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Six years ago, the Toronto Blue Jays began to see their future. Their heroes of postseasons past had moved on, and the Blue Jays called up the pillars of better days ahead. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette debuted in 2019 with a losing team that has no other holdovers today. Guerrero and Bichette were the sons of former All-Stars and two of the most promising prospects in the game, and they held the Blue Jays’ future.
They were going to one day get the Blue Jays through a night like Tuesday.
In Game 4 of the World Series, against the most expensive roster in baseball and the most talented player on the planet, Guerrero and Bichette lifted the Blue Jays to a 6-2 win that evened this series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at two games apiece.
Guerrero reached base three times and hit a third-inning, go-ahead home run off Shohei Ohtani. Bichette had an RBI double off a beleaguered Dodgers bullpen that helped put the game out of reach during a four-run seventh inning.
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Blue Jays-Dodgers Game 4 takeaways: Toronto outlasts Ohtani to even series
LOS ANGELES — Because he can bend the sport of baseball to his will, because he does things that leave his peers slack-jawed, because he reveals so little of how he accomplishes any of it, the moments when Shohei Ohtani elicits the most shock are the ones in which he appears human.
In the seventh inning of the Toronto Blue Jays’ 6-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series, Ohtani experienced one of those moments Tuesday. He cast his eyes toward the dugout and then toward the ground as he saw Dodgers manager Dave Roberts approach. Ohtani relinquished control of the baseball, and control of the game, to his manager. He yanked off his glove and muttered to himself. For those brief moments, he looked exactly like what he was at Dodger Stadium: a great player bested by a team capable of matching his individual greatness.
“I feel really good about this team every night,” Toronto manager John Schneider said. “It’s hard to play 18 innings and come back and kind of flip the narrative against a very talented team and a very talented individual in Shohei Ohtani on the mound.”
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Dodgers SS Mookie Betts ❌
Betts went 1-for-4 and remains an insignificant factor so far in this World Series. The Blue Jays did not, in fact, intentionally walk or pitch around Shohei Ohtani throughout Game 4, and so Betts was not regularly hitting with runners on base. Rather than a breakthrough game for Betts, it was another disappointing result. It was also my first incorrect pick to click after storming out to a 6-for-6 start in Games 1-3. Mama told me there’d be days like this.
Blue Jays DH Bo Bichette ✅
Bo Bichette walked in the first inning, forcing Shohei Ohtani to spend a few extra pitches in the early going, and then played a part in the Jays’ four-run, seventh-inning rally after Ohtani departed. With two outs in the seventh, Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen badly missed his spot with a curveball, which backed up on the inner half of the plate, and Bichette roped it over left fielder Kiké Hernández’s head for a run-scoring single. It was good to see Bichette turn on a ball. He has not missed a step since returning from a knee injury for this series.
Shohei Ohtani told reporters in Japanese that he plans to be ready to pitch again in this series if the Dodgers need him. That likely would not be until a Game 7.
Ernie Clement, Addison Barger and Nathan Lukes also had two hits, but Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s two-run home to put the Blue Jays in front was a huge momentum shift, and Guerrero was part of that four-run sixth inning too, being intentionally walked and coming around to score the final Blue Jays run.
He’s the face of the franchise, and with Bo Bichette and Alejandro Kirk, the mainstays of a homegrown core that wasn’t always perfect but ultimately got the Blue Jays to this spot. Guerrero has been outstanding in the postseason, and he delivered again when the Blue Jays really needed him.
Sure, they were worn out from Monday’s marathon Game 3, but the same could be said for the Blue Jays bullpen, and the Jays relievers did their part, especially when Mason Fluharty stranded two runners in the bottom of the sixth.
Needing their own bullpen to do the same in the seventh — albeit in a tougher situation — the Dodgers instead let things unravel, with Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Banda and Blake Treinen combining to let four runs score and put the Blue Jays firmly in control.
The Dodgers have lost two games this series and in each one, the bullpen loomed as an ineffective problem.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the Fox Sports postgame show describing the clubhouse after the 18-inning loss in Game 3:
💬 “Yesterday everybody was with his head down in the locker room. I was the last one to go in and when I went in, I saw everybody with his head down, I say, ‘Come on, bro. Head up. It’s not over yet. They’ve not won four games. You have to win four games to win the World Series. It’s not over yet.’
“I say, ‘If you want to put some music, put some music.’ You know? And we put a little bit of music, and we go home and rest, and we come back and win it today.”
