Month of MLB: Day 27

Thoughts from the first two games of the World Series.

1.  Blake Snell has been a huge weapon for the Dodgers in the playoffs so far.  Snell was sidelined for much of the regular season with injuries, and only had 11 starts this year.  But when healthy, he is a Big Time pitcher.  He won the Cy Young Award in 2018 for the Rays, going 21-5 with a 1.89 ERA.  He won it again in 2023 for the Padres, going 14-9 with a 2.25 ERA.  And in the playoffs, he has been formidable:

In Game One against the Phillies, he gave up no runs and only one hit in six innings, as the Dodgers won 4-3.

In Game One against the Brewers, he gave up no runs and only one hit in eight innings, as the Dodgers won 2-1.

So it made sense for him to start Game One here.  But it was clear from the beginning that the Blue Jays were causing many more problems for him than the Phillies or Brewers had done.  Through five innings, he battled gamely, and the score was tied at two.  However, in the bottom of the sixth, he walked Bo Bichette, allowed a single to Alejandro Kirk, and hit Daulton Varsho to load the bases with no one out.  At that point, Snell had already thrown 100 pitches, and he was plainly done.  The Dodgers had to go to their non-existent bullpen, and the results were disastrous:  the Blue Jays promptly scored NINE RUNS in the bottom of the 6th to take an 11-2 lead, and Toronto cruised to an 11-4 victory.  It was a very impressive display from the Jays, who handled Snell much better than the teams in the NL playoffs had done, and who exploded once they weren't facing a two-time Cy Young winner.

2.  That put enormous pressure on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who started for the Dodgers in Game Two.  The last time we saw Yamamoto, he was pitching a complete game victory in Milwaukee to put the Dodgers in charge of the N.L.C.S.  And the Dodgers needed a similar performance last night.

They got one.  Yamamoto pitched one of the best games we've seen in the World Series during the 21st century.  He dominated the Jays, pitching a COMPLETE GAME and allowing only one run on four hits.  He struck out eight and walked none.  He only threw 105 pitches.  It was a tribute to old-school, pre-analytics baseball, and the saying that Good Pitching Beats Good Hitting.  It was the first complete game in the World Series since 2015.  Yamamoto became the first pitcher to throw two complete games in a row during the playoffs since Curt Schilling in 2001.

The Dodger bats struggled for the first six innings, and the game was tied at one going into the seventh.  But Will Smith and Max Muncy hit solo homers to give the Yamamoto a 3-1 lead after 6 1/2 innings, and that was more than enough for the victory.  The Dodgers tacked on a couple of insurance runs against the Toronto bullpen, and tied the series with a 5-1 win.

3.  So now we go to Dodger Stadium for the next three games.  To me, it looks as though the key issue is whether the Dodgers' starting pitching can hold up against the Blue Jays' hitters.  This also feels like it could be the sort of series -- like the Blue Jays/Mariners series -- where the title will go to whichever team can win a close game at the end.

On the whole, I think teams are doing a really good job of recognizing that the regular season doesn't mean nearly as much as it used to, and the playoffs are the whole ball game.  You can see this, for example, in how the Dodgers are employing a completely different strategy for using their pitching staff in the playoffs than they used during the regular season.  Similarly, you can see how the Blue Jays are a contact-hitting team that doesn't just swing for the fences, like most teams were doing a few years ago.  These adjustments have resulted in a very high quality of play during the playoffs so far, and one of the most wide-open World Series that I can remember.