TORONTO — Where there was a Will, there was a way.
The Dodgers, buried in an early hole Saturday night, displayed one kind of will in recovering to catch the Blue Jays in the late innings. And then in the 11th inning another emerged.
Will Smith blasted a go-ahead homer that became the Game 7 winner as the Dodgers repeated as World Series champions with a 5-4 victory in 11 innings over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
Smith homered against Shane Bieber to give the Dodgers their first lead. The homer was the Dodgers’ third in four innings.
The Dodgers became the first team since the Yankees in 2000 to repeat as World Series champions. The Blue Jays were within two outs of the franchise’s first championship in 32 years, before closer Jeff Hoffman surrendered a game-tying homer to Miguel Rojas in the ninth.
“The thing that I am most proud of is we have created a culture that everyone who comes in here knows when you put on a Dodgers uniform you expect to hoist up that trophy,” Max Muncy said. “It’s all about the team. Whatever you can do to help the team win.”
Nobody was larger for the Dodgers than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who fired 2 ²/₃ innings of scoreless relief a night after throwing 96 pitches in his Game 6 start. Yamamoto’s last piece of magic was getting Alejandro Kirk to hit into a game-ending double play with the tying run at third base. Yamamoto was named World Series MVP.
“There’s a reason he didn’t lift the World Series trophy,” Freddie Freeman quipped. “I don’t think he could.”
The Dodgers (with a record $400 million payroll) relied mostly on starting pitchers — Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Yamamoto — to get through the game, avoiding a bullpen crew that had underwhelmed for most of the season.
“When I started warming in the bullpen I was not really sure I could pitch to the best of my ability,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “But as I started getting warmed up, because I started making a little bit of an adjustment, then I started thinking I can go in and do my job.”
The roof nearly blew off the stadium in the bottom of the third inning as Bo Bichette crushed a three-run homer that catapulted the Blue Jays into control with a 3-0 lead.
So, the question became whether Toronto’s pitching was good enough one last time to thwart a Dodgers lineup that had underachieved for most of this postseason. The names — Ohtani, Freeman, Mookie Betts, Muncy and Teoscar Hernandez — are all too familiar.
Close, but not quite for the Blue Jays — who couldn’t get a ring for bench coach Don Mattingly in his first trip to the Fall Classic in his 36 seasons in a major league uniform.
“I thought we had chances to sweep them,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “We played our game, and our game is as good as anybody in baseball. It is two heavyweights going back and forth.”
Rojas, who didn’t start in the series until Game 6, blasted a Hoffman slider over the left field fence with one out in the ninth to tie it 4-4.
“We were going to play 27 outs,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Obviously it didn’t look great in that moment, but I trust [Rojas] to take that at-bat and he got a pitch that he could handle and got the biggest hit he’s ever had in his life.”
An inning earlier the Dodgers had inched closer on Muncy’s homer against Trey Yesavage.
The Blue Jays threatened in the bottom of the ninth on Bichette’s single against Snell and Addison Barger’s walk. Yamamoto, who pitched six innings on Saturday, entered to plunk Kirk before getting Daulton Varsho to hit a grounder that became a force out at the plate. Ernie Clement was retired on a long fly that sent the game to extra innings.
Ohtani, working on short rest, was removed after surrendering Bichette’s blast. The right-hander lasted just 2 ¹/₃ innings and allowed three earned runs on five hits with two walks. It was a second straight lackluster start in the series for Ohtani, the losing pitcher in Game 4.
In the third, George Springer singled leading off and Nathan Lukes’ sacrifice fly advanced the runner before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was intentionally walked. Bichette’s three-run blast, which traveled 442 feet, ensued.
Two defensive gems by the Blue Jays limited the Dodgers to just one run in the fourth against Scherzer after loading the bases. First, Daulton Varsho’s diving grab on Teoscar Hernandez’s sinking line drive turned into a sacrifice fly, pulling the Dodgers to within 3-1.
The ensuing batter, Tommy Edman, hit a line drive that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. snagged diving near the first base foul line for the final out.
Justin Wrobleski drilled Andrés Giménez in the right hand in the fourth and after gestures and words were exchanged between the two, the benches emptied. Players also ran in from the respective bullpens, but order was restored without a punch thrown.
Max Scherzer was removed after surrendering a single to Rojas in the fifth. The future Hall of Famer — who also started a Game 7 of the World Series for the Nationals in 2019 — allowed one earned run on four hits and one walk with three strikeouts over 4 ¹/₃ innings.
But the Dodgers scratched for a run in the sixth against another former Mets pitcher, Chris Bassitt, to slice the Blue Jays’ lead to 3-2. Mookie Betts drew a leadoff walk in the inning and scored on Tommy Edman’s sacrifice fly after Muncy had singled.
The Blue Jays reclaimed the run in the bottom of the inning on Giménez’s RBI double. Clement singled leading off the inning against Glasnow and stole second.
“We’ve put together something pretty special,” said Roberts, a World Series winning manager for the third time since 2020. “To do what we have done in this span of time is pretty remarkable. Let the pundits and fans talk about whether it’s a dynasty or not, but I am pretty happy with where we are at.”