The Los Angeles Dodgers earned another chance to strengthen their recent baseball legacy against the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2025 World Series.
Los Angeles chases a repeat and a third championship since 2020 while Toronto arrives to the Fall Classic for the first time in 32 years. There’s plenty of headlines swirling before Game 1 begins Friday at Rogers Centre. Here’s what you should know hours before the start of 121st World Series.
Star Power Secured
This won’t be quite to the level of last year’s matchup when Aaron Judge (and now New York Mets slugger Juan Soto) led the New York Yankees up against Shohei Ohtani in a battle of the sport’s top two players. To be fair, that matchup turned out to be a dud when Ohtani and Judge combined to go just 6-for-37 with 12 strikeouts.
Ohtani returns to the dance after what’s arguably the greatest individual performance in baseball history. He tossed six shutout innings and 10 strikeouts on the mound along with three home runs at the plate to eliminate the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS.
This year, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is more than capable of stealing the spotlight. He’s turned in a phenomenal postseason thus far and perhaps the best in Blue Jays history with a .442 average and a 1.440 OPS this October along with ALCS MVP honors.
There’s a pretty darn good supporting cast between the dugouts in Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Bo Bichette and George Springer to name a few.
The Last Dance?
Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer dominated as two of the best pitchers of their generation. Kershaw announced he will retire at the end of the season and Scherzer can’t have much left in the tank. What they’ve contributed to the game is remarkable with 19 combined All-Star selections, six combined Cy Young awards and 444 combined wins.
Each pitcher has popped champagne for championships twice and has a chance to stand alone atop the baseball world one final time by the end of this series. The Dodgers and Blue Jays each look to make that a reality for their respective legendary starters.
Biggest Advantage
The Dodgers have four legitimate ace-caliber arms ready to roll in the rotation with Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani. Toronto has to grind at-bats and capitalize with big swings from starters to crack the armor of the talented line of arms that are finally healthy for the Dodgers.
Back-to-Back? Familiar
The Dodgers enter the series looking to mark the 15th instance of back-to-back championships in baseball history. Toronto knows about one of those instances, especially given that this battle marks the first time the Blue Jays have gone to the World Series since they won it all in 1992 and 1993.
The Blue Jays set out for their third championship while the Dodgers have the chance to take home the franchise’s ninth World Series title.
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