2025 World Series, Game Five: Blue Jays 6, Dodgers 1

hey good job Trey

You would think that back-to-back home runs to open a World Series game for the first time ever—Davis Schneider's on the game's very first pitch, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s on its third—would be the most remarkable aspect of the contest in which that actually somehow occurred. And it did rule a lot; please do not mistake me. But both of those mighty wallops (Schneider's was sufficiently mighty, while Vladdy's felt almost excessively so [it was the hardest swing measured in like forever {save a little wallop for the rest of the guys, please, Vladdy}]) went down before Trey Yesavage had even taken the mound. Once he did, it didn't take all that long to see that something probably even more significant (in the baseball sense) was taking shape. Before Sandy Koufax himself (he turns ninety in two months! and he stayed for all eighteen innings the other night! what!), Trey Yesavage struck out twelve, walked none (he did hit Freddy Freeman's foot, bouncing one in on an 0-2 count), and allowed just three hits (a home run to postseason stalwart Kiké Hernandez, and two dribbling infield singles for the usually-clubbing Téo) in his seven totally riveting innings. As the evening played out, there would be a new "first rookie pitcher to" or "first World Series game in which" every few batters, it seemed, but the one that stands out most to me, I think, is that this was only the third time a pitcher had struck out the complete starting lineup of an opposing team—like all of their guys, at least once—in a World Series game, the other two having been Bob Gibson in 1968 (arguably the greatest season by any pitcher ever, though he took the loss in Game Seven of the World Series that year after striking out seventeen in Game One and ten in Game Three [baseball, man; what can you even say]) and Randy Johnson in 2001 (some say 2001 Randy Johnson is striking out Yankees to this very day). 

Aside from these two historically wild occurrences—the game-opening dingers from Davis Schneider and Vladdy; Yesavage repeatedly slicing up a lineup with three definite Hall-of-Famers (poor Mookie, by the way) in full-on Bob Gibson/Randy Johnson mode—it was Blue Jays baseball the rest of the way: a great catch from Addison Barger on a screaming Ohtani liner that, given its apparent trajectory and exit velocity, should be a base hit roughly infinity percent of the time (I have not looked into the specifics); an Ernie Clement sacrifice fly to plate Daulton Varsho's triple (a gift from the irrepressible Téo and his enigmatic routes, that triple); and a few more late runs eked out on good baserunning, Dodger miscues, and a Bo Bichette liner ripped to the wall (which, in Bo's current state, was but a single). (On Bo, briefly: his .313/.389/.313 [average/OBP/SLG] in the World Series feels nearly miraculous after seven weeks away and a knee that is obviously still a huge problem, and you can see that his slugging mark has taken a huge hit not because he isn't hitting the ball hard so as that he literally cannot run to second base even when he rips it to the wall; this is all just so wild.) After Yesavage got the ground ball he needed to end the seventh (much to Max Scherzer's delight/sunflower-spitting rage), Seranthony Dominguez and Jeff Hoffman took it the rest of the way. 

And so here we are, back in Toronto for Game Six, and a chance to end the World Series—indeed, to win it, many are saying—this very night. George Springer, who seemed to have hurt himself significantly with a swing roughly halfway through the eighteen-inning Game Three, looked like he was going to possibly pinch run for Bo late in Game Five, should Bo have reached in that instance, and he's thought to be ready (in the loose sense of "playable," not in the sense of "in good health") for Game Six. Maybe he's got enough left for one more big swing this season? Just the one? Maybe? If Springer's back in at DH, that'll put Bo at second, which has gone pleasingly well so far, though one still hopes too many plays do not come his way (or rather, that if they do come his way, they come very much his way, rather than all that many steps to the left of his way, or, worse still, to the right of it). We definitely need their bats, both of them, as it's Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the hill for the Dodgers, about whom it turns out we were extremely correct to worry. Surely he doesn't have a third consecutive complete game in him, right? The Dodgers' bullpen really has been a problem for them, outside of its extraordinary showing in Game Three, and Dave Roberts will be in no rush to get Yamamoto out of there, you wouldn't think, unless we can really hang some runs on him early. Will Tyler Glasnow, lined up for Game Seven, be available tonight if the Dodgers need him? What about Blake Snell, having thrown so many pitches just two days ago? One assumes Ohtani could pitch in relief, and if it was against anybody but the Blue Jays, I am sure I would thrill to the sight of him jogging out from the dugout to the bullpen late in the game to warm up real quick. Instead, given our present circumstance, the thought fills me with a dread, a little. For our part, it's Kevin Gausman, whose strong Game Two performance was understandably overshadowed by Yamamoto's, but he really had the splitter going that night, and he was locating the fastball just as he needs to in order to get those chases on the splitter. So maybe? 

I will admit that, even though on the whole I have remained calmer than I would have anticipated throughout this extraordinarily wonderful October run, I am pretty stirred up about tonight! I would really, really prefer for this not to go to a Game Seven, even though Max Scherzer has been throwing so well that it is not that hard to imagine Saturday night's game, should it be played, as an opportunity for an all-time finish to a clear-cut Hall-of-Fame career, and a fitting end to a great World Series. We all love Max Scherzer, and what baseball fan doesn't love a Game Seven, but right now I cannot properly express to you how little I would like my Saturday night to have anything to do with either, given the opportunity that has been set before us tonight. The Blue Jays have done nothing this series to suggest that they can't do this—they have shown themselves to be every bit as good as this Dodgers team—but nearly anything can happen in a single baseball game, which is usually a thought that presents itself as promise, but less so in situations like this? Once it gets going, of course, for better or worse, it'll just be a baseball game, but in these last hours before it (fate hovered near, certain but unknowable), there's a real need for a baseball game, or something like it, to take our minds off this baseball game.   

KS

2025 World Series, Game Four: Blue Jays 6, Dodgers 2

 

une balle cassante suspendu

In the third inning of Game Four of the 2025 World Series, not so many hours after the conclusion of an eighteen-inning all-time classic Game Three, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays hit a two-run home run off of Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers in what early reports indicate is real life, somehow. (You might enjoy, if you have not already, this "All Calls" video [it is at best "Most Calls," but let's set that aside for now] of that particularly compelling sporting moment.) It put the Blue Jays on top, and the way Shane Bieber was dealing, and the Fluharty-to-Bassitt-to-Varland bullpen after him, that's very much where things stayed. We should note, probably, that while Shohei Ohtani is surely the most talented baseball player who has ever lived, he is still capable, mercifully, of at least reasonable approximations of human frailty and fallibility: not only did Ohanti give up that Guerrero rocket to left, but he went oh-for-three at the dish, too, striking out twice along the way (nobody reaches base thirteen times consecutively against the Toronto Blue Jays in a single World Series; nobody). Ohtani did pitch into the seventh, mind you, before being chased by an Ernie Clement double after a Daulton Varsho single to open that inning, but the Dodgers' bullpen did him no favours, allowing both of those runs to score, plus a couple more (Gimenenez single, Ty France pinch-hit RBI groundout, Vladdy intentional walk, and a Bo Bichette liner off the wall that could only be a single, given the shape of things). This was such a solid outing all around, from all involved, that it seemed inconceivable that these same Blue Jays had lost a six-hour, forty-nine-minute just before, but maybe it shouldn't have? "I slept like a baby," Vladdy answered when he was asked how he dealt with his emotions in the immediate aftermath of that wild game. "I was so tired." Andres Gimenez slept well, too, he told Hazel, because he knew Bieber was starting the next game. 

It's young Trey Yesavage who starts the next one—about fifteen minutes from now, in fact. We're down to a best-of-three to decide the World Series Champion, so each of these games is beyond enormous (in the baseball sense), but whatever happens tonight, it's remarkable, isn't it, that, one way or another, this 2025 season is going to end at the SkyDome? Isn't that a weird thing to actually be happening? It sure would be sweet to have to shots at that fourth and final win, though, so I really would prefer everybody do a really good job again tonight, please, guys, if you maybe could.

