The Blue Jays are not backing down from the final challenge for the Goliath World Series

TORONTO – Four wins stand between the Dodgers and a legitimate dynasty debate.

Of course, the team behind which the hopes and dreams of an entire country play will have something to say about that as well.

Returning to the World Series for the fifth time in the past 10 years, the Dodgers will begin their quest for a third title in the past six years — and become the first team to win back-to-back championships since the 1998-2000 Yankees — on Friday night against the Blue Jays at Rogers Center.

“Winning and then coming back is another thing because you always have a target on your back,” Mookie Betts said Thursday. “But it’s also fun to play that way. There’s an art to it, there’s a mentality to it, and it’s something a lot of us Dodgers have learned to embrace. I think that’s what we enjoy.”

Spending nearly half a billion dollars to bolster their roster after beating the Yankees in the World Series last October makes the goal even bigger, but the Dodgers have handled it well enough to this point.

“We underperformed throughout the entire regular season, but we always knew that when October came, that’s all that mattered,” said Kiki Hernandez, a standout who has been stepping up to the plate in the postseason regardless of what the regular season looks like.

While the Blue Jays, with the fifth-highest payroll in the game (still more than $100 million less than the Dodgers), may not exactly be David, they will be facing Goliath.

“I think the one thing we can’t do is look out there and say that’s Goliath,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “This is a beatable baseball team that has its flaws, and it has really good strengths. And the way we expose each one of them is going to determine who wins the Series. And I’ve got all the confidence in the world in my guys.”

The game revolved around the Dodgers’ dominant rotation against a relentless Blue Jays lineup. The staff had the second-highest strikeout rate (24.8 percent) versus the offense with the lowest strikeout rate (17.8); And the franchise has a chance to establish itself as a dynasty against an existing dynasty in the World Series for the first time since 1993.

For the most part, the Dodgers insist they haven’t taken much time to think about what winning another championship this year would mean in the bigger picture. But the hype around him got louder with each passing win, first over the Reds in the Wild Card Series, then the Phillies in the NLDS and the Brewers in the NLCS.

“Just to be in this place, last week I started throwing out the word dynasty and things like that,” Freddie Freeman said. “If you take that away, it means the organization is doing a really good job. So just being in that spot is pretty tough. But to win it and maybe win it twice in a row, it’s pretty cool.”

Of course, the last team before the 1998-2000 Yankees to win back-to-back World Series? The Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993 before the franchise spent the next 32 years chasing another, which led them to Friday.

“I think not having a history of winning makes it even more special,” said former Yankee and current Blue Jays shortstop Isiah Keener-Falefa. “When you’re able to offer something they didn’t get, that’s why we had the reaction we did (winning the ALCS). … No one really talked about (the tournament drought) because they felt like it was impossible to do. Now that we’re here, everything is back to normal and I think it’s great for the country.”

After the Dodgers were swept in the NLCS, manager Dave Roberts joked that his club was four wins away from “destroying baseball” — mocking critics who claimed their massive spending was bad for the sport. But huge salaries only guarantee so much.

“I’ve been asked the ancestry question about 10 times already — my answer to that is I feel really blessed to have been part of a culture that other people are starting to hear about and discover and want to come and join,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “That, to me, is a breed in itself. The culture that we’ve created as a Dodgers team, that people know when you come in, it’s all about winning. How are you going to get better? How are you going to help the team win? What batting are you going to sacrifice to move a guy to third base? Are you going to put your body on the line to help win the game? Are you going to put your body on the line to help win the game?”

“This is something everyone in the organization has bought into. It always started, for me, with (Clayton) Kershaw.

“Money can’t buy that.”