The Toronto Blue Jays were so close to winning the 2025 World Series.
The Los Angeles Dodgers required an incredibly unlikely hero to save them on multiple occasions to somehow pull out Game 7 a year ago to repeat as champs.
That hero — well at least, that’s how they’d refer to him in L.A. — has retired.
The Blue Jays didn’t get a chance at revenge with the nemesis who sent them home without the big trophy last year.
But on Thursday night, Miguel Rojas officially called it quits.
A year after writing his name permanently into Dodgers lore and into Blue Jays infamy, Rojas is hanging up his spikes.
Miguel Rojas in World Series vs. Blue Jays
There’s one moment that everyone remembers, but there’s actually two worth recalling.
The first is that home run, the one that tied the game, that Rojas hit improbably off of Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman.
The Blue Jays may have been concerned about one swing from a Dodgers slugger tying the game.
They likely weren’t worried that Rojas would knot things up by himself.
That’s exactly what Rojas did, though, and it set him up for one more moment that helped decide the game.
That infamous play in Toronto, the one where Isiah Kiner-Falefa was thrown out on a force play at home plate by a very small margin, is mostly focused on for the lack of lead by IKF.
But it was Rojas, playing second base on a drawn in infield, who made a sick snag of the hard grounder and fired a perfect strike home for the out.
MIGUEL ROJAS GETS HIM AT THE PLATE https://t.co/lAW2GEcdDh
— MLB (@MLB) November 2, 2025
If Rojas didn’t deliver twice for the Dodgers in the late innings last year, the Blue Jays would’ve been World Series champions.
Miguel Rojas Retires
Rojas told reporters Thursday night that he’s retiring. He steps away from MLB at age 37.
He signed as an international free agent with the Cincinnati Reds out of Venezuela way back in 2005.
Rojas never made the majors with the Reds, but he actually signed with the Dodgers in free agency in 2012 as they apparently saw something in him.
He got his MLB debut in 2014 but then was traded that December with Dee Strange-Gordon and Dan Haren to the Miami Marlins for Austin Barnes, Enrique Hernandez, Andrew Heaney and Chris Hatcher.
Considering what Barnes and Hernandez have done for the Dodgers, that was a good contribution by Rojas, too.
The Marlins traded Rojas back to the Dodgers in January 2023 for Jacob Amaya.
He ended up playing 1,401 games at the MLB level — 870 for Miami and 531 for Los Angeles.
Rojas ends as a career .260 hitter with 1,048 hits — including 210 doubles, 11 triples and 61 home runs.
And he has two World Series rings with the Dodgers — the 2025 one coming because Rojas was the hero at the Blue Jays’ expense.
Blue Jays’ World Series Nemesis Retires From Dodgers