LOS ANGELES (AP) — Admitting he came close to putting a position player on the mound for the first time in World Series history, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said a month ago he never would have believed he'd face that decision.
“I would have thought I was under the influence of something, for sure,” he said.
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Fans stand during the 14th inning in Game 3 of baseball's World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Toronto Blue Jays' Daulton Varsho (5) tosses his bat after getting hit by a pitch during the 13th inning in Game 3 of baseball's World Series, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)
Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider speaks prior to Game 4 of baseball's World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts speaks prior to Game 4 of baseball's World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
A day after the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5 on Freddie Freeman's 18th-inning home run off Brendon Little to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Series, both managers said Tuesday they were getting close to having to send a position player to the mound in a game of utmost importance because they were running out of available pitchers.
Yet, neither was immediately in favor of adopting in the postseason the automatic-runner rule used in the regular season since 2020, in which each team starts every extra inning with a runner at second base. Among 209 extra-inning games this season, all ended by the 13th. In the six seasons with the “ghost” runner, the longest was the Dodgers' 16-inning win over San Diego on Aug. 25, 2021.
“Baseball in its truest form and part of winning a seven-game series is if there are games like that, then to have to go through the battle of attrition with pitching,” Roberts said.
As bullpens emptied and the Dodgers and Blue Jays played deep into the night, Toronto second baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa had a jarring thought — both teams might run out of arms.
“There was a point where I was like, we might see two position players in the World Series going back and forth,” he said.
Will Klein, the Series-record 10th pitcher for Los Angeles, doubled his previous career highs with four innings and 72 pitches. Yoshinobu Yamamoto had warmed up and was set to enter for the Dodgers in the 19th, two days after throwing 105 pitches to win Game 2 in his second consecutive complete game.
“If Yamamoto couldn’t have taken the ball in the 19th, it was probably going to be Miguel Rojas. So that’s kind of where we were at,” Roberts said.
Rojas, a reserve infielder, made four mop-up pitching appearances during the regular season.
Little entered in the 17th for the Blue Jays and Shane Bieber, their scheduled starter for Game 4 on Tuesday, was in the bullpen and would have followed him to the mound. Rookie right-hander Trey Yesavage, scheduled to start Game 5 on Wednesday, would have been the last pitcher in before a position player.
“When I saw Shane go down there, I was like, anything’s possible at this point, just depending upon how long it went,” Yesavage said.
Blue Jays manager John Schneider wasn't sure he would favor extending the automatic runner to the postseason.
“I’m kind of a traditionalist when it comes to baseball,” he said. “It’s kind of unique because that’s how you play for 162 and then that goes away. But with that, I think you've got to structure your roster accordingly to try to handle some of those situations.”
Roberts said he woke up refreshed on Tuesday ahead of Game 4.
“I took a little sleep aid to get off my high and woke up with clarity, freshness, and excited to go tonight,” he said.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Fans stand during the 14th inning in Game 3 of baseball's World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Toronto Blue Jays' Daulton Varsho (5) tosses his bat after getting hit by a pitch during the 13th inning in Game 3 of baseball's World Series, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)
Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider speaks prior to Game 4 of baseball's World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts speaks prior to Game 4 of baseball's World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.
It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"
In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).
It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”
Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.
“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.
Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”
Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.
Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.
Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.
Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.
Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.
"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”
While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.
“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."
The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”
Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.
“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”
A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”
Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.
The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.
Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.
The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