KS   

2025 World Series, Game Three: Dodgers 6, Blue Jays 5 (F/18)

 

if it had to be somebody, it might as well have been Freddie

At some point late last night—maybe it was the top of the thirteenth? whichever inning it was that they showed Vladdy thoroughly finishing an apple, I think—a faint but discernible "Let's Go, Blue Jays" rose up briefly before it was deliberately and of course understandably drowned out by the excellent Dodger Stadium crowd (still not sure how they put up with the loudest "in-game ops" in the game; it's brutal! just stick with the lovely organ!). It's all a blur, honestly, as is bound to happen in the longest World Series game there's ever been (a tie, at least—none longer, we can say), and what certainly seems to one of the best baseball games in living memory (I was remarking last night that this game surpassed 1991 WS Game Seven for me [how many times did I rewatch my VHS-taped copy?], and that was before we were even into extras). In the early going, I was pleased as could be with Max Scherzer, who allowed just two solo home runs (that we do not get upset about solo home runs is a longstanding maxim in our house; I trust the youth to carry this forward)—one to Shohei Ohtani (more on him later!), one to Téo—in another fantastic outing, all things considered, and I was even more pleased when Alejandro Kirk parked a Glasnow curveball over the centre-field wall and staked us to a 3-2 lead, as they say, scoring both Vladdy and Bo, neither of whom should have even been on base but for Tommy Edmond's whiff on a seemingly bespoke (I am working that one in more) double-play ball to his right. The Blue Jays added another, and that four-run inning felt like almost enough to work with until Ohtani's second double of the night tied it up. But then Vladdy! Dashing madly around the bases and scoring from first with a wild slide on what turned out to only be a Bo Bichette single (he's not running "well"). When Ohtani homered again in the seventh to tie it once more, it was of course remarkable, but it still felt like we were playing a normal, if wonderful, baseball game. Then things got weird. Oh hey before that, let me say: lots of nice defensive plays, too! Big throws from Vladdy and Barger, Tommy Edmond with two great throws and a nice relay from Téo . . . just tonnes of great stuff. (The less said about the game's one true gaffe—the deeply botched and delayed ball/strike call that led to Varsho heading up the line, and Bo therefore understandably thinking it was ball four and a walk, only to be picked off—the better; it was just a poor scene all around.) But deep into the bullpens, that's when things really got strange, and stayed that way for really a lot of hours. After Glasnow, the Dodgers went, Banda, Wrobleski, Treinen, Dreyer, Sasaki, Kershaw for perhaps the final time (to get Lukes with the bases loaded, the Blue Jays' best chance in extras), Henriquez, and finally Will Klein for four innings, and for many more pitches than he'd ever thrown as a professional. You will note that that is literally everybody they had, as far as relievers goes (Yamamoto, who pitched Game Two, was loosening up in the pen, that absolute madlad). For the Blue Jays, they emptied it out too, going to Fluharty, Varland, Dominguez, Bassitt, Hoffman, Fisher, Eric Lauer for four-and-two-thirds somehow, and finally Brendon Little, who pitched out of big trouble in the seventeenth, only for Freddie Freeman (who has actually not been hitting that well?) to take a three-two pitch just a little deeper than the several balls Daulton Varsho had run down on the warning track throughout this game's previous six hours and thirty-nine minutes for Freeman's second World Series walk-off homer in as many years (no one else has ever had more than just the one). I felt bad for poor Little, who I can't imagine anyone sensible is in any way blaming for the loss, but I was also just relieved that the game ended on something clear-cut and definitive from a truly great player, rather than some error or mental lapse or meltdown that could have really hurt somebody. A strange concern, perhaps, but after eighteen innings of baseball, and as the clock drew very near to 4AM, it is very much how I felt. Had this seemingly endless spectacle of suffering and failure, now ended, summoned from me a renewed sense of empathy and the essential dignity of all living things? Or was I just super sleepy? Could easily have been both, just as soon as either. 

The game was incredible, in the true sense that it was difficult to credit what it offered us: Shohei Ohtani became the first player to reach base seven, eight, or nine times in a World Series game (he took care of all three, so that nobody else needs to), as his two doubles and two homers were followed by four intentional walks (man, Mookie Betts isn't really making all that much of those chances yet, is he?), and another walk where Little didn't seem too upset that his curveballs were ending up in the dirt. It is wild that the question surrounding a player who was walked five times is whether or not he should have been walked even more times, but for my part I will say that the times they went after him all made sense to me, both on a pure numbers level (take Shohei's obviously laudable home run rate, and compare it to the run expectancy of the first batter reaching base with no outs, for example, and you will see why walks with nobody on are as uncommon as they are; repeat this for any number of game states and/or just watch [maybe even sim!] a bunch of baseball), and also on the level of just straight-up competition, like, here is one of my guys I trust to get outs, and Ohtani, although quite clearly the greatest baseball player to ever live, is nevertheless a person who sometimes makes those—outs, I mean, and indeed even he makes more than half the time! At a certain point, you've got to play baseball. A little more on the subject of managerial decisions: it has been noted, too, that the batting order the Blue Jays were left with throughout extra innings was not their most desirable, which is of course true, but this loses sight (I would argue deliberately! as though in bad faith!) of the specific circumstances of each individual move at the time it was made, each rational in its turn (Springer hurt himself on a swing, and so Ty France, who did well, and then Davis Schneider to run for him; IKF to run for Bo and replace him at second is self-evident; Straw as a pinch-running late-inning defensive replacement for Barger has been the correct practice for ages; Heineman as a pinch-runner for Kirk when his run would have put the Blue Jays ahead well into extras is the right move). John Schneider used his bench aggressively, playing first to protect the lead with defensive replacements, and secondly to try to pinch-run his way to the lead in extras, all of which is exactly how you have to play it on the road; if you are the visiting team, you are functionally losing a tie game, and need to manage accordingly. I find no fault! The only managerial move all night that had me exhaling audibly was Braydon Fisher after Hoffman, rather than straight to Lauer, but my concern was misplaced: Fisher was given a pocket of the Dodgers' lineup to deal with, and he dealt with it admirably. The bullpens for both teams were the biggest concern going into this series, and so of course they just combined to turn in one of the great all-time displays of relief pitching we have seen or will ever see, allowing no runs over ten-and-a-half innings after the seventh. Unreal.

For all of this game's endless intrigues and complexities—some of them half-forgotten already, but the stuff that hasn't been, or the overall impression of it, at least, seems likely to linger in the mind—where do we actually stand in its super sleepy aftermath? At a two-one series after three, is all, which is the only place we can ever be after splitting the first two, I would remind you (I am sure you appreciate this reminder). The Blue Jays are still in the not-unenviable position of needing just the one win in Los Angeles to bring things back to [the] SkyDome for a Game Six on Friday night (Hallowe'en! spooky!). If Shane Bieber throws well in Game Four tonight against (sigh) Shohei Ohtani, who surely must be at least lightly tuckered after all of that (oh hey Kirk threw him out stealing second! I meant to mention that eariler!), that's the win we need right there, simple as that. And if he doesn't, our season will be on the line Wednesday night. Nothing announced, but that would be Yesavage? With everybody available out of the pen? This actually sounds okay to me, having seen "everybody" really put together something genuinely special last night. Great job, everybody! Thanks for all the baseball.

KS

2025 World Series, Game Two: Dodgers 5, Blue Jays 1

 

welcome, Téo; bring your cheer

Well, we got Yoshinobu Yamamoto'd, my friends. That's about the size of it. To say that the Blue Jays lightly squandered early chances in Game Two would not be inaccurate, but fails to truly the capture the lived experience of a game where you don't get anybody on after like the third inning, as Yamamoto retired twenty straight Blue Jays en route to his second consecutive complete game this postseason (last World Series complete game? the admirable Johnny Cueto for the 2015 Kansas City Royals, a team that actually needed no one to go the distance ever [an unreal bullpen, as longtime Baseball Feelers may recall]). Kevin Gausman turned in another excellent start, for his part, retiring seventeen Dodgers in a row at one point, allowing just one run until the seventh got lightly away from him with two solo homers on unideal but not terrible pitches. That the Dodgers tacked a couple runs on against the bullpen is frankly immaterial, as this game was fully and completely about Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers' pitcher about whom I had been, and totally remain, most worried.

