At the beginning of the week, the Dodgers were looking to take control of a World Series tied at one game apiece. What followed was a marathon game that will likely be lost to the sands of time due to the Dodgers picking the most inopportune moment to play their worst ball of the year. Game 3 of the World Series was entertaining, if not necessarily good — far too many blunders for this one to be called a good game.

Moreover, once the Blue Jays substituted themselves out of having a potent lineup, the game persisted in a state of perpetual now. The 2024 Dodgers would have been far cleaner and likely would have won that game in regulation without much difficulty, instead of having to play two games for the price of one.

The Dodgers built what was supposed to be an offensive juggernaut in 2025. For most of the past month, the Dodgers have been a sputtering, badly in need of repair Honda Accord, getting by on doing just enough hitting and stellar starting pitching.

But like ignoring a car with its check engine light on, the Dodgers persisted until the engine exploded, leaving them on the side of the road, long past the point of no return, on the penultimate and possible final day of the season.

All of the 2025 Dodgers’ warts have been on display this week.

Failing to make meaningful upgrades at the trade deadline? Check.Relying on a core that mostly underperformed at the plate in 2025? Check.Insisting on using the same ineffective arms over and over in the bullpen? Check.Not addressing obvious defensive weaknesses? Check.Being too reliant on the long ball in a feast or famine attack? Check.Potentially wasting legendary performances from role players? Check.

Most notably and damnably, the Dodgers are being outhustled and outplayed by a Blue Jays squad held together by nationalism and duct tape, while demonstrating that Mookie Betts, Tommy Edman, Max Muncy, and Andy Pages would likely have trouble hitting water from a boat:

While [Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman] are more than capable of ripping off a hot streak, just look at September, the longer the offensive drought lingers, the more strain there is on the rotation and the bullpen to be perfect and the more likely it will be that the Blue Jays will take this series.

Losing a homestand to the Blue Jays is one thing. Heck, the Dodgers played some stinkers in 2025 (Anaheim, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, etc.).

Losing the final homestand of the year in such lethargic and inept fashion is another matter entirely. It reminds me of the ill-fated games in early September in Pittsburgh and Baltimore. The only difference is that there are actual stakes of a title now.

The Dodgers are 13-7 in elimination games in the Dave Roberts era, going 5-4 on the road. Eric Stephen listed the victories; I now list the defeats. To repeat as champions, the Dodgers will need to improve to 7-4 on the road.

The only thing worse than going to Toronto is going to Toronto while facing true adversity for the first time this season, with the prospect of having to return in total defeat immediately.

The Blue Jays have bested Blake Snell (twice), Shohei Ohtani, and arguably Tyler Glasnow before the Dodgers got him off the hook. If the Jays can best Yoshinobu Yamamoto in their second attempt, then all we can do is tip our cap and shrug. If the Dodgers falter, it will not be due to a lack of effort from Yamamoto. In Game 6 of the last Japan Series, Yamamoto pitched in before being posted to the United States. Yamamoto threw a 138-pitch, 14-strikeout, complete-game gem.

The fact that the Dodgers need Yamamoto to replicate such heroics for the Dodgers even to have a shot does stick in my craw. Yamamoto can throw a no-hitter, but it will not matter if the Dodgers do not stop their San Diego Padres impersonation of the 2024 NLDS and actually score some runs. In no particular order…

If Mookie Betts could stop hitting worse than Cesar Izturis for the next two days, that would be great.If Max Muncy could stop hitting like the Dodgers were not going to pick up his contract option, that would be great. (Two words: lens cloth.)If Tommy Edman could stop playing like the player the St. Louis Cardinals gave up on, that would be great.If Alex Call could stop making me think “Stephen Kwan was right there” for the next two days, that would be great.If Kiké Hernández could tap into his hyperfocus and play with some swagger for the next two days, that would be great.

It would not sting so much if the Dodgers had not been such a pale imitation of the championship team of last year.

To paraphrase Orel Hershiser throughout the summer, the Dodgers have spent all of their equity and are now literally overdrawn. It is now literally: win or go home. It did not have to be this way, but we can dive deeper in a few days.

When one watches a team act like lollygaggers for large portions of the summer, one justifiably gets cross.

At the risk of being busted, I did not expect much from the Dodgers this postseason. I did not feel strongly enough to make a big deal of my forecast, and frankly, the short downtime between returning from Seattle and the start of the Wild Card made an essay moot. Still, the projection did not change: if we were unlucky, the Dodgers would not reap the consequences of their hubris and carelessness over the summer.

At the end of the regular season, I hoped we would get a Phillies/Mariners dudefest in the World Series. The Dodgers had underachieved to such a degree that I figured the Dodgers would get thumped by the Phillies in the NLDS for a simple reason: they did not have home-field advantage and had not won in Philly in the postseason since before I was born. Oops.

I figured, in a just world, the Dodgers would get thumped for being so laissez-faire throughout the season and retool accordingly. In the worst-case scenario, the Dodgers’ machinations would work, and we would all be collectively cursed with yet another Dodgers-Yankees World Series that everyone would make a huge deal about when there were way more interesting teams in the postseason tournament. Afterwards, we would hear nothing but screaming that the Dodgers were ruining the sport.

We got a third option where the Dodgers’ pitching strategy worked (for the most part) and someone else emerged from the American League. In my mind, what played out for the Dodgers has been house money. But heaven help me, I started to believe that these goobers would actually defend their title, despite all of their collective warts.

To paraphrase one of the hardest lines that I have ever heard, the time for postmortems and year-end review essays has not yet come; there is work to be done.

In a matter of penance and vanity, I realized that I am not yet prepared to say goodbye to the 2025 season. But I am not missing work and dropping everything to run to Toronto to watch Game 6. It would be nice for games not to be functionally over by the time I get home from the office. I have not watched Games 1, 4, and 5 live because I actually have a life to attend to.

Game 7, though? The arguably two most magical words in sports? To lift an idea from Stephen Nelson…

A madcap romp to fly in the dead of night, Friday night, to Toronto to fly back on Sunday, even though I just finished paying off the expenses from the Tokyo Series? There are worse ways to spend 48 hours.

Now, will it be easy to put together a flight, hotel, and ticket in under 24 hours? Actually, yes, barely an inconvenience. If the Dodgers play to their potential, it seems only fitting that I appear at the literal last game of the season, considering that I took all the effort to travel to the first two games of the season. Seeing a de facto exhibition series in Seattle as a final bookend is not enough.

If the Dodgers get eliminated tonight, no shenanigans. But if they win tonight? I do not see my nemeses Jackson Holliday, Andrew McCutchen, or Yu Darvish within the country, so the sky is the limit.

Toronto sports have a history of failure (usually, almost always, hockey, but occasionally baseball). For the first time in this series, the weight of expectation is on the Blue Jays, who have two cracks at winning a title at home. It is all fun and games to be scrappy until someone expects something out of you.

Personally, I’m picking Yamamoto over Gausman eight days a week and twice on Sundays.

Bring on Old Man Quitter for Game 7; Tyler Glasnow needs to prove to everyone he has that dawg in him. Let’s get weird, as who knows what will happen. Ohtani in the outfield? Betts in the six-hole? Sure, why not?

Someone is leaving Toronto in tears — I would prefer it to be their team over ours.