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.
The game started out looking like a replay of the retro-look Game 2 with the two starting pitchers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman, dueling.
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 the Dodgers got to Gausman in that third inning.
Tommy Edman got a first-pitch fastball up in the zone and doubled with one out. Sandwiched between two bad called third strikes to Kiké Hernandez and Miguel Rojas – home plate umpire Adam Haman was generous with his low-strike calls all night, lured there by all the splitters he was seeing from both starting pitchers – it didn’t look like the makings of a breakout for the Dodgers’ sluggish offense.
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 Mookie 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.
The Dodgers didn’t have another hit until Ohtani doubled in the eighth inning, 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.
Calling on his suspect bullpen at this point on Halloween night set up the possibility of a haunting outcome for the Dodgers. But left-hander Justin Wrobleski worked around another two-out double to retire the Blue Jays in the seventh.
They put their season in the hands of accidental closer Roki Sasaki from there.
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.
He went back out for the ninth but hit Alejandro Kirk with a pitch then gave up a double to Addison Barger, the ball sticking in the base of the center field wall and defensive replacement Justin Dean having the presence of mind to wave his hands in the air for a ground-rule double.
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 Betts to make a leap of relief into Hernandez’s arms.
More to come on this story.