On to beautiful Dodgers Stadium, then! If we win one of three, we're in good shape; two of three, tremendous shape; and if we win all three, my deep analytics suggest we would be World Series Champions even without winning any more games after that. There's really only one Dodger Stadium outcome—losing all three in a row—that would be anything less than really quite wonderful. And even then, what could you say? What could you even say? What I will say now, in closing real quick, is that the Blue Jays have always hit Game Three starter Taylor Glasnow fairly well, going back to Tampa days, and whether the great Max Scherzer has another tremendous day (like last time!) or a pretty terrible one (like several times just before!), it promises to be insane.  

KS 

2025 World Series, Game One: Blue Jays 11, Dodgers 4

 

Vladdy (to the left) had few if any doubts

Until Friday night, the last World Series pitch thrown in Toronto had been the one Joe Carter hit over the left-field wall to end Game Six in 1993, as Dan Schulman helpfully pointed out just before Trey Yesavage struck out Shohei Ohtani to get things underway these thirty-two years later. Of course it was, right? But as is so often the case, Dan had a neat way of saying it. I really like that guy. I also really liked this game! Like right from the start! Yesavage breezed through the top of the first— which might not sound like that much of an accomplishment, but run expectancy is higher in the first than in any other inning, even when the top third of the order does not consist of obvious first-ballot Hall-of-Famers—and the Blue Jay put pressure on the excellent Blake Snell, a lanky and likeable lefty, pretty much at once: after Springer and Davis Schneider grounded and popped out (respectively), Vladdy drew a walk, Bo singled (in his first plate appearance in weeks and weeks!) on a 3-0 changeup (if you're not giving Bo the green light on 3-0 against a lefty, I suppose, why even play him?), and Kirk walked before Daulton Varsho got under a breaking ball to pop out and end the inning. Leaving the bases loaded is for sure no fun, but all of that took really a lot of pitches, and the only undeniable weakness of this Dodgers team is middle relief; the earlier we can chase the starting pitcher, the better (this is of course pretty well always true, but especially in this case). It was Yesavage, though, who got touched up first (a run in the second), and also second (a run in the third), as he pitched into, around, and largely out of a good deal of traffic. Things could have been way, way worse, though, as his splitter really wasn't doing what it normally does, and you don't want to face bases-loaded Shohei Ohtani without your best stuff too many times (even the once felt bad). But Yesavage kept things close enough that I remained hopeful we'd have a chance to even the score once we got into the bullpen. 

Happily, we didn't have to even wait that long, with Varsho's home run thudding off the batter's eye to bring in Alejandro Kirk's single with Snell still on the mound in the fourth. In fact, Snell stayed until the sixth, and left with the bases loaded, in what turned out to be one of the biggest offensive innings in the history of the World Series. How about that! Thirteen batters came to the plate, three of them pinch-hitters (plus IKF running for Bo after his lead-off walk), and put up nine runs—nine!—highlighted, I think it's fair to say, by Addison Barger's pinch-hit grand slam (the first one in World Series history) the day after he slept on Davis Schneider's pull-out couch (sleepover! [Myles Straw apparently no longer had room]). That Varsho and Barger both homered off lefties is honestly maybe the most surprising thing about this whole wild happening; that our other home run came from Alejandro Kirk was less surprising, I would suggest, but no less delightful. 

All of this romping meant no Varland or Hoffman out of the pen, and instead Fluharty (who figures to be super important throughout the series as the lefty whose assignment will be Ohtani and Freeman), Dominguez (who has been totally solid in a somewhat unsung way), Fisher (who allowed a homer to Ohtani [I'm not even mad]), Chris Bassitt (whose stuff is "playing up" in relief, and who is by far the most stoked I have ever seen him), and Eric Lauer for the ninth. Different looks! For their guys! Let's go! 

There is of course no reason to think that any other game this series will go anything at all like this, and I am deeply alive to the fact that each Blue Jays win could easily be their last of this wonderful season. This might have been it! Who knows! It's Kevin Gausman on the mound for us tonight, and I can only ever feel good about that, but it's Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who worries me the most, going for the Dodgers. The recent FanGraphs headline "Does Toronto, or Indeed Humanity, Stand a Chance Against the Dodgers Rotation?" is no less true today because we managed to get to Blake Snell a little (and the bullpen a lot). But I guess we'll see. In closing, I would note real quick that we're just one win away from guaranteeing at least a Game Six at home, and also arguably just three wins away from winning the whole thing. Both seem good.

KS

 

ALCS Game Seven: Blue Jays 4, Mariners 3

the last instant before he knew for sure? or the first one after?

I watched it as it happened, of course, and I couldn't even tell you how many times since. I've also spent a good deal of time just sitting with it, like Tony Kemp (out in the left field of the human heart). George Springer's seventh-inning, three-run homer to flip a 3-1 score around and give the Blue Jays their only lead of the night in this, their first ALCS Game Seven (or Game Seven of any kind) in forty years, felt enormous in the moment—how could it have been bigger?—but it occurred to me nearly simultaneously (and not even in an especially doomed, fatalistic sort of way) that unless we got those last six outs, it would be forgotten pretty quickly, almost out of necessity (we can only bear so much). Experience teaches us that this is so. Who remembers Téo's two home runs against the Mariners in 2022 with anything like the clarity with which they recall Springer and Bo colliding amidst the hours-long bullpen implosion that followed? Is that even a part of how you think of that game? Those home runs? "If this holds up, they'll call this the Téo game," I definitely said aloud at the time, but it didn't, and so we don't. And without Bassitt's crisp ten-pitch eighth inning Monday night (find me another 72MPH curveball that clips the top of the zone like that, and then I will have seen two [maybe three]), and white-knuckle/lights-out closer Jeff Hoffman's ludicrous three-up, three-down, all-swinging-strike-threes ninth (poor Julio Rodriguez) to leave Cal Raleigh in the on-deck circle to end the Mariners' season (and need we even note that Hoffman allowed more home runs this season than any other relief pitcher in all of baseball? and that Raleigh had already homered this game against workhorse Louis Varland's 94 MPH change-up? the on-deck circle was the perfect place to leave him—great call on that one, Jeff Hoffman!), what is now rightly celebrated as the second-biggest home run in the Blue Jays' forty-nine seasons wouldn't have been that at all, would it? It's the precariousness of the whole thing that I'm left with, and not just of everything that came after, but of what came before, too: Barger works his five-pitch walk to open that crucial (we say now) seventh, as the very fine Bryan Woo could only find the zone once in the at-bat, but the thing that in a way I found even harder to believe than Springer's home run—both in the moment, and even more so afterwards—is Isiah Kiner-Falefa's ground-ball single up the middle, just past a diving J. P. Crawford, on an 0-2 Bryan Woo sweeper. That IKF was picked up late this season for his glove—off of waivers from the Pirates, mind you, and I say with no ill will that "waived by the 2025 Pirates" had to be a fairly low point for him professionally—is self-evident, and in that respect he's delivered throughout this series for sure. But how many times out of a hundred do you think IKF gets enough of that 0-2 sweeper to get it past Crawford? Consider the initial conditions right off the bat (both literally and figuratively) that kept that ball a hair to Crawford's left, rather than sending it right into his glove for a tailor-made (I think we should start saying "bespoke" more in this context) double play to turn a promising and ultimately season/team/career-defining inning into nothing at all—at least nothing good (for us). Or what about the Shane Bieber innings, as he pitched his way around a slugging Mariners lineup without the benefit of the usual break and depth on either his curveball or his slider? (They curved some; the slid a little.) And what about Gausman coming out of the bullpen, a rad move in the truest spirit of Game Seven—he didn't really have it either! But he turned a leadoff-walk into a double play, and after two more walks (one of them intentional, to Cal Raleigh), another groundball ended his seventh. Even Varsho's RBI single in the first came on an off-speed pitch he was clearly fooled on, and was way out in front of, but he stuck with it just enough to push it through the infield and tie the game. All I mean to say with all of this, I suppose, is that, once they've happened, Big Events (in the baseball sense) seem to take on an aspect of inevitability pretty quickly, but I remain low-key haunted by their contingency.

