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Month of MLB: Day 30

From a fan perspective, basketball expands as the season goes on.  You can see this in Hoosiers.  At the beginning of the season, only the most devoted fans are showing up to watch practice, gossip about new coaches, and generally tracking the performance of their favorite team.  But by the end of the state tournament, the whole state of Indiana is tuned in.

Baseball runs the opposite way.  In June, say, baseball is everywhere -- high school baseball, little league baseball, college baseball.  Thirty different major league teams, dozens of minor league teams, all going day and night.  During the summer, lots of casual fans go to baseball games, eat hot dogs, talk to their friends, and generally enjoy the Great American Pastime.  Other folks play catch, hit Wiffle Balls, or simply teach their grandchildren how to break in a new glove.  But as the baseball year goes on, the world of baseball grows more concentrated.  The schools and colleges are generally finished with baseball by the end of June.  The minors are mostly done by the end of August.  And by early September, most casual fans have moved on to football season.

By the beginning of October, the world of baseball consists of the 12 fanbases who have reached the playoffs, along with the small number of die-hards who like to watch baseball on television, even when they don't have a rooting interest.  Soon the 12 fan bases are down to 8.  Then the 8 are down to 4, and then the 4 to two.

Today, October 29, is Game Five of the World Series.  It will be the last game of the year in Dodger Stadium -- the last game of the year in the United States, for this season is ending in Toronto, Canada.  The only folks left are Dodgers fans, Blue Jay fans, and those folks who watch baseball on TV.  It's a small community -- but an intense one.  There's something uniquely cozy about watching the last few games of the season on television, and knowing that the only other people watching are people who really love baseball.  This isn't the Super Bowl, or the Final Four, or any event where folks sit around eating snacks and talking over the commentators.  We are here because we love the game, and we really want to see who will win.  It's concentrated fandom -- like how you can concentrate light to make a laser.

This year, the MLB playoffs have been extremely hard fought.  The Dodgers had a brutal four-game series with the Phillies.  The Mariners and Tigers resolved their series with a 15-inning Game Five.  The Blue Jays and Mariners went the full seven games to decide the American League.  And the Dodgers and Blue Jays are tied two-all after four games -- and one of those games went 18 innings.  After losing an 18-inning heartbreaker in Game Three, the Blue Jays bounced back to smash the Dodgers 6-2 yesterday.  So now the Dodgers and Blue Jays will play best two of three for all the marbles.

Here is the Toronto lineup (note that George Springer is still injured):

1.  Davis Schneider, LF (.234, 11 HR's, and 31 RBI's in 188 AB's)

2.  Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., 1B (.292, 23, 84)

3.  Bo Bichette, DH (.311, 18, 94)

4.  Alejandro Kirk, C (.282, 15, 76)

5.  Daulton Varsho, CF (.238, 20, 55)

6.  Ernie Clement, 3B (.277, 9, 50)

7.  Addison Barger, RF (.243, 21, 74)

8.  Isiah Kiner-Falefa, 2B (.262, 2, 40)

9.  Andres Gimenez, SS (.210, 7, 35)

Starting Pitcher:  Trey Yesavage (1-0, 3.21 ERA in three regular season starts)

Yesavage is 2-1 with a 4.26 ERA in four post-season starts.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers have scored only three runs in the last 20 innings, and they are reorganizing their lineup.  Andy Pages has been benched, and the lineup now looks like this:

1.  Shohei Ohtani, DH (.282, 55 HR's, 102 RBI's)

2.  Will Smith, C (.296, 17, 61)

3.  Mookie Betts, SS (.258, 20, 82)

4.  Freddie Freeman, 1B (.295, 24, 90)

5.  Teoscar Hernandez, RF (.247, 25, 89)

6.  Tommy Edman, 2B (.225, 13, 49)

7.  Max Muncy, 3B (.243, 19, 67)

8.  Kike Hernandez, CF (.203, 10, 35 in 232 AB's)

9.  Alex Call, LF (.267, 5, 31 in 270 AB's)

Starting Pitcher:  Blake Snell (5-4, 2.35 ERA in 11 regular season starts)

Snell is 3-1 with a 2.42 ERA in four post-season starts.

This is the last game where we are assured of at least one more game, so this will probably be the last live-blog of the season by me.  I will only say that I have rooted for the Dodgers for 52 years, and during most of that time I cared more about how I felt than I did about how they felt.  But this is my favorite Dodger team since I was 12 years old, and honestly I want them to win this Series more for themselves -- and their place in history -- than for me.  But if they do not win it, I will know that they were beaten by a great, great Blue Jay team.  This whole month of MLB has been a joy, and both these teams deserve their place in history.

Month of MLB: Day 29

And what a month it has been.  Last night, the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 6-5 in 18 innings, thanks to a walk-off home run by Dodger first baseman Freddie Freeman in the bottom of the 18th.  At some point, I will have a lot more to say about this game.  But I will be on business travel today and tomorrow, and I probably won't be able to write about the Series for a while.

Month of MLB: Day 28

Tonight's starting pitchers for Game Three at Dodger Stadium:

For Toronto:  Max Scherzer (5-5, 5.19 ERA in 17 starts)

For Los Angeles:  Tyler Glasnow (4-3, 3.19 ERA in 18 starts)

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.