2025 World Series
The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 4-3 in the 2025 World Series, winning Game 7 in 11 innings for their second straight title.
The Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2025 World Series, defeating the Toronto Blue Jays four games to three in a series that ran from October 24 to November 1, 2025 and ended with a 5-4, 11-inning Game 7 at Rogers Centre in Toronto. It was the Dodgers’ ninth championship and their second in a row, making them the first franchise to repeat as champions since the 2000 New York Yankees. Pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who won three games and finished on the mound in Game 7, was named World Series MVP.
| Fast facts | |
|---|---|
| Champion | Los Angeles Dodgers |
| Runner-up | Toronto Blue Jays |
| Dates | October 24 – November 1, 2025 |
| Venues | Rogers Centre (Toronto); Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles) |
| Series result | Dodgers won 4–3 |
| World Series MVP | Yoshinobu Yamamoto |
| Game 7 attendance | 44,713 |
The setup
The Dodgers arrived as the defending champions and as a roster rebuilt around starting pitching. After the 2024 title, Los Angeles signed left-hander Blake Snell, reliever Tanner Scott and Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki, and re-signed outfielder Teoscar Hernández and reliever Blake Treinen, betting that a rotation fronted by Yamamoto, a healthy Tyler Glasnow, Snell and a mound-returning Shohei Ohtani would carry them further than the bullpen-reliant 2024 team had. They finished the regular season 93–69, won the National League West for the 12th time in 13 seasons, then went 9–1 in October — a sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, a 3–1 win over the Philadelphia Phillies and a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS, where Ohtani was named series MVP.
Toronto’s path was different. Rather than headline signings, the Blue Jays leaned on a hitting program under coach David Popkins built around contact and each player’s strengths, and in April 2025 they secured their cornerstone, signing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a 14-year, $500 million extension on April 9, 2025. The approach produced a 94–68 finish, a first AL East title since 2015 — won on a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Yankees — and the league’s top seed. Toronto then beat New York three games to one in the Division Series and outlasted the Seattle Mariners 4–3 in a seven-game ALCS in which Guerrero was named MVP.
How it happened
Toronto struck first and hard. In Game 1, Blue Jays rookie-to-veteran depth overwhelmed Snell, and a nine-run sixth inning blew the game open; Addison Barger delivered the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history in an 11-4 rout. Los Angeles answered in Game 2 behind Yamamoto, who threw a complete game and allowed one run, the first World Series complete game by any pitcher since Johnny Cueto in 2015, for a 5-1 win that split the games in Toronto.
The series then produced one of the longest games in postseason history. Game 3 at Dodger Stadium went 18 innings over six hours and 39 minutes; Ohtani reached base nine times and was intentionally walked four times, both World Series records, before Freddie Freeman ended it with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 18th — making him the first player with walk-off home runs in consecutive World Series. The 6-5 win gave Los Angeles a 2–1 edge, but Toronto seized it back. Shane Bieber pitched the Blue Jays to a 6-2 win in Game 4, and in Game 5 rookie Trey Yesavage struck out 12 over seven innings — a World Series record for strikeouts by so young a pitcher — in a 6-1 win that put Toronto one victory from the title.
Facing elimination, the Dodgers turned again to Yamamoto, who allowed one run over six innings in Game 6 as Los Angeles scored all three of its runs in the third and Glasnow closed out a 3-1 win to force a seventh game. Game 7 was its own epic. Bo Bichette’s three-run homer in the third gave Toronto a 3-0 lead; Max Muncy’s eighth-inning solo shot cut it to 4-3, and Miguel Rojas — who had not recorded a hit since the Wild Card round — tied it with a one-out home run in the ninth. In the 11th, Will Smith hit a go-ahead solo homer with two outs off Shane Bieber, and Yamamoto, pitching on no rest a day after a 96-pitch start, recorded the final outs of a 5-4 win. It was the first World Series Game 7 to reach extra innings since 2016.
By the numbers
| Game | Date | Score | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oct 24, 2025 | TOR 11, LAD 4 | Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam; nine-run 6th (box) |
| 2 | Oct 25, 2025 | LAD 5, TOR 1 | Yamamoto complete game (box) |
| 3 | Oct 27, 2025 | LAD 6, TOR 5 | 18 innings; Freeman walk-off HR (box) |
| 4 | Oct 28, 2025 | TOR 6, LAD 2 | Bieber start; Guerrero HR (box) |
| 5 | Oct 29, 2025 | TOR 6, LAD 1 | Yesavage 12 K (box) |
| 6 | Oct 31, 2025 | LAD 3, TOR 1 | Yamamoto 6 IP; Glasnow save (box) |
| 7 | Nov 1, 2025 | LAD 5, TOR 4 | 11 innings; Smith go-ahead HR (box) |
The record
Per Baseball-Reference and series records, through Nov. 1, 2025.
Honors
- 2025 World Series MVP — Yoshinobu Yamamoto
- World Series champions — Los Angeles Dodgers
- NLCS MVP — Shohei Ohtani
- ALCS MVP — Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Per Baseball-Reference, Nov. 1, 2025.
Yamamoto’s MVP case rested on three wins across 17⅔ innings with a 1.02 ERA, capped by 2⅔ scoreless relief innings in Game 7. The series also drew a reported average of 16.1 million U.S. viewers, the most-watched World Series since 2017, with Game 7 reaching an audience of at least 51 million across the United States, Canada and Japan.
The arguments
The loudest debate after 2025 was whether the Dodgers had become a dynasty or simply the best-funded roster in the sport. Supporters point to five World Series appearances in nine seasons and consecutive titles, the first repeat since 2000, as evidence of sustained excellence that no checkbook guarantees. Critics counter that a payroll anchored by Ohtani’s deferred $700 million contract and additions like Snell let Los Angeles absorb mistakes other clubs cannot, framing the title as a product of spending as much as execution.
A second argument concerns how close Toronto came. The Blue Jays held a 3–2 series lead and led Game 7 by three runs, and observers noted that a single different bounce — Rojas’s ninth-inning homer, Yamamoto’s availability on no rest — would have reversed the outcome. Some commentators called the series among the greatest ever played and Game 7 among the finest deciding games in baseball history; others cautioned that a seven-game margin that thin says as much about the runner-up as the champion.
Why it matters
The 2025 World Series confirmed the Los Angeles Dodgers as the defining team of their era and ended a quarter-century without a repeat champion, while giving Toronto its deepest October run since the early 1990s. It will be remembered for its extremes — an 18-inning Game 3, an extra-inning Game 7, a pinch-hit grand slam and a pitcher closing out the clincher a day after starting — and for Yamamoto, whose three wins turned a rebuilt rotation into the backbone of a championship.