Even that fateful sinker! On the Springer home run, I mean! (I swear I will stop soon, just one more.) The great Trevor Plouffe, foremost among his generation of players-turned-analysts (and by a lot, in my view), said of Eduard Bazardo's sinker that caught too much of the plate and ended up more "middle-in" than "in," that "you know what George Springer does with pitches like that: he puts them in the fucking seats." A great way to say it! And certainly sometimes true! And of course I couldn't be happier that it was the case in this particular instance. But this was the third time Springer had seen Bazardo this series (should it have been the closer Andrés Muñoz, seen in a lovely photo here supporting Seattle Feline Rescue, in his stead?), and a study of postseason series over the last ten years has shown a discernible jump in OPS when a hitter sees a relief pitcher for the third time in a series (recall, if you will, John Schneider's explanation for bringing Little into his ill-fated game-five appearance: he was trying to give the Mariners' bats some different looks). The first two times Springer saw that same pitch, from that same pitcher, he rolled over it, and grounded out. Not this time, he didn't, but those first two times, which were no less actual. And so here I am, totally caught up in the wonder of the thing that has somehow happened, but at the same time I find myself, more than anything else, lingering in the several/many/endless ways in which it nearly didn't. This is perhaps a question of temperament, or disposition.

So anyway, now that we're here—in the 2025 World Series, against a Los Angeles Dodgers team that has three surefire Hall-of-Fame players at the top of its lineup (one of those three, the greatest talent the sport has ever seen, will also be the game-four starter, looks like), and that has another definite Hall-of-Famer who they might not necessarily even roster (Clayton Kershaw [oh okay, just checked, and he made it {will he even pitch, though?}]), and that could not have dispatched the ninety-seven-win Milwaukee Brewers with greater ease in the NLCS—how might we proceed? Fundamentally, I think we look to bash, and, indeed, to monster bash. As a team, the Blue Jays' 143 wRC+ (weighted Runs Created+, in which league-average is by definition 100) is far and away the best in this postseason, with the Dodgers' 113 the next best. Let's just go straight-up OPS, and look at the extent to which our boys have been boppin':   

Vladdy 1.440

Ernie 1.063

Springer .930

Barger .889

Varsho .804

Lukes .791

Gimenez .764

Kirk .753

IKF .571

League-average OPS was .719 this season, and so you will note that in addition to ALCS-MVP Vladdy putting up an all-timer of a run, Ernie Clement being unreal, and George Springer springing as georgily as he has ever sprung in his long, excellent, postseason career, our only starter whose OPS is below regular-season average (please keep in mind these are the numbers we're putting up against excellent pitching, too!) is the previously discussed (see above) Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose bat, it seems, is about to be replaced by that of Bo Bichette, ready to play in some capacity (DH? SS? 2B, where he has been taking ground balls for the first time since minor-league days?) for the first time since that ruinous slide directly into the catcher's shin-guard just ahead of a rain-delay in Yankee Stadium weeks and weeks ago. The Blue Jays have been hitting so well, and Andres Gimenez has been so impressive at short in Bo's absence, that I had been half-thinking, why mess with any of this? But if Bo is ready to go, or even not-really-ready-to-go-but-let's-find-him-some-ABs ready to go, just out of basic human decency you've got to give him a chance to play. Bo Bichette has been an enormous part of these last six years, as important to this team as anyone, and I will go so far as to say that even if it slightly hurts our perhaps-slim-yet-discernible chances of winning the World Series, I want to see him at least given a shot. As one wag on the boards had it earlier this year, Bo and Vladdy are a bonded pair! They need to be out there together. (As an aside, would you believe that Bo and Vladdy are within 0.7 fWAR for their whole careers so far? That's pretty remarkable!) At a certain point—as John Schneider asserted after the game-five loss led to all kinds of nonsense—your guys are your guys, and those are the guys you play. How fortunate, then, that one of our guys is Bo Bichette, one of the best pure hitters in the game.  

Kind of to my own surprise, I hadn't checked the updated FanGraphs World Series odds until just now, halfway through the composition of this very sentence, in no small part because, what does it even matter? This is all amazing! I love it all already! If the Blue Jays get smoked in four games, this would still be a banner year (literally! they'll put up a banner for it!), no worse than the third best we've ever had, and my own personal favourite one for sure, no question. It's been thirty-two years since the Blue Jays were last here, and without getting too heavy about my own mortality, I'm not sure precisely how many more thirty-two year intervals I have left in me (can't be more than a few). We all know the Dodgers are the more imposing team, the defending champions, looking to join the Yankees, Blue Jays (thank you), and Reds as the only teams to repeat as World Series champions in the last fifty years (the A's did it just before that, too). But there's a reason games one and two (and maybe even six? how about seven?) will be played in Toronto, rather than in Los Angeles, and it is that the Blue Jays were actually the better team in the regular season by one game—just one!—and I have chosen as that one game (it could be any) a Sunday afternoon in August, at Dodger Stadium, in which Mason Fluharty got both Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts with runners on to seal a 5-4 win that turned on late homers from Vladdy, Addison Barger, and Ernie Clement. The Blue Jays took just one of three that weekend, and I see here, coincidentally, that the FanGraphs projection has the Dodgers at 65%, the Blue Jays at 35%, a perhaps rare instance where the model corresponds almost perfectly to the general sense of thing. But let's go. "I actually love that the Blue Jays are playing a seemingly impossible foe," I wrote to some longstanding pals in a chat the other day, "because i) failure is more romantic than success, and ii) if something weird happens, and we win, it will be insane." 

KS

ALCS Game Six: Blue Jays 6, Mariners 2

 

yes sir, there she goes; let's admire that one

Game seven begins imminently, so let me say now in just these few moments that remain before it what a wonderful thing game six was, and not just Vladdy's homer, or the joyous havoc he caused on the bases (no Vladdy, don't run! that ball in the dirt has not skipped nearly far enough away from Cal Raleigh for you to do so prudently! oh wait no okay he threw it into left field and now you have scored with ease! never mind, Vladdy, great job! [how fortuitous for us all that he was born ready]), or even Addison Barger's two-run shot to bring home Ernie Clement's two-out triple, or any of those obviously wonderful things, but consider please, if you will, young Trey Yesavage, in literally just his sixth major-league start, who kept his head sufficiently amidst a considerable amount of traffic on the basepaths in the early going to induce three—three!—consecutive inning-ending double plays, two of them in near-NOBLETIGER fashion from the perspective of the Seattle Mariners (they were OOBLETIGERs, I suppose, in that the bases-loaded-ending-in-team-incapable-of-getting-easy-run[s] began with one out in each such instance). All of that, obviously, could have just as easily gone the other way should even one of those three crucial groundballs found a hole; or if the Mariners had not uncharacteristically kicked the ball around for three costly errors; or had either Varland or Hoffman faltered even slightly in relief (which they extremely did not); or really any number of little things along those lines (or others!). But just about everything broke our way, which, along with everybody doing an especially good job, is really all you need to win a postseason baseball game. "We’re trying to win one game in a row," John Schneider said ahead of game six. "We’ve done that ninety-nine times this year." Now that they've made it an even hundred, would it be to much to ask for just the one more? It might well be, but at the same time, I see no harm in merely asking, right? Shane Bieber, in whom my faith is unwavering, takes the hill, with literally everybody available out of the pen, up to and including Kevin Gausman and Max Scherzer (let's get nuts). Of course, the most agreeable outcome would be one that sees the Blue Jays ahead early and easily and in such comfort that nothing weird has to happen at all, but if things are even remotely close beyond the earliest innings, I hope to see starters—perhaps exclusively starters—up in the bullpen in the truest, darkest, yet at the same time most exuberant spirit of game seven. Could be good!  

