With a Quick One-Two Punch, Blue Jays Force Game 7

Facing elimination in Game 6 of the ALCS, the Blue Jays were right where they wanted to be. Back in Rogers Centre, where they had the best home record in the majors during the regular season, the Jays defeated the Mariners 6-2 on Sunday night to force a decisive Game 7. On the other side, looking at an opportunity to advance to the World Series for the first time in franchise history, Seattle was wholly unprepared to meet the moment. The Mariners committed three errors, grounded into three inning-ending double plays, and just couldn’t keep up with Toronto’s relentless offense.

Trey Yesavage, making just his sixth start in the big leagues and second in this series, held the Mariners to two runs in 5 2/3 innings. His splitter was particularly nasty; he threw 31 on Sunday, the most he’s thrown in a big league start so far. He earned 10 whiffs on 17 swings (a 59% whiff rate) with that tumbling offspeed pitch and induced two critical double plays with it in back-to-back innings.

In the third inning, after the Jays had scored two, the Mariners quickly built an opportunity to strike back. J.P. Crawford walked to start the inning, and after Dominic Canzone struck out, Leo Rivas lofted a 360-foot single off the top of the right-center wall. Crawford misread the fly ball and remained too close to first base, so by the time center fielder Daulton Varsho played the carom and fired back into the infield, Crawford had only advanced to second base, meaning Rivas had to hold up at first. Instead of having two runners in scoring position with one out and the top of the order coming up, the bad baserunning had put the Mariners in a textbook double play situation. Nevertheless, after Julio Rodríguez walked to load the bases, it looked like Cal Raleigh, whose 57.7% fly ball rate was the highest in the majors this season, would at least be able to lift a sacrifice fly to get the Mariners on the board. But Yesavage buckled down, turned to his trusty splitter, and got Raleigh to ground into an inning-ending double play on the first pitch of the at-bat.

The very next inning — after Toronto padded on two more runs in the bottom of the third — Yesavage faced another bases-loaded threat. Back-to-back one-out singles from Josh Naylor and Randy Arozarena and a walk from Eugenio Suárez put runners on every base. After allowing runs to score in the previous two innings and their rally in the third cut short, surely the Mariners needed to score with this opportunity. Again, Yesavage turned to his splitter to get out of trouble. He threw three straight to Crawford, earning a weak wave and another rally-killing double play on the third pitch of the at-bat. For good measure, Yesavage induced a third inning-ending double play in the fifth inning too, though the threat was much less intense in that frame.

The Blue Jays’ solid defense stood in stark contrast to the sloppy play from the Mariners. In the second inning, a pair of errors led to Toronto’s first scoring opportunity. First, Rodríguez misplayed a bounce off the turf on a Varsho leadoff single into the left-center gap, allowing the Jays to begin the frame with a runner in scoring position. The next batter, Ernie Clement, hit a sharp groundball to Suárez at third base, but between the speed of the hit and his attempt to look the runner back to second base, Suárez dropped the ball and couldn’t fire to first fast enough once he picked it back up. Addison Barger followed with an RBI single to right field, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa knocked in another on a weak groundball that Suárez couldn’t field cleanly with his barehand. Despite the two miscues, Suárez made a couple of nice plays later in the game, including spearing a 116-mph groundball off the bat of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to end the threat in the second inning.

The Mariners’ third error came in the seventh inning and also resulted in a Blue Jays run. Guerrero had reached on a hit-by-pitch and moved up to second when Alejandro Kirk followed with a single. Matt Brash unleashed a diving slider in the dirt that kicked away from Raleigh behind the plate. The Seattle catcher dashed after it and tried to throw out Guerrero chugging to third. The throw was off line and the ball ended up in left field, allowing Guerrero to score the sixth and final run for the Jays.

The Mariners also have to be concerned with how poorly the starting rotation has fared in this series. Logan Gilbert got the call in Game 6 and struggled to keep the Toronto offense off the board early. The errors certainly didn’t help in the second, but Gilbert allowed a two-out home run to Barger in the third and Guerrero took him deep in the fifth to end his night. In six games, Seattle’s starters have a 7.33 ERA and a 6.86 FIP in 23 1/3 innings.

What should be a strength for the Mariners has become a liability during this series. Miller has been the only starter to find any kind of success against the Blue Jays, and based on his peripherals and batted ball metrics, he was pretty lucky to escape with just two runs allowed across his two starts.

The Blue Jays are one of the most aggressive teams in the majors, and they also had the lowest strikeout rate in baseball during the regular season; they hunt for pitches in the zone early in the count to do damage on and can still put the ball in play regularly if the pitcher manages to get to two strikes. The Mariners’ pitching staff loves to attack the strike zone, running the third-highest zone rate in the majors. That approach plays directly into Toronto’s aggressive tendencies; in the ALCS, Seattle has thrown 53.8% of its pitches in the zone, and the Jays have swung at 68.2% of those in-zone pitches. Toronto’s zone contact rate is an astounding 88.1%. Gilbert couldn’t make an adjustment away from that attack-the-zone approach in Game 6 — 60% of his pitches landed in the strike zone — and he paid the price. George Kirby is slated to start the decisive Game 7, and although his reputation is that of a strike-thrower, his zone rate was the lowest of his career this year. Somehow, he’ll need to make an adjustment to keep the Blue Jays from attacking as aggressively as they did when they faced up in Game 3.

With a trip to the World Series on the line on Monday night, every pitcher on both rosters will be available to ensure their team is the last one standing in the American League. The ZiPS Game-by-Game odds see the contest as a coin flip, giving the Blue Jays a half a percentage point advantage.