LOS ANGELES — In the moments before Game 5 of the World Series, Trey Yesavage was under attack. Warming up in the visitors bullpen in right field at Dodger Stadium, surrounded by Los Angeles Dodgers fans on both sides, the Toronto Blue Jays’ 22-year-old right-handed rookie weathered insults of all manner and variety. At one point, Yesavage took a breath, stepped off the mound and turned to pitching coach Pete Walker.

“This is fun,” Yesavage said. “I love this.”

Of all the improbable happenings amid the Blue Jays’ run to the cusp of their first championship in more than 30 years, none rivals the emergence of Yesavage. His first game this season came in April in Jupiter, Florida, for Single-A Dunedin. There were 327 fans in the stadium. His latest, on Wednesday night, was a seven-inning, no-walk, 12-strikeout masterpiece that thrust the Blue Jays to a 6-1 victory and sent them back to Toronto one win shy of a World Series title. It was a performance that muzzled the mouthy masses in right field and the remainder of the 52,175 who saw an all-time performance from a pitcher throwing in his eighth major league game.

Against a lineup featuring three future Hall of Famers, in front of a crowd that understood the desperation Los Angeles would face with a Game 5 loss, Yesavage devastated the Dodgers over and over. They swung and missed 23 times, at his disappearing splitter and darting slider and carrying fastball. When they did make contact, it was mostly feeble; a solo home run from Kiké Hernández accounted for their lone run. Yesavage carved them like a pumpkin, appropriate considering the Blue Jays will attempt to secure their first championship since 1993 on Halloween.

In part because the kid taken with the No. 20 pick in last year’s draft went from Single-A to High-A to Double-A to Triple-A to the big leagues, where almost immediately everyone around him understood how he made such an ascent. Yesavage’s stuff is nasty, sure, but his demeanor — country boy who sees the big city as just another thing to conquer — exudes calmness and confidence without a whit of arrogance.

After Toronto’s Game 5 win, in which home runs by Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the first and third pitches staked them to a lead they would not yield, Chris Bassitt and Shane Bieber, who together have thrown more than 2,000 major league innings and made 359 major league starts, sat next to each other in the clubhouse and simply marveled. They’ve known Yesavage for six weeks, and every outing — whether it was shutting down Tampa Bay in his debut or throwing 5⅓ no-hit innings with 11 strikeouts against the Yankees in his postseason debut — reinforces what they find most impressive about him.

“How he was able to make Game 5 of the World Series, mentally, look like any other day,” Bassitt said. “It could’ve been May. You couldn’t tell. He’s just calm, and he’s got wholehearted belief in himself.”

Said Bieber: “It would be easy to say it’s an ignorance-is-bliss thing, but I don’t think it is. It’s full conviction in himself and his game plan and his stuff. When he’s got it, he’s got it. Look in his eyes. And he had it.”

Bassitt continued.

“When he gets his splitter going, I think he realizes the other team has no chance,” he said. “Because no one has been able to figure it out. Early on, when he had the split going, it was like: strap in, because you guys are gonna be in trouble.”

Trouble doesn’t fully describe the Dodgers’ fruitlessness against Yesavage in Game 5. In Game 1, he had operated with no control of his splitter, leaving him to navigate Los Angeles’ lineup handicapped. Between his bullpen session this week and catch play Tuesday, Yesavage said he found his splitter grip and entered Wednesday with faith in it. He was awake at 8:30 a.m., called his girlfriend, ate an egg sandwich and two pieces of sausage at breakfast with his parents and brother, showered and relaxed on the outdoor patio in his hotel room with his family. He went to the stadium ready to perform.

And once there, he made history, striking out more batters than any previous rookie in a World Series start.

“I saw something on Instagram that someone took a video of me on my phone saying I was locked in,” Yesavage said, “but I was just doomscrolling on TikTok and Instagram reels. I just keep it as chill as possible. I don’t change anything I say to myself, but I’m also just here to go to work. I try not to think about anything.”

Head empty of concern, arm full of vigor, Yesavage stood atop the mound opposite two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell and outdueled him. Yesavage felt good in the first inning. After striking out the side in the second, good evolved to great. And from there, every pitch was an attempted emasculation — fastballs up in the zone from the highest arm slot in the big leagues, and splitters and sliders in the bottom half that tease and tempt hitters into swinging even when they know they shouldn’t. Yesavage hunts strikeouts as if they’re prey, a quality that endeared him to another of the Blue Jays’ veteran starters.

“When they pulled him after 78 pitches in that Yankee start,” Max Scherzer said, “I was like, ‘Hey, would you have gone back out there and just navigated that?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m trying to strike everybody out.'”

Scherzer smiled.

