I’m still coming down from the high of what I think we all agree was a great World Series. It will go down as one of the best of the 21st century; it had star power, shocking twists, unlikely heroes, the whole nine yards. The guys who mapped out ridiculously dramatic football Friday evening lights They’re probably saying, “Guys, take it easy, you’re pouring it on too thick.”
Especially the last game and a half I was really stressed about the outcome, which isn’t something that normally happens when I don’t have a partisan dog in the fight nor the obligation to write the game off.
A few days into the road, I experience an emotion I didn’t expect: I’m going to miss this Blue Jays team. They were great to watch. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star player put his team on his back Vladimir Guerrero Jr. did this in October. At least not in baseball, and certainly not a position player. I lived and died with each painful wobble that passed Bo Bichette And George Springer. After seeing Trey Yesavage pitch in college, his escape surprised me less than most, but that didn’t make it any less exciting.
Even the Jays’ damagingly aggressive baserunning—which was their ultimate downfall—only made me like them more. Baseball these days is so optimized and so often geared toward predictability, it’s hard not to admire a team that isn’t afraid to put it all on the line.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Sam Miller was able to describe the situation more sharply and concisely than I could.
If I ever write an all-time “Played Their Asses Off” rankings, the 2025 Blue Jays will be right at the top, and perhaps the pull quote.
—Sam Molenaar (@sammillerbb.bsky.social) November 1, 2025 at 11:07 PM
In case you can’t tell, I love a charismatic number two, and I worry that as time goes on, history will only remember part of what made these Blue Jays so appealing. So I want to post a historical milestone for a man who exemplified what I found so compelling about him: Daulton Varsho.
Varsho wasn’t one of Toronto’s biggest offensive contributors. He certainly had some memorable contributions. He went 4-for-5 with two dingers in the ALDS clincher against the Yankees, and it was his fourth-inning home run in Game 1 of the World Series that broke. Blake Snell’s air of invincibility and announced that the underdog Blue Jays would not go quietly.
But overall, Varsho posted a wRC+ of 97, and of the 65 players to hit at least 20 times this postseason, he was 59th in WPA. It didn’t help that he went 0-for-9 during Games 6 and 7 of the World Series. In fact, it was his sedate grounder to second base with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of Game 7 that led to two days of dithering. Isiah Kiner Fear’s baserunning decisions.
Remember that one Miguel Rojas almost fell over while fielding the ball on the World Series-winning run on third, leading to this incredible “Oh, crap” face.
Nevertheless, I give Varsho one of the highest compliments I can give to an athlete: he was a total pest. A threat. I don’t want to play up the “grinder” stereotype too much for the son of a former big league player and coach who was named after a catcher and who himself emerged as a mid-major college catcher before transforming into a Gold Glove outfielder… but you get the idea.
The Dodgers blew out Milwaukee in the NLCS, but there were times when the Brewers could have seized the initiative. Specifically, by letting a command-agnostic Dodger pitcher plunder them. Brewers second baseman Brice Turang found himself in the unusual position of having to answer for not wearing one Blake Treinen offering in Game 1 of the NLCS, when it would have forced the tying goal.
No problem for Varsho, who was hit by just one pitch in 271 regular-season plate appearances in 2025. He was tackled twice in seven World Series games, including a Game 1 body shot from Snell that haunted the two-time Cy Young winner and paved the way for a nine-run sixth inning.
It’s Canada. We have ice.
But it is in defense where Varsho has stood out the most. Varsho made 49 putouts this postseason, 11 more than any other outfielder. Granted, that’s the result of opportunity; With the Blue Jays playing two seven-game series and the Dodgers shaking up their midstream outfield, Varsho played 21 more innings than any other outfielder. Julio Rodriguez made 38 putouts in 12 games; Pete Crow Armstrong made 24 in just eight games.
But some of Varsho’s were pretty amazing. I like to commemorate the end of the season with a ranking, so here are the six best defensive plays of the postseason for Varsho.
No. 6: Hop, Skip and a Jump
Varsho didn’t rob a single home run this postseason. Not that you’d expect him to do that from six feet away. But this catch is a great illustration of Varsho’s ability to read the ball off the bat. Some outfielders get their range from pure foot speed and/or chase it with a consistent closing speed. Varsho reacts to the crack of the bat and runs as fast as his legs can in the direction the ball is hit, only slowing down when he arrives at his final destination.
