Minnesota Shuts Down Toronto’s Bats, Advances to ALDS

Whatever happens to the Twins for the rest of the playoffs, at least there won’t be any more talk about laundry-based curses. After five shutout innings from starter Sonny Gray, the Twins continued to keep the Jays’ bats silent en route to a 2–0 win in Game 2 to clinch the wild card series.

If nothing else, Wednesday’s game was a showcase of station-to-station baseball that’s generally unheard of these days. While a certain former All-Star shortstop broadcaster spent much of the game bemoaning Toronto trying to hit for power rather than stringing base hits together, the latter is the one thing the Jays were actually able to do, collecting nine singles on the day. But with the exception of Santiago Espinal, out at second on Matt Chapman’s double-play grounder in the sixth, all Toronto runners finished their innings stranded. The Twins didn’t do any better at hitting for extra bases, but aided by a walk allowed by José Berríos and then another by his controversial replacement, Yusei Kikuchi, their singles came at an opportune moment.

This was only the 21st game in playoff history to feature no extra-base hits, but only three games had more combined hits than the 16 for the Jays and Twins. Those were all higher-scoring affairs — two had 11 runs, and the third had a combined nine — so you can argue that there has never been a playoff game in which the absence of doubles, triples and homers was felt more.

But it’s not the lack of pop that will be the lasting memory of this game. Instead, it’s Toronto manager John Schneider’s decision to pull Berríos in the fourth inning after allowing a leadoff walk to Game 1 hero Royce Lewis. The obvious idea here was that with a runner on first in a scoreless game, there would be a benefit to treating Kikuchi — in the bullpen because the wild card round is only three games — as a second starter who had a favorable matchup with lefty hitters Max Kepler and Alex Kirilloff coming up (or at least swapped out for pinch-hitters). Further affecting that calculation was the fact that Kikuchi has significant platoon splits. As of the mid-September run of ZiPS, only two established starting pitchers had a better lefty-killing platoon projection: Andrew Abbott and Ranger Suárez.

The problem is what may have been an uncontroversial move in the sixth or seventh inning is going to raise more eyebrows in the fourth. The natural comparison would be to Kevin Cash’s decision to remove Blake Snell in the sixth inning of Game 6 of the 2020 World Series. But that was an easier case to make, with Snell not known for going deep into games and the Dodgers starting their third go-around in the batting order. Berríos was pulled after only 12 batters and 47 pitches.

Schneider kept things rather vague in his post-game conference.

We had a few different plans in place. José was aware of it; he had electric stuff. Tough to take him out. I think, with the way they’re constructed, you want to utilize your whole roster. And it didn’t work out.

It’s one of those moves that would look awful if it failed but wouldn’t earn significant plaudits if it did. In the 2021 World Series, Brian Snitker pulled Ian Anderson after five innings of no-hit ball in order to bring in A.J. Minter with lefties Michael Brantley and Yordan Alvarez on the horizon. The Braves won the game and the championship, and practically nobody mentioned it since.

As Schneider noted, it didn’t work. Kikuchi threw several high-effort sliders, hitting 90 mph, but he was all over the zone, including a fastball that even Javier Báez wouldn’t offer at. A Donovan Solano walk followed by Carlos Correa’s single put the game’s first and final runs on the scoreboard. Kikuchi escaped the inning before the damage got worse, but those two runs proved to be the difference.

If you had to choose one moment of this game to serve as the one that haunts Blue Jays into the future, though, it’s not when Schneider called for Kikuchi; it was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s blunder on the base paths in the top of the fifth. With Guerrero on second and George Springer on third after a Sonny Gray wild pitch, Vlad took too generous of a lead at second, and Gray punished him severely.

Losing the tie baserunner in scoring position is always brutal in this position, but it felt especially so at that point in the game, coming off a deflating moment the previous inning. The Jays were aggressive all game against Gray, resulting in 11 swings-and-misses, and that felt like their best opportunity to get those runs back.

After Louie Varland relieved Gray in the sixth, the Jays put together three hits — the third, an Espinal infield single, not being enough to drive in the runner on second — to load the bases for Chapman. But Caleb Thielbar got him to ground into the double play, and that was basically all she wrote for Toronto’s 2023 season. There was one last brief moment of hope after another Espinal single, this one off Jhoan Duran, with one out in the ninth, but Duran proceeded to extinguish it in matter-of-fact fashion, whiffing Chapman on three curves and then Daulton Varsho on three fastballs.

While there will no doubt be calls in Toronto for the heads of Schneider and the villainous stathead puppetmasters supposedly controlling his every move, the game highlighted a constant problem for the Jays this year, and one that was unexpected coming into the season: the missing offense. After finishing second in the AL in runs scored in 2022, Toronto dropped to eighth in 2023 despite the addition of Brandon Belt and the stunning debut of Davis Schneider. This was never supposed to be a mediocre offensive team, but it was, and now the Jays have to replace Chapman and figure out how to get another big season out of Guerrero.

When you lose 2–0, I’d submit that the offense is always primarily at fault, not any pitching change; with zero runs, the Jays wouldn’t have done any worse if Mayor McCheese had relieved Berríos. But history isn’t written by the losers and is definitely unconcerned with being fair, and Game 2 of the 2023 AL Wild Card Series will always be the Yusei Kikuchi Game.

For the Twins, practically everything that happens now is gravy. They’ve dispelled two curses — though they really need to win a series against the Yankees to avenge fully the ghosts of past losses — and get two days off before starting an even bigger challenge than the Jays: the reigning world champion Astros.