“I know exactly what he’s talking about,” said Scherzer, he of 3,489 career punchouts. “You start smelling it. You start smelling, this is how I’m going to get you. I’m here to strike you out.”

Yesavage’s olfactory glands were working overdrive Wednesday. He struck out every Dodgers starter — and got their Nos. 2, 3 and 4 hitters, Will Smith, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, two times apiece. Yesavage’s girlfriend, Taylor Frick, sent him photos throughout the game of her crying happy tears. Scherzer, manic as ever, celebrated a double play by yeeting sunflower seeds against the dugout wall. After a performance like that, in a moment so big, large displays of emotion are more than acceptable.

Meanwhile, Yesavage remained cucumber cool. He makes it easy to forget sometimes how new this all is. He and Bieber had been talking recently about introducing Yesavage to some high-end alcohol, to enjoy the spoils of the big leagues.

“You like tequila?” Bieber said.

“I’m 22,” Yesavage said.

Bieber chuckled.

“You were just in college, weren’t you?” he said.

He was, at East Carolina, where he had pitched in big games in front of big crowds at North Carolina and North Carolina State. But there was nothing like this. Dodgers fans are notorious for their razzing in the right-field bullpen, relentless and nasty and boundary-smashing, all part of the experience. Yesavage, who had topped their team in Game 1, received the gamut.

“If I were a Dodgers fan, I would try to rattle him, too,” Bassitt said. “Given the fact that he is 22. Given the fact that he barely has pitched on the road. Given the fact that this is the World Series. I’d be talking s—. But the reality is, I don’t think many people realize it doesn’t faze him. He’s like, just wait until I get on the mound. I’ll show you.”

He showed them all right. Over 104 pitches, each thrown with the weight of a nation on his shoulders, he manifested his pregame feelings into something bigger and better.

This was fun. And he had every reason to love it.

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Dodgers‘ bats, mostly quiet in October, were nearly silent in Game 5. If they don’t start making some noise in Game 6, their hopes for a title defense might be dashed.

The Dodgers flailed on offense for much of a 6-1 loss that put them on the brink with a 3-2 World Series deficit to the Toronto Blue Jays. After a historic 18-inning win over the Jays on Monday to grab a series lead, the Dodgers totaled only three runs in losses Tuesday and Wednesday.

Slumps are never welcome but especially not when a team is so close to a second straight World Series crown.

“We’re not really doing much as an offense, and whenever we get a chance, we don’t capitalize,” the Dodgers’ Enrique Hernandez said. “We’re going through one of those funks right now. It is just really bad timing to have those in the World Series.”

If you remove the Dodgers’ offensive outburst in a wild-card romp over the Reds, Los Angeles has hit just .224 with a .372 slugging percentage in the postseason, well down from its regular-season numbers (.253 and .441). The Dodgers are hitting .201 against the Blue Jays over five games and just .200, without an extra-base hit, with runners in scoring position.

The nadir might have been Game 5, when the Dodgers were dominated by rookie Trey Yesavage for seven innings and managed four hits and one walk while striking out 15 times. They had only one at-bat with a runner in scoring position.

“It’s been hard for us the last two days,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “But we’ve been in this situation before.”

It was an overall lackluster performance for the defending champs in a pivotal game. The defense failed to convert a couple of key double-play opportunities early. The Blue Jays ambushed starter Blake Snell from the outset, homering twice in Snell’s first three pitches and becoming the first team to start a World Series game with back-to-back blasts. The Dodgers set a World Series record by uncorking four wild pitches, two from Snell and one each from relievers Edgardo Henriquez and Anthony Banda.

In other words, it’s not the kind of response you’d expect from a team that won the title a year ago and entered the series against Toronto 9-1 in the postseason.

“Everyone’s got to do their job,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’re at elimination, and we’ve got to kind of wipe the slate clean and find a way to win Game 6. Pick up the pieces and see where we’re at.”

The Blue Jays have mostly dominated the stars of the L.A. lineup, save for Shohei Ohtani‘s big Game 3, when he homered twice and reached base nine times over the marathon contest. That continued Wednesday despite Roberts’ reshuffled lineup: The first four hitters — Ohtani, Will Smith, Mookie Betts and Freeman — went a combined 1-for-15 with eight strikeouts.

With the Blue Jays averaging nearly six runs a game in the series, something has to change, even with Yoshinobu Yamamoto going for L.A. in Game 6 on Friday in Toronto. Of course, the veteran Dodgers have seen it all and remain nowhere near panic mode. But they know they can’t put it all on Yamamoto’s shoulders.

“Yoshi is going to show up, he’s going to take that mound, and he’s going to do his thing,” Hernandez said. “It’s just we need to do a little better job putting together runs. Man, it seems like whenever we get traffic on, we found a way to get ourselves out of the traffic.”

