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LOS ANGELES -- Trey Yesavage has shifted the momentum in the 2025 World Series massively in favor of the Blue Jays, with his brilliant 12-strikeout performance in Wednesday’s 6-1 Game 5 victory bringing them just one win away from a championship. Meanwhile, the Dodgers are on the ropes, heading back to Toronto down 3-2 in the Series. Before Game 6 on Friday, here are three takeaways from Dodger Stadium: Blue Jays have made LA's rotation look mortal; now for their biggest challenge Three pitches into Game 5, the Blue Jays had a 2-0 lead. Davis Schneider led off with a first-pitch homer off Blake Snell, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. followed suit two pitches later -- the first back-to-back homers to ever start a World Series game. It was the latest example of the Toronto offense making a high-level starting pitcher look human. They’ve done it to Snell, who allowed five runs over 6 2/3 innings on Wednesday. They’ve done it to Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón and the entire (very good) Mariners rotation. But … awaiting the Toronto offense in Game 6? Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the best starter of the postseason -- coming off a pair of complete games, including a gem in Game 2 at Rogers Centre. If the Blue Jays can solve Yamamoto -- or at least make him work and chase him early -- they might be rewarded with their first World Series title in 32 years. As we’ve seen, however, that’s so much easier said than done. Yesavage has that DOG in him It was fair to feel a little bit of angst about Yesavage taking the mound for the Blue Jays in Game 5. He went just four innings in a shaky Game 1 start, and that one came in the comforts of Rogers Centre. This time around, he was walking into the hostile territory of Dodger Stadium. But unlike that Game 1 outing, where Yesavage practically abandoned his usually nasty splitter, the right-hander had everything working on Wednesday. His lethal slider-splitter combo resulted in 12 strikeouts and 21 whiffs. In what was the Dodgers’ only real threat against him in the fourth, Yesavage showed why the Blue Jays believe he is built different. Just as the crowd was trying to come to life after Teoscar Hernández’s single put runners on first and second with two outs, the 22-year-old rookie locked in and silenced the noise with a popout of Tommy Edman to end the inning. Time to find out what Dodgers are made of For the first time this postseason, the Dodgers’ backs are against the wall. They’re facing elimination on Friday in Toronto -- and they do so with a lifeless offense that has scored just three runs in 18 innings over the last two games. (Not to mention, only one run across nine extra innings in Game 3.) With Yamamoto for Game 6 and potentially Glasnow with a dose of Ohtani in Game 7, the Dodgers, on paper, have the pitching advantage. That might not matter if their offense doesn’t wake up. The defining moment of the Dodgers’ World Series run last year came when they trailed the Padres, two games to one, in the NL Division Series. They responded with an emphatic Game 4 victory in a hostile environment in San Diego, before winning Game 5 in Los Angeles. Does this team have a similar response in it? If so, the Dodgers will have to do it on the road twice this time.
