Blue Jays unable to find Rogers Centre Magic as Game 7 looms
Trick trumps treat on Halloween as opportunities lost in 3-1 Dodgers win
The trick for the Blue Jays on this Halloween night was to beat Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, after he had already tossed a Game 2 complete game at Rogers Centre. The treat if that had happened was going to be another six-game World Series celebration, the third such outcome in club history. Instead, the defending World Series champion Dodgers hung on, behind six innings from Yamamoto and help from three relievers to beat the Jays 3-1, sending the Fall Classic to a Game 7 for the ninth time overall since the Jays last World Series win in 1993.
The Jays threw their own ace, Kevin Gausman, up against Yamamoto, the best the Dodgers had to offer and, other than the three-run third inning, Gausman was outstanding. Gausman struck out seven of his first nine batters, the first time through the order, but then it was manager John Schneider making a fateful decision to walk Shohei Ohtani intentionally with first base open that ended up biting the Jays.
A runner on second, with two out in the third, Schneider held up four fingers and put the NL’s presumptive, repeat MVP on first base. Controversial, in that the Japanese star had had no history of success against Gausman. Including striking out to lead off this game, Ohtani was 2-for-16-.125, with 7 Ks lifetime. Instead, Will Smith doubled, Freddie Freeman walked and the slump-ridden Mookie Betts grounded a sharp single to left field scoring a pair. It’s the only three runs the Dodgers would score.
“That’s something we talked about before the series,” Schneider tried to explain. “If there is an obvious chance, take the bat out of (Ohtani’s) hands, yeah, we’re going to do it. Again, man, they have really good hitters up and down their lineup, so you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t sometimes.
“You’re always playing with fire with the calibre of Will Smith, Freddie Freeman, and Mookie Betts. So you take your chances -- you know you’re putting some extra traffic on there, but you take your chances with Kev. I like the way he was throwing the ball with the split and just a couple heaters, threw a split to Will and a heater to Mookie that beat us, but that was our plan from the get-go.”
It was a pre-series gameplan that had obvious flaws. Bottom line is nobody pays to see Schneider hold up four fingers and, to a man, you know that every Blue Jays pitcher on the staff wants a chance to go after the best player on the planet in the right circumstances. It should be dictated by the scoreboard and game situation, not a pre-series plan. This was just the third inning in a scoreless duel and one man on base. In addition, you had a pitcher on the mound who had retired him 14 of 16 times they faced. The Jays put him on and the Dodgers scored three.
On the offensive side, the Blue Jays had several opportunities to tie the game or go ahead, with two runners on base in three of the final four innings, but coming up empty. The best chance dramatically came in the ninth inning, with Jose Bautista, the 2015 bat-flip hero watching from the stands, cheering them on. It was not meant to be.
In the sixth and eighth innings, it was Daulton Varsho with a chance to dress up as this year’s hero. With two men on, the centre fielder struck out as the last hitter Yamamoto faced to end his night in the sixth, then, next time up, he pulled a hard grounder right at second baseman Miguel Rojas in the eighth.
But it was the ninth inning in which the Jays had their best opportunity to tie. Facing newly-anointed rookie closer, Roki Sasaki, pitching in his second inning of the night, Alejandro Kirk was hit by a pitch, forced to leave the game. An update on his condition and avasilability for Game 7 will come after the results of an x-ray. With Myles Straw pinch-running, Addison Barger slashed a long drive to left-centre that lodged under the padding of the wall on the fly, something that may never have happened at Rogers Centre. Centre fielder Justin Dean immediately threw his arms in the air as Straw scored and Barger circled the bases behind him.
But left field umpire John Tumpane had raced out towards the play and called it immediately, so there was no real argument. The bottom line is that if the ball had not lodged, then Straw would likely have scored, but Barger would have still been on second base.
Instead, with the tying run on second and nobody out, manager Dave Roberts went to Game 3 starter, Tyler Glasnow who had warmed up quickly in the pen. Ernie Clement popped up the first Glasnow pitch to Freeman and then came a quick and stunning end of the game. Andres Gimenez lobbed a short line drive to left-centre field with one out. Kike Hernandez was playing shallow and raced over to make the catch and, on the run, fired a one-hopper to Rojas at second to nail Addison Barger for a double play, to end it. Barger was being aggressive, thinking the ball would drop and he could score the tying run. But that aggressiveness cost him.
It’s a tough read,” Schneider excused. “Kiké playing shallow and one out you’re thinking score. He made a really good play. It’s such a tweener. He made a good play, good throw. Good play by Rojas too. Wild. Wild way to finish it, for sure.”
The Jays need to be mistake-free to win Game 7 behind future Hall-of-Famer, Max Scherzer.
“It’s the two best words in sports, Game 7,” Schneider concluded. “No better guy to have on the mound to kind of navigate the emotions, the stuff. Max has been getting ready for Game 7 when he knew he was pitching Game 3, so all the confidence in the world in him and everyone tomorrow.”
In the last 31 World Series, since 1993, this becomes the ninth to go the full seven games. Breaking that down to the Blue Jays exact circumstance, there have been two Fall Classics in which a team has come home leading three games to two that have then gone to a seventh game and the visiting team has won both – 2016 with the Cubs beating the Indians and 2019 with the Nationals completing the comeback against the Astros.
The good news was that the Canadian anthem was performed with robust strength and spine-tingling emotion, mostly by the crowd of 44,710 that even included some correct lines of French and that 1992-93 centre fielder Devon White threw out the ceremonial first pitch. There was no Joe Carter moment on Friday, although the opportunties were there. So, Game 7 will be another 8 pm start on Saturday and this time it’s truly a winner-take-all.
“It’s going to be electric here,” Schneider opined. “These guys, it’s business as usual, although it’s coming down to one game. These guys are really good at kind of turning the page. That will take a while to kind of unpack. That’s a wild ending. I love the way we played. Had our chances with guys on base as the game went on. But we’re going to be ready to play tomorrow. Everyone’s going to be ready to play. It’s going to be fun here. To the fans I say, see you tomorrow night, be loud, be rowdy. We’re going to be ready to play.”