KS

ALCS Game 5: Mariner 6, Blue Jays 2

 

hoooooo boy

I am probably less hung up on that calamitous eighth inning than just about anyone who watched it, or has even heard tell (and word seems to be traveling fast!), but there's for sure no getting around the disaster of it (in the admittedly limited sense that disaster is possible in the outcome of a baseball game). The Blue Jays had traffic on the bases all night, but had only been able to score twice: Barger in the fifth, on the Springer double, and a scurrying Kirk in the sixth, on Clement's soft single to right. There was even a NOBLETIGER in there at one point, one that ended when an Ernie Clement groundball traveled directly down, right in front of the plate, and just totally stayed there for an easy double play. I've never seen anything quite like it. Colleagues stranding colleagues, suffice it to say, as happens against good pitchers who are bending but not breaking, which was what the Mariners were able to achieve. But Gausman had been so good himself (just the Eugenio Suarez solo shot in the second), and Varland, too, as the first man out of the pen, that we carried a 2-1 lead through seven. It never felt like enough, but a one-run lead in a playoff game, especially on the road, never will. Given the context, it seemed curious, then, that it was Brendon Little who got up in the pen, and desk-guy Joe Siddall was profoundly and transparently pre-spooked by it when the broadcast threw things back to the studio between innings, even before it was entirely clear Little was even going to come in (Siddall was tense and terse [he was ternse]). If Jeff Hoffman and Seranthony Dominguez—in that unusual but compelling order—had been brought in to pitch the eighth and ninth the night before in a game we were leading by kind of a bunch, why not those guys now, in a similar situation, but one made all the more pressing by this scant one-run lead? As the eighth began to unfold, Dan Schulman and Buck Martinez speculated that it must have something to with using the lefty Little to turn the switch-hitting Raleigh and Polanco around, and then dealing with the lefty Naylor behind them as his third batter, rather than leave that to Hoffman (who does not have particularly troubling lefty/righty splits) or Dominguez (who kind of does). Even if it had worked, this move to Little, it would have been quirky, but it didn't work at all, and so the word "quirky" really hasn't come up in any of the immediate reaction (people getting worked up on Reddit, as they say, is the first draft of history). Cal Raleigh's homer tied it, and, after two walks, a switch to Seranthony Dominguez, and a hit batter, Eugenio Suarez (remember him? he's from earlier) hit a grand slam to right field that might as well have been a walk-off. Not great!

And yet, while in the immediate aftermath, this move to Little—an up-and-down reliever who has definitely struggled with his command in the second-half (slightly less so in September, but problems against righties persist)—is being characterized as an all-timer of a bad managerial decision, not just on "the boards" but also on the Blue Jays broadcast itself (and it totally might be! everybody might be right!), I find that I am not actually minding it all that much? Or at least not as much as you might expect. Brendon Little had nothing tonight, poor guy, but neither, as it turned out, did Seranthony Dominguez, who followed, and Dominguez was definitely part of everyone's plan for those last six outs (I have not seen anyone argue that Hoffman should have been tasked with all six, though I'm sure if we had it to do over again, we'd all ask him to give it a real good try). John Schneider, asked about it all afterwards (if you can believe it), said he wanted to give the top of the Mariners order a different look than they'd seen last night (mission accomplished on that front, no denying it) with a guy that he trusts in big spots (more than Fluharty or Lauer, if you really wanted a lefty in there?). Really, what else could he say at that point? It was a bad decision, followed by two bad performances, but this really isn't hitting me any differently than any other bullpen loss. Actually, I think if you replace the "but" in the previous sentence with an "and so," it gets closer to the heart of it. It was a shame not to have brought more of those baserunners home in support of yet another very fine Kevin Guasman outing, but one-run road-game leads are just not something experience has taught me are especially likely to stand up, and so this loss does not sting like a bee so much as it feels like the attenuated bite of a cat you have scooped and held slightly longer than the enscoopened cat has chosen to enjoy. A disappointment, yes, but only a minor one, and understandable almost to the point of predictable.  

So, what did we actually do here, what did we actually get done this week: turns out we took two out of three games in Seattle to bring the series back home to [the] SkyDome for game six Sunday night, and quite possibly a game seven beyond. If Trey Yesavage pitches even passingly like he did against the Yankees, and Shane Bieber, aided by the full weight of the Blue Jays pitching staff, can put together a game anything like the one he just pitched against the Mariners, then even a handful of runs of support here and there (from an offense that has been the best of any team so far this postseason) means we're headed to the World Series. Not a bad place to be in October, and I remain really very stoked about it. Oh hey also, switching topics for just a sec, did you notice, too, that Shohei Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings tonight and struck out ten whilst also hitting three home runs? In what is almost certainly the finest game of Major League Baseball anyone has ever played? To finish off the Dodgers' sweep of the ninety-seven win Milwaukee Brewers (hey congrats on a great season guys)? A cynic might say that the Mariners and Blue Jays are really only competing to see who is to be granted the privilege of getting rolled by the Dodgers in the World Series, but I would suggest i) that would definitely still be pretty neat to be a part of, and ii) you never know! Baseball's pretty weird sometimes! 

KS

ALCS Game 4: Blue Jays 8, Mariners 2

 

they call him "Max" Scherzer because he Scherzers the most that anyone can

Frankly, guys, I'm a little surprised! There really wasn't any reason to think it would go quite this well, was there? Max Scherzer's five-and-two-thirds of two runs on three hits (four walks, five strikeouts) probably exceeded everyone's expectations besides Scherzer's own famously unreasonable ones (he is not necessarily a first-ballot "reasonable guy"). Much attention has understandably been paid to the comical intensity with which he assured John Schneider that no, he did not in fact need to be relieved; that, on the contrary, he was good; and finally, let's go (it made Ernie Clements of us all [the exchange has already been Jomboy'd, but there really wasn't much for him to add in this instance]). To me, a neater, though less remarked upon aspect of Scherzer's start (probably because it was noted on the Rogers Sportsnet Canadian broadcast, but not, I am told, the American Fox one) came in the first, when, with two runners on, Vladdy yells to get Scherzer's attention, reminding him to better conceal his grips, as the amiable Julio Rodriguez, leading off first, was in fact all over them already, and could no doubt both see the changeup grip and relay that information to the batter, which is a problem Scherzer had in New York about a month ago (as a direct consequence, he got utterly shredded in that start). Scherzer adjusted at once, got out of the early jam with a double play ball almost immediately, and away we went. Ludicrous! A ludicrous outing! And the bats, my goodness the bats: Gimenez again, somehow, not just with the two-run homer but with four runs knocked in by the end of it; Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, newly in the lineup after Santander's reaggravated injury ended his season and caused a reshuffling (Barger to right, rather than third, where he immediately made two huge catches and crucially threw Naylor out at third to cut short an inning that easily could have gotten away from us), got on and scored twice (IKF, I mean); and Vladdy homered again as part of one of the best postseason runs any player has ever had in the history of Major League Baseball, no big deal. Between being historically great at the plate, that tip to Scherzer in the first, and the concrete, specific advice you could see him offer Barger in the dugout after Barger was caught looking to strikeout in a big spot, only for for Barger to rip a double in his next plate appearance, Vladdy is far outperforming every expectation anyone has ever had of Vladimir Guerrero Jr, which is a wild, wild thing to consider (you may recall that his FanGraphs "Prospects TLDR" begins "Guerrero has a messianic bat," and that he recently signed an extension to play with the Blue Jays until 2040). But in our entirely justified Vladthusiasm (Jr.), let us not overlook the achievements of the bullpen last night, from Fluharty to finish the sixth, to an inning each from Varland, Hoffman, and Dominguez. And wasn't it interesting that Schneider went with Hoffman with a six-run lead in the eighth, rather than the ninth, so that he might deal with the top of the order; that's the kind of thing I absolutely love to see, honestly (high-leverage reliever deployment irregularities? yes please). By the end of the game, given all that had occurred—and, crucially, the heightened context of its occurrence—I found myself not only thinking to myself, but even texting to pals, that this was as satisfying as any Blue Jays' win I can recall in my forty years of attending to this sort of thing. And I guess why wouldn't it be? This is all tremendously, outrageously big. Kevin Gausman is on the mound tonight (in just a couple hours, really), with a chance to head back to Toronto with two shots to wrap this up, if things go as they very well might (the Mariner's Bryce Miller is, of course, certainly no joke). Should Gausman falter, worst-case scenario is indeed a worst-case Ontario, in that we're still headed back to [the] SkyDome for a game six at home. But maybe tonight we can slide all nimbly into a series lead, in a manner analogous to that exhibited by the sly Myles Straw below:     

It's a best of three series now, and I feel like we could probably win one of those, right? Either way, this much is certain: it is a hot-dogs-and-root-beers, Friday-early-evening start-time, perhaps the last one of the year, and we are going to savour it as such.  

