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Cubs News

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. equals Kris Bryant World Series feat in Blue Jays’ loss

3 months agoZoe Grossman

All kinds of records were set at Dodger Stadium on Monday night.

The 18-inning thriller that was Game 3 of the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays — which the Dodgers won on a Freddie Freeman home run — resurfaced memories of many Fall Classics from years past.

One of those came about when Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. touched home plate in the seventh inning.

According to MLB’s Sarah Langs, Guerrero Jr. became the first player to score from first on a single without advancing on an error in a World Series game since Kris Bryant in 2016.

The moment for Bryant came in none other than the Cubs’ Game 7 win nine years ago, when the Cubs’ third baseman sprinted around the bases on an Anthony Rizzo single to extend the Cubs’ lead to 5-1 in the top of the fifth inning. The Cubs, of course, went on to win 8-7 in an extra-innings nail-biter of their own.

The stat from Langs is certainly a unique one, but it only makes sense that an instant classic of a World Series game on Monday night would draw similarities to the Cubs’ championship clincher.

Guerrero Jr.’s hustle gave Toronto the lead on a Bo Bichette base hit with the series tied at a game apiece. But that lead was short-lived — in the home half of the frame, Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani evened things up again with a 401-foot shot for his second home run of the game. That was the final run that either side could muster across for the next 11 innings.

One of the records that Ohtani set in his two-homer, two-double night matched another World Series game featuring the Cubs: The Japanese superstar equaled the record for extra-base hits in a World Series game, tying Frank Isbell of the Chicago White Sox in the South Siders’ 8-6 win over the Cubs in Game 5 of the 1906 World Series.

Ohtani also drew four intentional walks in the contest — one shy of the Cubs’ Andre Dawson, who drew five from Cincinnati Reds pitchers on May 22, 1990.