Dodgers Recap: Yesavage masterpiece puts LA on the brink of elimination

CHAVEZ RAVINE — Remember when Freddie Freeman hit that homer in the 18th inning a couple of days ago? That was cool, right? Well, that was about the last cool thing that’s happened to this Dodger team. In Wednesday’s pivotal game five, they found themselves completely overwhelmed by rookie Trey Yesavage‘s brilliant, record-breaking performance on the mound and found themselves on the wrong end of a 6-1 score. They now trail the Jays 3-2 in the series, and will have to win two in a row in Toronto to win their second straight World Series. I wouldn’t bet on it.

The game couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start for Snell and the Dodgers. The strains of Snell’s walkout song were still echoing through Chavez Ravine when he tossed a meaty fastball to leadoff hitter Davis Schneider, who did his best George Springer impression and walloped the pitch over the left field fence for a leadoff homerun. Two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. did the same, and before most Dodgers’ fans’ nachos had time to cool, they found their beloved team in a 0-2 hole in the most important game of the year. It was, um, not great.

Pair that with Jays starter Trey Yesavage looking a whole lot better in his outing in the early going and it started to look like the game might be lost before it even started. Yesavage sent the Dodgers down in order in the first and then struck out the side in the second to give the Chavez Ravine faithful a queasy feeling from the get-go.

It wasn’t until the third that Dodger fans finally had something to cheer about. Postseason Kiké Hernández showed up at last in the World Series. He pummeled an inside fastball from Yesavage and sent it over the left field fence to cut the lead in half. Though that would be all they’d get it the inning, the dinger went a long way in calming the shattered nerves in the Loge Section and elsewhere.

Now trailing just 2-1, Snell went back to work as the game moved into the middle innings. Unfortunately, the good vibes of the Hernandez blast didn’t last long. Daulton Varsho led off the third with a triple into the right field corner, and was knocked in on a sacrifice fly to center by the next hitter Ernie Clement. Not great. Snell struck out a two straight to end the inning, but the margin was once again two runs.

Meanwhile, Trey Yesavage was showing why he’s moved through the Blue Jays farm system with lightning speed. The Dodgers had a scoring chance with two out in the fourth on a walk and an infield hit, but other than that, they couldn’t really lay a glove on the tall righty. By the end of the sixth, Yesavage had struck out eleven Dodgers and it was starting to look like those early swings might hold up for the rest of the game.

In the end, Snell gutted his way through the rest of the outing. He gave up some traffic in the seventh, and after a strikeout of Davis Schneider, he was removed in favor of Edgardo Henriquez. It wasn’t the disaster of Game One, but it was a far cry from the Snellzilla we’d grown accustomed to since his return from the IL. And the problem was, given the state of the offense and how Yesavage was pitching, Snellzilla was what was required on Wednesday. And he was a no-show.

Henriquez did what the bullpen always seems to do in 2025. He came into douse the fire wearing a gasoline suit. On a 3-2 pitch to Vladdy Jr., Henriquez went “just a bit outside” and brought in another run on a wild pitch. Then a single scored a fifth Blue Jay run. After a walk loaded up the bases, that was it for Henriquez. Any of this sounding familiar? Anthony Banda got the final out, but a manageable deficit now seem insurmountable and time was running out. The numbers tallied up kind of ugly again for the starter Snell: 6.2 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 8 K. The Jays beat our ace twice. Plenty to talk about over the winter, eh?

Banda ended up giving one more run in the eighth, but by then it hardly mattered. Yesavage simply overwhelmed the Dodgers in his last postseason start in the same way he’d done to the Yankees in his first. The final line for Yesavage: 7.0 IP, 3 H 1 ER, 0 BB, 13. It was the most strikeouts by a rookie in a World Series ever, and the first twelve strikeout game since El Duque back in the 1980s. Utter and complete domination. Not bad for a guy who started the year in Low-A.

As for the Dodgers, they need to snap out of whatever funk they’ve been in for the last 48 hours and start playing baseball again. The good news: Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be on the mound on Friday night in Toronto. The bad news: you actuallly have to score runs to win a baseball game. And now the Dodgers have to win two of them.

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