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Tonight’s game only lasted two hours and 54 minutes — nearly four hours less than last night’s six-hour, 39-minute marathon.
Toronto’s affable superstar was calm, cool and collected while leading his team to a massive Game 4 win.
The 2025 MLB season began six months ago in Japan, a two-game series between the Dodgers and Cubs in the Tokyo Dome.
With the Blue Jays’ win tonight, we are assured that it will end in either a Game 6 or Game 7 or the World Series in Toronto.
As my colleague Evan Drellich pointed out before the series began, this means for the first time ever, the MLB season will both start and finish outside the U.S.
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The fans at the Rogers Centre watch party stood for the final out and yelled with pride as the Toronto Blue Jays won Game 4 of the World Series.
The crowd gets to leave Rogers Centre earlier than Game 3 (by several hours) and with a different result (a Blue Jays win).
A fantastic atmosphere in Toronto as the Blue Jays supporters had a lot to cheer about. There will be a watch party at Rogers Centre for Game 5 before the World Series comes back to Toronto for Game 6.
Shohei Ohtani was pitching well when he took the mound in the seventh inning. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s two-run homer was the only damaging swing, and Ohtani had just set down the side in order in the sixth and was facing the bottom half of the Blue Jays order.
But two quick hits chased Ohtani from the game, and the Blue Jays pounced on Dodgers relievers Anthony Banda and Blake Treinen, scoring four runs on five hits in the inning.
What had been a one-run game was suddenly a five-run Blue Jays lead, and they held on from there.
After playing 18 innings in Game 3, neither manager was eager to get into his bullpen in Game 4. Blue Jays skipper John Schneider went to the mound with one out and a runner on in the sixth but was convinced to keep starter Shane Bieber in the game.
When Bieber immediately gave up a first-pitch single, Schneider changed his mind and called on rookie left-hander Mason Fluharty with two on and one out. Fluharty got out of the inning with a fly ball and a strikeout.
It was the start of a strong night for the Blue Jays pen, which got two scoreless innings out of veteran Chris Bassitt before Louis Varland handled the ninth inning to finish off the win.
Shohei Ohtani might be the star of this postseason, but the best hitter by OPS has been Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The Blue Jays’ first baseman delivered again in the third inning. After a single by Nathan Lukes, Guerrero hit a two-run home run to left-center field. It gave the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead in the game and gave Guerrero 14 RBIs in the playoffs, tied with Ohtani for the most this postseason.
Guerrero has been perhaps the most consistent hitter in the playoffs. He’s had a hit in each his past nine games, and a hit in 13 of 15 games overall. He homered three times in the division series, three times in the ALCS, and this was his first homer (and sixth hit) of the World Series. Guerrero reached base three times and scored twice in the game.
Much like they did seven years ago after winning an 18-inning marathon of a World Series Game 3, the Dodgers lose Game 4 at home on short rest. That loss to the Red Sox in 2018 came down to an implosion by a taxed bullpen in the late innings, while this one had more to do with a seemingly exhausted offense and two-way superstar in Shohei Ohtani, who pitched well in his World Series debut on the mound given the less-than-ideal conditions. But not good enough.
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Really impressive bounce-back from the Blue Jays after as tough of a loss you can have last night.
Shane Bieber was steady and gave them some length. Put up quality at-bats in that seventh inning to break the game open, and now they’ll guarantee themselves at least one more game back home.
With the Blue Jays’ gritty Game 4 victory, they even up the World Series and guarantee that the winner will be crowned in Toronto.
If the Dodgers go on to win the series, it’d be their sixth consecutive championship that they clinched on the road. They haven’t won a clinching World Series game in Los Angeles since 1963, when Sandy Koufax outdueled Whitey Ford and the Dodgers completed a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees.
The Dodgers were designated the home team when they won the World Series in 2020, but the games were played at a neutral site in Arlington, Texas, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their other clinching victories have come at new Yankee Stadium (2024), the Oakland Coliseum (1988), original Yankee Stadium (1981) and Minnesota's Metropolitan Stadium (1965). Three of those ballparks, of course, are disused or no longer stand.
▶️ A lot of teams would have folded after that Game 3 gut-punch, but not Toronto! They get a gutty, resilient Game 4 victory in L.A. and there will assuredly be a Game 6 at Rogers Centre. The 2025 World Series is tied at two games apiece! | Final Blue Jays 6, Dodgers 2