KS

ALCS Game 3: Blue Jays 13, Mariners 4

ah, the cat's light . . .

Setting aside, for a moment, the Blue Jays' thirteen runs on eighteen hits last night—which is a pretty strong topic, and one to which we will for sure return—how about Shane Bieber? That first inning was a little shaky, I will grant you, with the walk, two-run homer, and then the double, too, but if ever anyone has "settled in" after "early jitters," this was like an archetypal instance of that. Bieber allowed just those two runs on four hits through six innings (eight strikeouts, one walk), and looked like he could have gone a little deeper, too, if so called, but why push it with the guy who lines up to be the game-seven starter, should we be spared? To the bats, though, the sweet, sweet bats: Andres Gimenez's two-run homer (he homingly homered home Ernie Clement, who continues to hit closer to .500 than you might even think) to tie it up was as welcome as it was unlikely (Gimenez confessed after the game that he was just trying to hit something to the right side to move Ernie, who had doubled, over to third); Vladdy's extreme double off the wall set the stage perfectly for Daulton Varsho's similar double with the bases loaded a few batters later; and from there, everybody just starting launching taters throughout the stadier: Springer, Vladdy (who was four-for-four, his last double looking like he could have tried to stretch it for the cycle), Kirk (three-run shot!), Addison Barger . . . it turned out to be another true romp in what has become, seven games in, one of the top offensive performances in the history of the Major League Baseball postseason (by any number of measures, but you can just keep it simple with OPS, which would has the 2025 Blue Jays safely within the top ten). Pretty good! That all of this happened—or the most significant portion of it, rather, the real game-deciding part—against the very fine George Kirby is all the more impressive (there were some low-leverage guys used later, as you would expect). Tonight's task is realistically a good deal taller, in that it is Luis Castillo (and just his whole cool style) on the mound for the Mariners (I wanted us to land him from the Reds so hard; why were my entreaties rebuffed [less in word than in deed]?), while we are going with first-time-in-a-month Max Scherzer, who, at this late stage of his sure-thing Hall-of-Fame career, is generally understood to be a semi-animated skeleton of some kind. Do not mistake me: I am into it, and the potential for glory here, should Scherzer even manage to get through the lineup once without major incident, is substantial. But is this less a Max Scherzer start than perhaps a bullpen day (aren't they pretty much all, though, I suppose, in the final analysis?) in which Max Scherzer is the actant performing the rôle of l'ouvreur? I'm sure the goal for Max Scherzer, personally, is to slice these guys up three times through the order and maybe hand off the ball for the ninth if his pitch count is getting up there a little, but I think the more level-headed team goal is probably two wins out of these three games in Seattle, right, so that game six and indeed perhaps game seven can follow in Toronto? And so it's Scherzer tonight, and, though nothing has been announced beyond that, you'd think Gausman in what we might as well assume will be the first of three must-win games after that, with Yesavage and Bieber to follow? I really can't think of any other way they could play it, but I am open to the possibility that I am not thinking super clearly about any of this, other than thinking about how this clearly rules. 

KS    

ALCS Game 2: Mariners 10, Blue Jays 3

 

Lundi-soir Vladdy, c'était nous

It wasn't the Mariners' first home run, a Julio Rodriguez three-run shot off young Trey Yesavage in the first, that was the problem, really, as we grinded out the three runs we needed to tie it back up in cheeringly short order. Nor was it the the Mariners' third and mercifully final home run of the evening, a two-run job from Mississauga's perpetually stoked Josh Naylor (he does not get stoked so much as arrives stoked, and stokes further as events dictate), as things were already fairly out of reach at that point. No, it was that three-run homer right in the middle, the Jorge Polanco one off of Louis Varland, that really felt like the one that truly sunk us (nautical metaphor). A drag! (Ships have drag.) And yet I could not help but notice, as it was all unfolding, just how less tense it feels to be losing a postseason game than it is to be clinging to a narrow lead in one. It is, if not unpleasant, very nearly unpleasant to be leading a playoff game, unless you are really, super-duper leading it; anything less than that, and each pitch feels so fraught as to compel, if not outright require, near-constant snacking (which is also fine, so long as snacks be near at hand [oh, they have been; and oh, they will be]). Much like the top-seeded National League team, those cheap (relatively speaking) and cheerful (in absolute terms) Milwaukee Brewers, our own top-seeded Toronto Blue Jays find themselves down 0-2, each team having dropped their first two games at home to their league's west-division champion. Probably better to be down a couple games to the Mariners than to the Dodgers? And yet, all the same, not good! I'm not minding any of this nearly as much as you might expect, though. The Mariners' starting pitching has looked really good so far, and is only likely to look better as their top arms now stand at the ready (to the extent that arms can stand [the mixed-metaphor minefield of synecdochic metonym has exploded yet another guy]), and the scene shifts to lovely and spacious Safeco Field (they're not calling it that anymore but those initial lead-sponsor naming rights have not yet lapsed in my heart [how can you not be romantic about naming rights?]). In game three—a pretty big one? in that we emerge either down 2-1, and very much in a series, or down 3-0, in which case, that becomes somewhat less true?—we are running Shane Bieber out there, and even though things did not go especially well for him in his game-three start in Yankee Stadium in the previous round, I remain not just hopeful, but genuinely optimistic, perhaps in no small measure because of the strange relationship that develops when you obtain a player in one of your simulation baseball games only for Blue Jays Actual to later obtain the services of that selfsame player in the primary world of our experience (this is sort of what happened between me and Yimi Garcia, honestly). I would not be surprised if he pitches well! And if he doesn't, I mean, what are you gonna do. I'll tell you what the Blue Jays are gonna do, though, one way or the other, is start Max Scherzer in game four. This, to me, is a move at once by (John Schneider, Pete Walker, Don Mattingly, perhaps even Ross Atkins et al.), of (Max Scherzer himself), and for (me) absolute madlads. Max Scherzer has pitched just awfully for ages now, almost certainly tipping his pitches in at least one of his disastrous late-season outings. And yet I love this move. Let's see if this absolute psycho (I say it with love) has one more big game left in this surefire Hall-of-Fame career. Wouldn't it be neat if he did? Wouldn't it be neater still if that game brought us back even at 2-2 in the series, and guaranteed a game six back home at [the] SkyDome (camel-case forever)? Even if all it did was bring us back to 3-1, and bought us one more day of Blue Jays baseball, I would be totally into that much, too. And if it just goes ruinously, hot on the heels of Shane Bieber maybe not going so great tonight, well I mean so it goes. You can't win them all, I have heard tell, even when you have very nearly won them all, which is how one ends up still playing baseball on October 15th, one of only four teams left, still just four wins away from the World Series, and eight wins away from winning the whole blessèd thing. At this point in this deeply wonderful baseball season, I am literally down for whatever, and choose to approach whatever remains in the come-what-may spirit embodied by this unknown (in the sense of unnamed [I suppose I just mean anonymous]) yet iconic fellow right here:

Though much separates us—time, place, whether or not we enjoy to smoke cigarettes very much at all—what unites us is our devil-may-care enjoyment of Blue Jays baseball, particularly on the Baton Broadcast System, as Fergie Oliver used to say somewhat confusingly at the start for a few years there (because we were pretty sure we were mostly just watching regular old CTV still?), very much at the height of when you could enter to win a V-Tech cordless phone whenever the Blue Jays hit a home run. But our shared enjoyment of and enthusiasm for Blue Jays baseball, his and mine, began before that era, and has long-since survived it, too, I would imagine. Unless the fellow pictured above is no longer with us (sad), or has perhaps simply moved on to other hobbies that he has found he enjoys more instead (understandable). Either way, let's play ball. 