One thought: do what the Blue Jays are doing.

“It doesn’t feel great,” Roberts said. “You clearly see those guys finding ways to get hits, move the baseball forward. We’re not doing a good job of it.”

Last season, the Dodgers trailed the Padres 2-1 in the best-of-five division series and rallied to win en route to a World Series victory, something Freeman alluded to as a recent of example of the Dodgers meeting the challenge facing them now. But to win two, first you have to win one.

“There’s a fight in there,” Roberts said. “We’ve won two games in a row [before]. But again, it just comes down to one game. We have been in a lot of elimination games, and we found a way to get to the other side.”

LOS ANGELES — A record-setting performance by rookie pitcher Trey Yesavage in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night has the Toronto Blue Jays on the cusp of their first championship since 1993.

Yesavage struck out 12 batters over seven innings while giving up only three hits without issuing a walk, helping Toronto to a 6-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Blue Jays lead the best-of-seven series 3-2 with Game 6 scheduled for Friday in Toronto.

It was a masterful start for Yesavage, and it came in his first career postseason start on the road.

“It’s a crazy world,” Yesavage, 23, said afterward. “Crazy world. Hollywood couldn’t have made it this good. So just being a part of this, I’m just very blessed.”

Yesavage set the rookie mark for strikeouts in a World Series game, surpassing Don Newcombe’s 11, set in 1949. It was his second postseason game this month with at least 11 strikeouts, making him the first rookie to accomplish the feat in multiple postseason games; Yesavage struck out 11 against the New York Yankees in Game 2 of the American League Division Series.

“I was shocked when he did it to the Yankees,” second baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa said with a smile. “Less shocked this time around.”

Yesavage combined a lively fastball with a devastating split finger and slider, inducing 23 swings and misses, the most by any pitcher in a World Series game in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008).

He said the key to his performance Wednesday was “getting in the zone early, being in my count, just throwing whatever I wanted when I was in two strikes.”

“Being able to execute my plan throughout all seven innings was massive for that,” he said.

Yesavage had a rougher outing against the Dodgers in Game 1, when he gave up four hits and three walks over four innings. He was a different pitcher Wednesday.

“He located every pitch he wanted to today,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “Game 1, he didn’t necessarily have the best command, and today, I don’t think he missed a single spot, with the exception of down below the zone, which is what he wants to do. He didn’t give us anything to take advantage of.”

Outfielder Enrique Hernandez added: “His slider was really good tonight. I think his slider was his difference-maker. It was harder and tighter than it was in Toronto. We weren’t really able to pick it up and his split is pretty good.”

“Pretty good” might be an understatement: Batters are 3-for-34 with 22 strikeouts in at-bats ending on his splitter this postseason.

It didn’t take long for Yesavage to lock in Wednesday. He struck out five consecutive batters between the first and third innings before Hernandez homered, Yesavage’s only blemish. He struck out both Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman twice and got Shohei Ohtani once on a nasty splitter to end the third.

“Historic stuff,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “When you talk about that stage and his numbers, getting ahead of a lot of hitters, tons of swing-and-miss. It’s one thing to be in the zone, and it’s another thing to be in the zone and get some swing-and-miss.

“Kind of blown away at what he did.”

It didn’t hurt that Yesavage took the mound with a 2-0 lead after the Blue Jays’ first two hitters ambushed Dodgers starter Blake Snell. Leadoff man Davis Schneider hit the first pitch he saw for a home run to left, and then two pitches later, Vladimir Guerrero Jr did the same.

“Last time I only got a few fastballs, so I was kind of sitting fastball,” Schneider said. “Especially being a leadoff guy, you’re going to at least get one, and I thought he was going to throw a changeup that first one, but I saw a fastball and hit it out.”

After seeing Schneider’s blast, Guerrero said his plan at the plate was simple: “The plan was to win,” he said through the team interpreter.

The Blue Jays extended a 2-1 lead with one run in the fourth, two in the seventh and one in the eighth. It was eerily similar to Game 4, when they eliminated an early deficit and pulled away for a 6-2 win. But Wednesday was the first time all series the Dodgers never had a lead in a game.

“That was a huge spark,” third baseman Ernie Clement said of the first-inning homers. “You couldn’t ask for a better start.”

The Jays are hoping for a similar finish to the series. They will have two chances to win one, both at raucous Rogers Centre — that’s if they even need a Game 7. They’ve regained momentum after dropping a heartbreaking, 18-inning affair in Game 3 on Monday. Thanks to an historic pitching performance in Game 5, they’re one win away from popping champagne again.

Said teammate Max Scherzer of Yesavage: “When he’s on, he can make anyone in the game look stupid.”