Salad Jays: Ontario Upstarts Upset Dodgers in Game 1

The Blue Jays and Dodgers players arrived at the World Series with wildly different points of view. The Dodgers are the seasoned defending champs with multiple former MVPs and Cy Young Award winners, dealing with the gravity of global expectations. The Blue Jays, though they have a few vets with World Series experience, are mostly a legion of talented upstarts who’ve reached unfamiliar heights. They also bear the weight of a city (and perhaps an entire country) that has waited three decades to return to the World Series. In a raucous Rogers Centre atmosphere in Toronto, the Jays harnessed the energy of that weight and used it to hammer the crap out of the Dodgers in a decisive 11-4 Game 1 victory.

Both teams created early tension on offense but struggled to break through in earnest. The Dodgers brought L.A. traffic to the bases in the second inning and drew first blood. A leadoff walk to catcher Will Smith and a Max Muncy single set the table for an Enrique Hernández RBI knock. Tommy Edman, a switch-hitter who surprisingly batted right-handed against the righty Trey Yesavage (perhaps to force him to use something other than his splitter), also tallied a single and loaded the bases with one out. After Andy Pages struck out on a well-located Yesavage slider, MVP favorite Shohei Ohtani stood in with the bases juiced and two outs, and it felt like the dam might burst on Toronto’s rookie starter. Instead, Yesavage got Ohtani to roll over a slider and ground out to first base.

The Blue Jays approached an answer in the home half of the second but ran into the final out of the inning when Ernie Clement made an overzealous attempt to sneak all the way to third base after Freddie Freeman and Blake Snell struggled to connect on a tough 3-1 putout.

The heady play by Snell prevented two-hole hitter Davis Schneider from seeing the dish with multiple runners on and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on deck.

There was more mayhem in the third as Yesavage, who generated a whopping 14 whiffs in only four innings pitched but often struggled with fastball command, walked Mookie Betts and Freeman to start the inning. Smith drove in Betts with an opposite-field single, but on this play Freeman was the one caught wandering too far beyond second base, resulting in a rally-stymying out. Had Freeman just stopped at second, Los Angeles might have had a bigger inning rather than a 2-0 lead after three.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered, at least not for much longer, as the deep Blue Jays lineup began to find its footing and take over the game. Alejandro Kirk, who reached base four times in this one, singled to lead off the home half of the fourth. One pitch later Daulton Varsho tied the game by driving a 96-mph Snell fastball out over the center field wall.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider reacted to the new game state by starting to play matchups in the middle innings. Lefty Mason Fluharty was used to get Ohtani and Freeman out in the fifth, and then Seranthony Domínguez worked a clean inning and a third.

In the bottom of the sixth, Toronto not only took the lead but put the game out of reach. Snell allowed the first three batters of the inning to get on base before he was removed for Emmet Sheehan at exactly 100 pitches in a tie game. Sheehan then allowed the first three batters he faced to reach, as well, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled him after the Blue Jays sent lefty-hitting Addison Barger to the plate to face Sheehan with the bases loaded rather than starting left fielder Davis Schneider. Once Barger was announced as a pinch-hitter (Schneider’s third move of the inning) Roberts countered with lefty Anthony Banda. It didn’t work out for the Dodgers.

It was the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history and came off the bat of a 25-year-old who, while at one point a Top 100 Prospect, had struggled to totally root into the Toronto lineup until this year, his eighth in pro ball. Like someone opening a soda that had been shaken, the Blue Jays scored four runs with one swing of Barger’s bat, and then the bubbles continued to swirl as, a few batters later, Kirk hit a two-run homer in his second at-bat of the inning. Twelve hitters came to the plate in Toronto’s nine-run sixth. Those were the most runs scored by one team in an inning of a World Series game since 1968, when the Tigers plated 10 in the third inning of Game 6. Only one other time has a team tallied 10 runs in a single inning of a World Series game; that was 96 years ago, when the Philadelphia Athletics, trailing the Cubs 8-0 entering the bottom of the seventh in Game 4 of the 1929 Fall Classic, put up a 10-spot in the frame.

After that the Blue Jays turned on cruise control. There was a two-run Ohtani homer in the seventh, but that was met with, at best, a collective indifference from a crowd that seemed to consider it a bonus that it got to watch Ohtani go deep. Both teams used their lower leverage pitching to get through the final three innings of this one. Toronto amassed 14 hits and four walks.

Nuggets To Consider for Game 2

Bo Bichette returned from a knee sprain that he suffered in early September and went 1-for-2 with a walk before he was removed for a pinch-runner in the decisive sixth inning. Normally a shortstop, he played second base for the first time in the majors as a way to take some of the load off his knee. He made a nice backhanded defensive play in the third inning, though he did look slightly hobbled. We might expect he’ll be run for, or that Isiah Kiner-Falefa will replace him on defense, late in games.

Despite the mid-game onslaught, none of the Dodgers relievers used (Sheehan, Banda, Justin Wrobleski, Will Klein) had to throw more than 16 pitches in this game. Meanwhile, Domínguez required just 13 pitches to get four outs and seems likely to be available in Game 2 if the Blue Jays need him.

As mentioned up top, switch-hitter Tommy Edman batted righty against a right-handed pitcher in Game 1. He last did this against John Curtiss of the Diamondbacks in September, and before that against Emmanuel Clase in May. Per Synergy Sports, Edman has 73 right-on-right plate appearances since 2018 and is hitting .232/.260/.348 in those situations.