No. 5: The smooth operator
Varsho was relatively quiet defensively in the first two rounds of Toronto, but he was all over the place in the World Series. He made five outs in Game 3 – all in the eighth inning or later – and then three more in the first five innings of Game 5, before this sliding grab of a sinking Will Smith liner, then another flyout later in the inning. You begin to understand that you are getting tired of seeing this man.
No. 4: Totally had it
This is a great read and a great break on a ball hit in front of him; These types of line drives can sometimes be difficult to judge. Varsho could have gone more directly to this ball and caught it with two hands during the dead run. Instead, he played it one-handed, with a carefree slide at the end.
No. 3: There, but for Taller Turf, Go I
This is by far Varsho’s most spectacular catch. He plucked the ball out of the air, just inches from the ground, if that. Not a second to spare. Nevertheless, I have to mark it down a few spots because Varsho made a rare bad move and came back to a ball that would ultimately end up in front of him.
No. 2: Going Horizontal in Game 7
This catch, a flying, diving grab to rob Teoscar Hernández of a hit, time seemed decisive. A point scored during the action. Varsho’s throwing shoulder has been in some degree of desperate disrepair for over a year, but I think none other than Roberto Clemente could get up from a prone position to throw out a tagging runner at the plate. If Varsho had played it on a jump, at least one run would have been scored, maybe two, and the Dodgers would have had the conga line intact. Had he missed this catch, the ball likely would have gone most of the way to the wall, leaving Hernández in second or third, with the bases otherwise clear and the game tied with one out.
Instead, Guerrero made an equally spectacular diving stop on one Tommy Edman liner to end the inning and limit the damage to a point. Craig Calcaterra called it “a team of destiny,” and he was right to do so. The Jays had just bled Shohei Ohtani’s nose a half-inning earlier, and if Varsho and Guerrero hadn’t made those two diving stops, the Dodgers could have paid them back with interest and maintained a multiple-run lead until the bottom of the fourth.
No. 1: The Game 3 Extra-Inning Quadrilogy
This is actually four plays in one, only one of which seems like something spectacular without context, but it really sums up Varsho’s postseason for me.
Of the 49 catches Varsho made in the outfield, 15 resulted in him putting one or both feet on the warning track. That’s 15 times the batter got all or most of the ball, leaving open the non-trivial possibility that when the broadcast changed the camera angles, we might see the ball fly into the seats. And instead of getting the most impactful play possible, we got Varsho trotting towards us to get the batter out.
This happened to the Dodgers a lot. Freddie Vrijman hit 18 fly balls in three rounds of the playoffs. Two of them left the yard, two others went for doubles and Varsho caught nine of the other fourteen. Varsho caught five of those nine on the warning track.
During the marathon Game 3, that legendary, definitive game, Varsho tracked down a warning fly ball that came off the bat at 100 mph or more for four consecutive innings. Listen to the audience in these videos. He got Freeman to finish 13th with a runner in second place.
The next Dodger hitter was Smith, who was so confident he had won the game that he took a Barry Bonds-style combination of dropping and staring. Will Smith! He’s not normally one for showboating, but he’s not made of stone. Any hitter on a Major League roster would undoubtedly pimp a walk-off in the World Series. Fox announcer Joe Davis was sure that’s what he meant.
But no, Varsho went straight into the wall and plucked the ball out of the air.
Freeman got another shot with two outs in the 15th; I don’t think this ever realistically looked like it was going to go out, but it definitely looked like a double in the canyon.
Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, etc., etc.
In the 16th inning it was Hernández’s turn again.
At that point, the Dodgers must have suspected there was a force field or something. Are Eric Lauerfor God’s sake (with all due respect), why haven’t we found one yet?
But each time it was Varsho who robbed them of the triumphant moment they had stayed up all night for. At least until Freeman finally pushed one over the fence in the 18th.
If Guerrero dominated the playoffs through force of will, to a degree usually only possible in basketball, Varsho was the Draymond Green to Guerrero’s Steph Curry. With less nut punching. He was there to catch every stray ball, to fight for every rebound, to make every high-leverage defensive play. Five years from now, we’ll probably have forgotten Varsho’s contributions to the Blue Jays’ excruciating near miss. But we can remember them for now.
#Daulton #Varsho