KS  

ALCS Game 1: Mariners 3, Blue Jays 1

 

uh oh

"This one's on me" was Kevin Gausman's gracious (and suitably show) assessment of the Blue Jay's 3-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners to open this American League Championship Series Sunday night, but he was clearly mistaken: Gausman was one strike away from six very fine shutout innings when Cal Raleigh (the Big Dumper himself) crushed a solo home run to right to tie the game at one; Gausman walked the next batter, who, Brandon Little, alas, could not hold at bay in relief. That's two runs charged to Gausman's account in five-and-two-thirds innings, which you would take from your starter just about every time, right? And so I am much more inclined to agree with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s assessment of the evening, which reads as follows: "We just didn't hit." After George Springer's first-pitch dinger, the Blue Jays added only Anthony Santander's second-inning single to that initial and quite rad opening volley. Two hits! Just two! This is the same team that put up twenty-three runs against the Yankees just last weekend, and scored thirty-four runs on fifty hits in that all-timer of a four-game series. Baseball continues to be both the weirdest and the best, though I am hoping that the particular weirdnesses of game two, whatever they may be, will prove more congenial to my particular interests. A split at home, win even one of the three in Seattle, and we're back home for game six? And indeed seven? Is this too much to ask? It may very well be! And yet here I am, asking all the same. Trey Yesavage takes the mound but twenty-five minutes from this, our moment of composition, and it sure would be neat if he could slice up these totally reasonable Seattle Mariners much as he did the largely loathsome Yankees (not you, Aaron Judge; you seem pretty nice) just eight days ago. Tell you what, implied reader, check back later and I will let you know.     

KS 

Blue Jays 5, Yankees 2 (which is to say, Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1)

 

 a glad band

"What a flex," a dear old friend noted in a chat after the Blue Jays 5-2 win Wednesday night, "to eliminate the Yankees with a bullpen game." Objectively, this is undoubtedly true, but it was honestly not a thought that had occurred to me, at least not in that particular spirit, even once at any point during this deeply improbable yet highly rad eight-reliever outing, for sure the finest bullpen performance in the history of the team (what could surpass it? I mean ever?). Headed into this series, I don't think many observers would have argued that the Blue Jays' bullpen was among the team's greatest strengths; indeed, insofar as you can say that a ninety-four-win season had any problems of any real significance at all (in my view, you kind of can not), there was a several-week period in which things got a little dicey in relief, you may recall, and Jeff Hoffman outings had been at times (though have not been lately) a bit of a wild ride. But there he was, Hoffman I mean, good for the final four outs, striking out Cody Bellinger to seal the deal. What a parade of guys it was: we had Louis Varland, not twenty-four hours removed from giving up homers to both Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr., good for the first four outs of the game as the opener; Mason Fluharty gave us the next three, but allowed a Ryan McMahon solo shot to the short porch in right along the way; our guy Seranthony Dominguez came in much earlier than I would have expected, but with great success, allowing just a walk against his five outs; the stalwart Eric Lauer did just the same (though left-handedly);  Yariel Rodriguez, who I would have guessed would be one of our multi-inning guys for sure, got just the one out to end the sixth; Brendan Little got us three outs ahead of rookie Braydon Fisher, who got into a little trouble in the eighth that the aforementioned Hoffman sorted out before returning to the mound to handle the whole ninth with nobody up in the pen behind him, allowing Judge to knock in a Trent Grisham double along the way for the Yankees second run, but this was not a run anyone could mind even a little. A few times throughout an evening I spent largely in and around our cozily-lit kitchen, as I marveled at just how well this all was going, I paused to take stock of what a success here would look like; this is to say, how many runs would be a good result from this bullpen day? Obviously the realest answer is an n-1 type of deal, but beyond that, what would you say, four runs, maybe? You'd have to call that pretty good, right? So maybe if the Blue Jays' bats could somehow put up five, I figured, we'd be okay? Well they sure did! Cam Schlittler's last start, against the Red Sox, had been remarkable, but his last start against us saw him chased in the second inning. Wednesday's game was more like the former than the latter, but all the same, there was Vladdy knocking in a George Springer double to get the Jays on the board in the top of the first, and away we went: Springer's sac fly in the fifth brought home the unstoppable Ernie Clement (what a series!); Nathan Lukes had the crucial knock in the seventh to bring home Clement and Gimenez after Jazz Chisholm had booted a grounder that was just extraordinarily suited to an inning-ending double-play just a couple batters before (oops!); and light-hitting-yet-right-hitting Myles Straw brought home Alejandro Kirk (who had doubled and then also tagged up on a fly to deep right, way to go, Kirky!) to give us the five runs that would have beaten the four runs I had for whatever reason settled on in my mind as being a solid result from l'enclos des releveurs, not that we ended up needing all of them. I guess it really was quite a flex, then? Even more so, I suppose, once John Schneider revealed that he had only sent Trey Yesavage sauntering out to the bullpen mid-game, like he did, to mess with the Yankees, so far as he was able, as he had no actual intention of using him in game four (he did not say the same about about Gausman, who I assume he really would have put in under certain circumstances).  

What a wonderful, joyous round of baseball it was, absolutely as much fun as you're ever going to have in a postseason series: two all-time romps in front of the eager home crowd, then a road loss on account of a freaky home run by the best right-handed hitter in at least a generation (and you can make a reasonable case for "ever," too) followed by a taught-though-never-quite-fraught total-team series-clinching win to eliminate the Yankees in front of their own frustrated, booing, and weirdly depleted home crowd (many headed for the gates after the Yankees left the bases loaded in the eighth, which is wild to me as someone who has stayed right to the end of some enormously hopeless and insignificant baseball games in my lightly-misspent youth). Vladdy already feels like a legend at twenty-six. Trey Yesavage only pitched once, but did so whilst utterly Juan-Guzman-maxing. Daulton Varsho had a totally unreasonable number of extra-base hits in those first two games at home. Ernie Clement was on base constantly. All of our guys who we have enjoyed so much all summer long just totally did a great job, and none of this could have been any more fun.

And now the Mariners, after Seattle's fifteen-inning win over the Tigers last night, in a game I perhaps foolishly stayed up for (I am not even convinced it was actually a good baseball game). I'm not entirely sure which team I'd really have rathered the Blue Jays face: probably the Tigers, I guess, but we've won the season series against both, and the Tigers, despite their late-season slide, pulled it together admirably against the scrappy Guardians, played the Mariners tough(ly), and had the best pitcher left in the tournament in Tarik Skubal. Unlike the Mariners' Cal Raleigh, you can't avoid Skubal by just walking him, right? So I don't know. They're both beatable teams in a seven-game series, as are the Blue Jays themselves, of course. With the Brewers and Dodgers NLCS now official, this may be the least objectionable postseason final four of my lifetime, and I will endeavour to appreciate it as such regardless of the results the rest of the way (though clearly I have preferences). Something that has perhaps occurred to you is that this ALCS will be the first postseason meeting of these 1977 expansion cousins, which is a worthy thing to note, but have you yet reflected on how this Mariners/Blue Jays match-up is also the first postseason proxy encounter between FanGraphs dramaturgical dyad Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli? Isn't that weird, that this is a thing that not only could happen, but that is demonstrably about to? I think it is okay to give in to astonishment in the face of this reality. Consider, too, that the Blue Jays are only eight wins away from getting this man a ring:

Let it fuel you, Vladdy; let it fuel you.

