The Dodgers would clinch the series that night, because the Yankees imploded in that inning<\/a>: Aaron Judge dropped a fly ball, Anthony Volpe committed a throwing error, Gerrit Cole did not cover first base, and the Dodgers tied the score before the Yankees finally secured that third out.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t quite like that for the Dodgers on Wednesday, but it was uncomfortably close. The Dodgers\u2019 mistakes were scattered over nine innings, not clustered in one.<\/p>\n They were not eliminated from the World Series. If they play another defensive game like this one, they just might be.<\/p>\n After a sluggish 6-1 loss<\/a> to the Toronto Blue Jays in this year\u2019s Game 5<\/a>, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts<\/a> was asked what disappointed him the most about the game.<\/p>\n It could have been his team\u2019s disappearing offense. The Dodgers have scored three runs in their past two games, and they\u2019re batting .201 in the series. On Wednesday, the top four batters \u2014 Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman \u2014 went a combined 1 for 15 with eight strikeouts.<\/p>\n It could have been his team\u2019s bullpen, again. On a night Roberts chose not to use closer Roki Sasaki<\/a> to try to hold the deficit at 3-1 in the seventh inning, Edgardo Henriquez and Anthony Banda exploded it to 6-1 within seven batters.<\/p>\n Roberts had a different answer.<\/p>\n \u201cJust not playing a clean game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Dodgers needed Blake Snell<\/a> to go deep into the game, and he did. He threw 116 pitches, a total he has topped only twice in his 10-year career.<\/p>\n With a cleaner defense, though, he could have made those 116 pitches last into the eighth, or maybe even the ninth, giving the Dodgers the opportunity to skip over that pesky non-closer part of their bullpen.<\/p>\n In the third inning, Betts fielded what could have been an inning-ending double play ball, but his relay from shortstop was wide of second baseman Tommy Edman. The Dodgers had to settle for the force play, and Snell had to make an extra seven pitches to get out of the inning.<\/p>\n Edman said such plays \u201cjust get magnified in situations like that.\u201d<\/p>\n In the next inning, right fielder Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> made another such play, charging toward the line and sliding to try to corral a drive hit by Daulton Varsho.<\/p>\n \u201cI just went to catch it and fell short,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cI tried to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n The ball skipped past Hern\u00e1ndez, and so Varsho ended up with a triple. He scored on a sacrifice fly, a run the Blue Jays would not have scored had Hern\u00e1ndez played it safe and played the ball on a hop.<\/p>\n \u201cBlake pitched a heck of a ball game,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cBut, yeah, giving up bases and not converting outs when you have an opportunity to convert outs, that came back to bite us.\u201d<\/p>\n Said Smith, the catcher: \u201cThat happens. You can\u2019t play perfect baseball all the time. I thought he did a really good job minimizing those opportunities for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Snell was not immune. The Dodgers threw four wild pitches, leading to this scoring account from the seventh inning: Addison Barger singled, took second on a wild pitch by Snell, took third on a wild pitch by Snell, and scored on a wild pitch by Henriquez.<\/p>\n Toronto\u2019s Addison Barger scores after a wild pitch by Dodgers reliever Edgardo Henriquez in the seventh inning of Game 5 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n In the eighth, a wild pitch by Banda advanced Ernie Clement into scoring position, and then he scored on a subsequent single.<\/p>\n The Dodgers, remember, are the team with all the postseason experience. The Blue Jays\u2019 starting pitcher, Trey Yesavage, made his first major league appearance 45 days ago.<\/p>\n Ohtani led off the bottom of the first inning with a comebacker. Yesavage bobbled the ball and then dropped it, but he had what you might call veteran poise, picking up the ball and throwing what Toronto manager John Schneider called \u201ckind of a shovel pass\u201d to first base for the out.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that he kind of shoveled it the way he did and kind of had a little smile on his face,\u201d Schneider said, \u201cit actually gives you a little bit of confidence that he\u2019s in the right frame of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n He was. He struck out 12. He gave up one run. The Jays had two runs after two batters. The Dodgers scored one, so you could say the poor defense ultimately did not impact the outcome.<\/p>\n In the eighth inning, Ohtani hit a hard grounder toward first base, where Vladimir Guerrero Jr. snatched the ball in a position so awkward he fell to the ground. As he lay there, he slapped first base with his bare hand<\/a>.<\/p>\n Aesthetics be damned, he got the job done defensively. The Dodgers did not.<\/p>\n In the aftermath, Smith exuded calm and confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cWe trust each other,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe we\u2019re the best team in baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n Maybe so, but what the Dodgers have to do now is what Aaron Judge said the Yankees had to do to shush the shots some Dodgers players took at them after last year\u2019s World Series<\/a>: Play better<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You remember the stickers. You might even have one yourself. They were the stickers that reproduced the Fox…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[34975,25862,18619,4279,140713,5460,35909,363,140714,4212,25867,19630,3956,22362,99,1599,126266],"class_list":["post-260600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ball","tag-batter","tag-blue-jays","tag-dodgers","tag-first-base","tag-game","tag-inning","tag-mlb","tag-night-roberts","tag-out","tag-pitch","tag-run","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-snell","tag-sports","tag-team","tag-world-series-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761816788_943_hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n