ pitching does not improve. Sheehan allowed three of the four hitters he faced to reach base. By the time Banda exited the game, Toronto had hit two more homer and the Dodgers were losing by nine runs.

Barger’s grand slam highlighted the Blue Jays’ blitz of Dodgers pitching to blow open what had been a tense affair through the first five and a half innings. Then, Toronto scored nine runs on six hits and swung and missed at all of three pitches in an inning where they sent 12 hitters to the plate. By the end of the game, nine different Blue Jays had scored a run.

That familiar relentlessness has produced some of the best offensive performances by any team in the 2025 postseason: They scored 34 runs over four games in their demolition of the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series and overcame 2-0 series deficit against the Seattle Mariners by outsourcing them 33-17 over the next five games.

Unlike the Dodgers, who finished second in home runs, RBI and slugging percentage during the regular season, the Blue Jays don’t make power the focal point of their offense. Toronto entered Game 1 scoring nearly seven runs per game in the postseason and a team batting average of over .300, which is over 50 points higher than the second-place Dodgers. Even more impressively, the Blue Jays are striking out fewer than six times per game, something no other playoff team can boast. Over the course of the regular season, the Blue Jays had the second-fewest strikeouts of any offense in Major League Baseball.

That approach is one seemingly designed to frustrate the Dodgers, who overpowered the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers with long outings anchored by high strikeout totals. Before Friday night, Dodgers starting pitchers had struck out at least seven hitters in nine of their 10 playoff starts. In Game 1, the pitching staff didn’t record a strikeout after the fourth inning.

“We needed to pass the baton to the next guy,” said Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho after the game. “That’s been our MO all year, and we trusted it.”

It is just the second loss of the postseason for a Dodgers team that showed plenty of signs of its veteran savvy and discipline even in a blowout loss. Though they struggled to capitalize on early opportunities, the Dodgers forced Blue Jays starting pitcher Trey Yesavage out of the game after four innings thanks to long, patient at-bats that stretched the star rookie and triggered Blue Jays manager John Schneider to replace him in the top of the fifth inning.

“We really tried to stay stubborn in the hitting zone,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But we just couldn’t get that one or two at-bats to really create a little bit more distance.”

Even if they are being cast as David, the Blue Jays are hardly overmatched: They have the fifth-highest payroll in the league, one of the game’s most popular stars (Vladimir Guerrero Jr), two former Cy Young-winning starting pitchers (Shane Bieber, Max Scherzer) and an excellent defense that the Dodgers cannot exploit the way a sloppy New York Yankees team accommodated them in the 2024 World Series.

Even if the Dodgers might have more financial might, Friday night’s sudden change from pitcher’s duel to blowout showed that a thrilling and unpredictable series likely awaits.

“It feels great right now,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said after the game. “But in about 10 minutes, tomorrow’s tomorrow.”