KS

Yankees 9, Blue Jays 6 (which is to say Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1)

should have wanted it more, I guess

So that one got away from us a little! That Vladdy homered again in the first, and that the boys rallied for four runs in characteristic fashion to go up 6-1 and chase Carlos Rodon in the second, these are all excellent things. But when you're on the road, are you really up before the other team has batted in the bottom half? Are you really? My perhaps idiosyncratic view is that all road leads are an illusion always. It is regrettable, certainly, that Shane Bieber did not have it Tuesday night, and that John Schneider understandably felt compelled to pull him in the third with things at 6-3 and Bieber both getting hit hard and missing his spots (one or the other, you maybe let it ride a little longer?). Of all our guys, I would not have expected Isiah Kiner-Falefa to boot a ball, and I would not have expected a windy popup to pop right out of Addison Barger's glove behind third, but these kinds of physical errors are easier to take than some major lapse of judgement or effort; these are things that happen. What does not really happen, and yet did, is homers being hit on 101mph fastballs that are well-in off the plate. I thought the deal with Aaron Judge's great big long arms is that he can cover off-the-plate away! Wouldn't these same super long arms mean he would be more jammable inside? Perhaps that was Louis Varland's thinking? You will literally never see a less likely pitch homered uponst, and yet there it was, ripped off the foul pole to tie the game at six, and from there, certain things followed. Other minor disappointments included Santander (who delivered a big, two-run single in the second, it must be noted) diving disastrously for a ball in right, and a gettable ball getting by Vladdy to his right—neither of these were errors, but both guys would tell you they should have made those plays. (Honestly, maybe Springer in the outfield rather than at DH when Santander is the guy you're going to put out there? Not the case when you're starting Nathan Lukes, obviously.) There's all kinds of things you can say, but fundamentally it is a drag that Bieber had so poor a third inning that we had to go to Fluharty early. Everything follows from that, really.

And so a bullpen day for game four, which has been the plan all along (Berios and Bassitt hurt, Scherzer sadly unplayable down the stretch), and either we steal one here (let's go Varland! and also Lauer! and literally all of our guys! because that is how many of them we are likely to use!), or it is back to Toronto for game five Friday night, with both Gausman and Yesavage ready to go for it. That's really what I'm expecting, the latter, but the former would really be quite something, and I would welcome it with great enthusiasm, should the universe choose to unfold its mysteries in that particular manner (please do).  

KS   

Blue Jays 13, Yankees 7 (which is to say Blue Jays 2, Yankees 0)

 

there she goes

A top-five-or-so all-time Blue Jays home run, then? Somewhere in the mix with Joe Carter (1993 WS),  José Bautista (2015 ALDS), and Edwin Encarnacion (2016 WC), with neither Roberto Alomar (1992 ALCS) nor Ed Sprague (1992 WS) quite in the same register on account of those last two having being on the road (through no real fault of their own)? It's hard to say how many times I've watched the at-bat in the two days since (FOX, Sportsnet, and FAN590 calls here; truly comical Yankees radio call here; TVA call here [ooh que c'était frapper fort!]), but what stands out now is really the same thing that stood out to us as we watched it together on the couch as it happened: watch Vladdy between the pitches; look how loose in he is in the shoulders, the hips. It's not a natural looseness, but a practiced, disciplined one. This is Vladdy remembering that he needs to be loose, and remembering how to effectuate that looseness, or to take steps that will allow him to achieve something that resembles or functions close enough to looseness as to offer some, or perhaps even many, of its benefits. The swing itself will, of course, transport those of us of a certain age and inclination twenty years or more into the past, seeing his father in every movement from the first twitch all the way to the huge, wraparound follow-through, and while there's nothing new about that, it still strikes me just about every time (and possibly moves me somewhat [hard to say]). The moment felt enormous, and has been taken up as such already not just among Blue Jays fans but around baseball more broadly, probably out of proportion to the actual role it played in the game objectively—the Blue Jays were already up 5-0, and rookie Trey Yesavage was well into his unreal eleven-strikeout, no-hit five innings of work in not just his postseason début, but his fourth start in the majors at all—as Vladdy's grand slam didn't pull one out of the fire for us so much as it turned an already solid lead into a laugher (the Blue Jays went up 12-0 before the Yankees started stringing things together against our low-leverage relievers). But that was part of the joy of it, too: two games into the ALDS, this hasn't just been a romp, but an historic romp, putting up twenty-three runs—twenty-three!—against the Yankees fourth starter and on-again-off-again bullpen, sure, but also against their ace, Max Fried, who will certainly pick up some Cy Young votes for the season he's just turned in. The Blue Jays have more home runs so far (Vladdy, Kirk, and Varsho for two each, with Springer and Clement getting in on it, too) than they have strikeouts. Daulton Varsho had twelve total bases Sunday, which is good for about the fifteenth-best postseason game by any hitter ever, and his day has already become an afterthought, while Vladdy's swing has become the defining moment of this improbably wonderful weekend (given the respective temperaments of both guys, this turn of events would seem to suit them both well enough). There can be no expectation that things will continue quite like this as the series shifts to Yankee Stadium, but I don't just like that we have Shane Bieber going for us tonight in what will surely be a pretty intense situation; I super-duper like that we have Shane Bieber going for us tonight in what will surely be a pretty intense situation. Carlos Rodón can be excellent, but the Blue Jays have hit him well this season, just as Max Fried can be excellent, but the Blue Jays, for whatever reason, have been all over him this year. Without checking, I feel comfortable asserting (or at least speculating) that Vladdy hits better in Yankee Stadium than any other road park, and not just the three-homer night in 2022 that led to Gerrit Cole literally tipping his cap to Vaddy while the ball was in play on what turned out to be a double down the right-field line. What if we can put together a couple hits early? What if Springer, who homered Sunday, is locked in again after a tiny stretch of being slightly less so? What if the boys—stick with me here—continue boppin'? What then, I ask you?

KS

Blue Jays 10, Yankees 1 (which is to say Blue Jays 1, Yankees 0)

 

a big stretch from a long guy

Pretty ticklish until the seventh! And that sixth was intense! Kevin Gausman had been dealing until then, of course, and on like no pitches, as the Yankees' clear game-plan of swinging early in counts to avoid the two-strike splitter meant Gausman was only throwing ten-or-so pitches an inning, and he can do that pretty much indefinitely, right? Especially behind a two-run lead on early homers from both Vladdy and Alejandro Kirk (hey thanks guys, seriously, for real)? And some characteristically strong defense (go Vladdy; go, Vladdy)? That sixth, though: bases loaded, nobody out, Aaron Judge at the plate . . . things could have gone south in a hurry. The three-two splitter low and away that Judge chased for strike three was really a heck of a pitch, as was Louis Varland's belt-high 101MPH fastball that beat Giancarlo Stanton down the exact middle of the plate a few batters later. To escape bases loaded, nobody out, against Judge, Bellinger, Rice, and Stanton with only one run coming in is of course not a true NOBLETIGER, but I would argue that, especially given the context, it was a NOBLETIGER of the spirit (I imagine it may well have felt that way to Yankees fans). The Blue Jays' four-run seventh and the four-run eighth that followed made this one a true thrashing down the stretch, with everybody hitting everything off a Yankees bullpen that had, until then, performed admirably (called upon in the third inning after Louis Gil's low-key struggles), but let us not forget the super-tense tension that tensioned tensely before Andres Gimenez singled home the Blue Jays' third run through a drawn-in infield when the outcome of this game still felt very much in doubt. Kirk's second homer of the day (and the fifth in his last ten plate appearances, somehow [Kirk joins Johnny Bench as the only catchers to hit two home runs in a postseason game against the Yankees]) was the clear highlight of those eight runs that sort of felt like they fell from the sky, but there was much to admire all around, and really a lot of fun to be had. In a five-game series, each win is enormous, obviously, but it seemed especially important for us to win this one, with our best pitcher on the mound against the Yankee's number four starter; it seems less likely we'll be able to put ten on the board in game two with Max Fried starting, but the Blue Jays actually hit Fried pretty well this year! So who knows! Young Trey Yesavage will be our guy Sunday afternoon, and it sure would be a whole lot cooler to go into Yankee Stadium up two games to none rather than all squared up. Someone should communicate this important truth to the Toronto Blue Jays, lest they, in their haste, overlook it. 

KS