After enduring the emotional rollercoaster of an 18-inning World Series marathon loss, the Toronto Blue Jays showed what championship grit looks like. In Game 4, they responded like seasoned October veterans, dismantling the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 and knotting the Fall Classic at two games apiece.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. lit the spark with a towering two-run homer off Shohei Ohtani in the third inning, a shot that not only energized his team but also etched his name into the franchise record books with his seventh postseason home run. Guerrero has been unstoppable this October, slashing .419 with 14 RBIs and a 1.306 OPS across 15 games.
But the offense wasn’t the only bright spot. Shane Bieber, acquired midseason in a trade with Cleveland, stepped up when Toronto needed stability. He delivered 5⅓ innings of one-run baseball, stifling the Dodgers’ lineup and conserving a taxed bullpen after the previous night’s 6½-hour epic.
The Blue Jays didn’t let up. In the seventh inning, Ernie Clement cracked a double that helped chase Ohtani and ignite a four-run rally. Clement’s contribution extended his postseason hitting streak to 10 games, the longest by a Toronto player since Roberto Alomar’s streak in 1993—the year the Jays last lifted the trophy.
Toronto’s bounce-back performance echoed a similar storyline from 2018, when the Boston Red Sox dropped an 18-inning heartbreaker to the Dodgers but rebounded with a Game 4 win en route to a title. Whether Toronto can complete that same arc remains to be seen, but they’ve already proven they can take a punch and punch back harder.
The win guaranteed a return to Toronto, where 30,000 fans packed Rogers Centre just to watch Game 4 unfold on big screens. That sea of energy and support hasn’t gone unnoticed in the clubhouse.
For a team running on fumes and fueled by little more than adrenaline and caffeine, Toronto looked very much alive—and very much like contenders who aren’t ready to go home without a fight.