Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. watches as Los Angeles Dodgers' Will Smith rounds the bases after hitting a home run in Saturday night's World Series game.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
In the seventh inning of Saturday’s Game 2 of the World Series, Kevin Gausman did something no Jays starter had done this post-season - he came back out.
Six innings had been the absolute limit for Jays manager John Schneider, but Gausman was cruising. Sixty-two pitches, most of which looked like he was bouncing a ball off a wall. The Dodgers hadn’t really hit a single ball hard.
Then L.A. catcher Will Smith hit a home run. That shut everyone up.
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The Schneider we have come to know would have jumped in then. But things were working and Schneider’s mind might have drifted to a week ago.
Leading 2-1 against Seattle in Game 5 of the ALCS, Schneider got creative in his pitching selections. Instead of the usual suspects, he pulled Brendon Little out of the chorus and gave him his shot. Little gave up a home run, and was allowed to walk the next two batters before he was pulled. Two hitters after that, Eugenio Suarez hit a grand slam.
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Even the homers on Sportsnet broadcast blew the Toronto manager up for freelancing.
“Decisions are hard,” Schneider said afterward.
Since then, aside from the five-alarm situation of a Game 7, Schneider has avoided decisions. He does what the numbers say to do. As Schneider has repeatedly said, he is “convicted in a process.”
On Saturday, he played his gut. Gausman remained in.
The crowd knew. Over the years, Toronto baseball fans have repeatedly taken it in the back from visitors from abroad alleging ignorance. They’ve even been rubbished by people running their own team. But this audience always knows when the game has tilted and things are starting to slide off home team’s top shelf.
Fans watch Toronto play Los Angeles at Nathan Phillips Square on Saturday.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Canadian Press
As Gausman got back to work, they were oddly quiet for people who’d just spent several mortgage payments on a night out. This isn’t the loudest building in sports, but it must be the one with the greatest variance between absolute din and total silence. Sometimes – like on Saturday night – in a single game.
Over in the Dodgers dugout, L.A. starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto was doing calisthenics, a jacket draped over his shoulders, looking like a very lithe James Brown. As good as Gausman had been, the Japanese pitcher had matched him step for step. Who knows how much that factored into Schneider’s decision?
Two batters later, Max Muncy hit another homer off Gausman. That was the game. The Toronto bullpen dribbled out a few more runs, as it tends to do when things aren’t going well for everyone else.
Yamamoto pitched a complete game, four hitter. It ended 5-1 for L.A. The series picks up at Dodger Stadium on Monday night.
There’s a lesson here and it isn’t, ‘Anything you can do, I can do better’. It’s ‘You do your thing, and I’ll do mine.’
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Schneider wasn’t about to say that. History has taught him that putting your hand up in this organization often ends in getting it cut off. From his perspective, fate, rather than the Dodgers, beat Toronto on Saturday.
“It was kind of a classic pitchers’ duel and they made a couple more swings,” Schneider said afterward.
I guess that’s one way to describe a game that you had both hands around and dropped. It’s a measure of how great the Jays have been in these playoffs that they’ve had very few of these sorts of dissembling post-game press conferences.
Before the series began, the sort of people who only bet sure things had already handed it to L.A. On the FOX panel, Alex Rodriguez called the Dodgers baseball’s best team since the guy to his left, Derek Jeter’s, ’98 Yankees. Calm down, pal. The ’98 Yankees had a bullpen that didn’t lose a wheel every time you asked it to pitch more than two innings.
But the Dodgers also aren’t as vulnerable as Game 1 suggested. The Jays wouldn’t be human if their heads hadn’t been turned a little by all the international back-slapping they got after that demolition job.
I think it’s fair to say this much – the Blue Jays are not going to think the Dodgers into submission. They have neither the experience nor the personnel for that.
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The Jays have played their game once, then tried it the Dodgers way, and have now defined the contours of this World Series. Toronto is the irresistible force. L.A. is the immovable object. Whoever gives the most inches will lose.
On Saturday, the Jays drifted away from their core mission. They were on course early – first and third with nobody out in the opening inning. But Toronto could not score from that position, and a considerable head of steam burned off in that moment.
The Dodgers aren’t Seattle, or even New York. They’re not going to let you try and try and try again until you get it right. You have to take your chances.
Friday was the dream scenario. On Saturday, the Jays got the realistic one – a game they could have won, that they didn’t. It happens.
On a macro level, Toronto had one imperative task during their first two games at home – don’t lose it. They didn’t. They’re standing in the middle of the ring, trading blows.
But like Game 1, the Jays cannot afford to lose Game 3. The Dodgers are scary enough when you are neck and neck. Once they get in the lead, they’re terrifying.
On Saturday, the Jays didn’t do wrong, they just did a little different. Trying new things can be fun, but not in baseball, and definitely not in the World Series.