The Los Angeles Dodgers have put all the chips in on their pursuit of being baseball’s first back-to-back champions since 2000. The Blue Jays and their red-hot lineup won’t go down easy.
The Toronto Blue Jays, with a 4-3 win in Monday night’s American League Championship Series Game 7 over the Seattle Mariners, are headed back to the World Series for the first time in more than 30 years.
Their opponent: the $340 million buzzsaw known as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With the biggest payroll in baseball, the Dodgers are baseball’s most successful franchise in recent years, with two World Series titles and five National League pennants over the past nine seasons. Now, they are four wins away from becoming the sport’s first repeat champions in a quarter century.
The Blue Jays emerged in July as one of the best teams in baseball and ended the season 94-68 on top of the AL East, a remarkable turnaround from 2024’s last-place finish in the division. In the ALDS, Toronto’s bats overwhelmed their division rival New York Yankees, pouring on 34 runs over four games.
Still, Toronto needed all seven games of the ALCS to return to the World Series.
