Home-field advantage is rarely talked about as a disadvantage, but there’s something to be said about the added pressure of playing in front of your own fans, especially as you find yourself one win away from a World Series championship, as the Toronto Blue Jays currently are.
The Blue Jays proved over the last three games that they can win at Dodger Stadium, as they took two of those contests in LA on the way to a commanding 3-2 series lead headed back to Toronto’s Rogers Centre, which will be rocking like it never has before on Friday night for Game 6.
Will this environment cause a distraction for the Blue Jays, allowing the Dodgers to gain an upper hand psychologically?
Analyst and former MLB player Kevin Pillar talked about this on Friday during a new episode of the Foul Territory podcast.
“I think there’s … a ton of pressure when you have such a passionate fan base, an energetic fan base, a starving fan base, one that has waited a long time to be one game away from winning a World Series,” Pillar said. “You got to imagine the pressure that the (Blue Jays) ballplayers feel showing up to the field today. … I can’t even imagine what it was like going to bed last night, knowing, you know, ‘one more sleep and I could be a World Series champion.’”
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Pillar then did somewhat of a 180 and acknowledged the other side of the coin — that being that this Blue Jays squad has shown time and time again in 2025 that it has a bunch of cooler heads capable of prevailing over pressure.
“I mean, this is a team that has faced so much adversity,” Pillar said.
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“Let’s just talk about what (the Blue Jays) faced in the postseason, you know, losing Bo Bichette, going down the stretch, having to win (the last game of the regular season) to win the division … (having) to go into New York to win some games … to be down 0-2 against Seattle, going into a hostile environment. Being down 3-2 to Seattle to win … and then ultimately going up against, you know, the elite of elite with the Dodgers … a juggernaut, the defending champions … to lose an 18-inning game and come back and be unfazed.”
“If there was ever a team that is built to kind of handle everything that we’re talking about … this team is just so steady with their approach to the day-to-day. You watch them come out for BP every day, you watch them stretch … it looks like they’re playing spring training games. There’s no heartbeat. It’s a ton of fun. It’s a ton of passion. … This team is really, really kind of built for this moment.”
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As the pressure rises to unparalleled levels shortly after 8:00 p.m. ET on Friday night, Kevin Gausman will step up to the mound for the Blue Jays and do his best to breathe evenly, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto following suit for LA.
