Dodgers v Blue Jays – five World Series talking points

The 2025 edition of the World Series, which features one more titan looking to defeat a potential new foe, kicks off in Toronto on Friday.

In the past ten years, Major League Baseball’s big-spending Los Angeles Dodgers have been a juggernaut. After losing back-to-back World Series in 2017 and 2018, they triumphed in the Covid-shortened 2020 season, then overcame fellow behemoth, the New York Yankees, last year.

And they have remained victorious in the National League playoffs, defeating only one of their ten postseason games, defeating the Philadelphia Phillies 3-1, and sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers 4-0.

A revitalized Toronto Blue Jays team is in their way, having defeated the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox to win the AL pennant before winning the game again in the play-offs and coming from 2-0 and 3-2 down to clinch the Seattle Mariners.

But will the Dodgers become the first team to win successive World Series since the Yankees in 1998, 1999 and 2000?

Game 1 (in Toronto): Friday, 24 October

On Saturday, October 25th, Toronto, for Game 2.

Game 3 (in Los Angeles): On October 27th, 2018.

Game 4 (in LA): Tuesday, 28 October

On Wednesday, October 29th, 2018, in LA, game 5*

Friday, October 31st, for Game 6* (in Toronto).

Game 7* (in Toronto): Saturday, 1 November

Shohei Ohtani is the face of baseball right now, ensuring that this World Series will be as closely followed in Japan as it will be in North America.

The 31-year-old is a rare “two-way” player who can play both as a pitcher and a hitter in a game where most college players are instructed to pick one discipline over the other.

He signed a $ 700 million (£558 million) contract with the Dodgers as a free agent for the 2024 season, rejecting the Blue Jays and other potential buyers.

While injury prevented him from pitching last year, he was unanimously voted as the National League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP). He made history with a 50 home run and 62 strikeouts as the first MLB player to do so simultaneously when he returned to the pitcher’s mound in June.

And he rewrote the record books in the play-offs, striking out 10 batters and allowing three home runs in the championship game, which was hailed as one of the best in history.

A Sports Illustrated cover is everything television loves to tell a redemption story.

In June 2014, the US magazine Sports Illustrated made a bold front-page prediction that the struggling Houston Astros, in the midst of rebuilding their roster, would win the 2017 World Series.

The prophecy was fulfilled three years later. In the 2017 “Fall Classic,” Houston defeated the Dodgers, with Springer earning the MVP after five of the seven games with home runs.

However, that success was later tarnished by an electronic sign-stealing scandal which left Springer, and other players involved, in the role of MLB’s pantomime villains – particularly in the eyes of Dodgers fans after they also lost the 2018 World Series to a Boston Red Sox team who were themselves later found guilty of sign-stealing.

Springer left Houston for Toronto in 2021 via free agency, but despite turning 36 this year, he still leads the Blue Jays’ starting lineup with a three-run homer in the final AL Championship Series game seven, earning him the title of one of MLB’s best postseason performers of all time.

If Ohtani’s $70 million annual salary were not deferred at all, Ohtani would have earned an even higher figure, and that $68 million is more than the Miami Marlins’ $67 million salary alone.

“Before the season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball”, bullish manager Dave Roberts said after they reached the World Series. “Get four more wins and really ruin baseball,” the saying goes.

A win for the Dodgers, however, might make it more likely that MLB does not have a salary cap, as opposed to the other “Big Four” US sports (football, basketball, and ice hockey).

The players ‘ union, naturally, bitterly opposes a cap. Naturally, MLB and the team owners would like one. Given the amount of money the Dodgers are spending, even the Yankees’ owners have questioned how other teams can compete.

And with the current collective bargaining agreement between owners and players due to expire in December 2026, the two sides seem as far apart as ever.

Founded as an expansion franchise to MLB in 1977, the Blue Jays have been a lone Canadian representative since the struggling Montreal Expos were bought by MLB and relocated to the US capital for 2005, becoming the Washington Nationals.

Although Canada still has seven NHL teams, the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1993, the same year that the Blue Jays last won the World Series.

The only other Canadian “Big Four” success came with the 2019 NBA Finals victory for the Toronto Raptors.

The Blue Jays have a local Canadian hero leading the charge this time – first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr, who was born in Montreal while his Hall of Fame father Vladimir was playing for the Expos.

Freddie Freeman, who has dual Canadian and US citizenship because his parents are from Ontario, is opposing him on first base for the Dodgers.

Despite playing for both teams this year, he is a guaranteed World Series champion despite a sluggish .069 batting average in 2025.

Meet Clifton Lewis ‘ Buddy ‘ Kennedy.

He debuted in MLB in 2022 after being picked by the Arizona Diamondbacks after graduating from high school, but by September 2023 he was already moving.

He started his 2025 MLB career with the Philadelphia Phillies, but he was let go in July by the Oakland A’s, St. Louis Cardinals, and Detroit Tigers. He frequently flies between the minor leagues and gets call-ups to the major leagues.

Signing for the Blue Jays, he played only two games before moving to the injury-hit Dodgers in August. He was then let go after only one hit in 17 at-bats, and he was then signed back to Toronto on a minor league deal.