#88 World Series part 1: Playing to their strengths
A free edition with bits and bobs from an even Fall Classic
The Opener
With gambling arrests roiling the NBA, commissioner Rob Manfred said MLB is “really vigilant” and ensuring they have access to relevant data as more negative side effects enter the public consciousness. Meanwhile, MLB Players Association director Tony Clark called for the end of prop bets.
Bryce Harper told The Athletic’s Matt Gelb he was hurt by Dave Dombrowski’s eyebrow-raising comments about whether he can return to being an elite player. What Dombrowski said set off a wave of even less well-considered chatter, of course. ““I have given my all to Philly from the start,” Harper told Gelb. “Now there is trade talk? I made every effort to avoid this. It’s all I heard in D.C. (with the Nationals). I hated it. It makes me feel uncomfortable.” Not a fun time in Philly.
The Rockies are down to finalists for their GM job, per The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal. They name D-backs assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye and Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman as the known candidates, but there could be others still in the mix for a job that is both fraught with challenges and pretty interesting now that it will go to someone with a fresh eye.
Blue Jays and Dodgers tied, 1-1
Through the first two games of the World Series, the Blue Jays and Dodgers are tied and, conveniently, each win showcased the victorious team doing well something that they do best.
Remember how we told you that the Blue Jays don’t strike out but they also don’t sacrifice slugging? Accordingly, Game 1 was a clinic in powerful contact. Against a Dodgers staff that had surrendered just four home runs all October and was striking out opposing batters at a 28.3% clip, Toronto struck out just four times all night and launched three home runs. (More on the biggest swing of the night below)
Pre-Series, I think a lot of people were reacting to the Dodgers’ obvious dominance on the NL side of the bracket when they forecasted Los Angeles re-taking the championship handily. But Toronto is playing too, and they’ve also looked pretty great lately. The World Series started with a stark reminder that two teams deserve to be on this stage.
… And then the Dodgers roared back with a demonstration of how not all strengths are created equal in October. The Blue Jays entered the game with a team-wide .534 SLG which, according to the MLB Network research packet, is the highest ever for a team playing at least seven games. Kevin Gausman gave them 6.2 innings, retiring 17 Dodgers in a row at one point. It looked, when he came out for the seventh inning of a then-tied game, like he might prevail in what was shaping up to be a pitchers’ duel. That’s not what happened.
Instead, the night belonged to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw his second-consecutive complete game — the first pitcher to have two in a postseason since Madison Bumgarner over a decade ago. It’s almost hard to lose when the run-prevention part of the equation is as simple as: this one guy will pitch the whole game while giving up just one run in a repeatable performance. The Blue Jays teed off against the Dodgers bullpen on Friday. On Saturday, they never got the chance to.
— Hannah Keyser
Let’s get to some bits ‘n’ bobs:
⚾️ Blue Jays fans have taken to chanting “We don’t need you!” at Shohei Ohtani, a couple years after frenzied (and wrong) reports whipped up the fleeting idea that he was flying to Toronto to sign with the Blue Jays.
Players rarely say anything about these sorts of fan campaigns but I appreciate the Toronto players responding with, essentially, a nervous chuckle.
“Don’t poke the bear,” Toronto pitcher Chris Bassitt said.
“At the end of the day, Shohei Ohtani is an unbelievable baseball player. Any team that he would be on, it would be awesome. But he’s over there and not here,” George Springer said. “He’s one of the best baseball players ever, and he’s got 15 years to go.”
They will not be providing any bulletin board material. —ZC
⚾ I do not understand why Addison Barger slept on teammate Davis Schneider’s couch the night before Barger because the first pinch hitter to smash a grand slam in the World Series.
First, the slam, which was just the second home run off a left-hander Barger hit all year:
Now, the backstory:
Ok if you swipe to the next slide you see Schneider confirming that Barger slept at this place. Here’s what he says: “His family is coming in, came in tonight so, like, he needed me, or needed someone. He was staying with Myles [Straw] and then stayed with me last night. My girlfriend is here so, like, he was like ‘Can I sleep in the bed with you guys?’ And I was like, ‘No, sleep on my couch.’ It’s a pull-out.”
Ok. So, wait, what? Why was he staying with Straw? What does his family arriving have to do with any of this? Wouldn’t the team be more than happy to get him a hotel room, like they’re presumably doing for Trey Yesavage. Couldn’t he cover the cost of the hotel room himself if not?
Schneider goes on: “But [the couch] was squeaking all night…It was so funny, I just looked over and I see him sleeping there in the middle of the night.”
Is the couch in the bedroom? Wrong place for a pull-out! –HK
⚾ That Game 1 barrage highlighted just how dangerous and frustrating this Blue Jays lineup can be for opposing pitchers. Dangerous and frustrating being the key. If you scrub through teams mentally, you can probably place most into one box or the other — Yankees = dangerous, Brewers = frustrating, and on and on. Put another way, the Blue Jays have married a notable amount of contact ability with real power.
That didn’t happen overnight. Quite a few of their bats have taken contact-oriented base skills and added bat speed this season. Stories from throughout the year attribute this to the teachings of first-year hitting coach David Popkins and his staff. Most of them bring up the word “intent,” which in this context means adapting swings to the situation. A first-pitch fastball ambush can be less concerned with making contact and more concerned with planting the ball in the second deck. Here, let Ernie Clement say it, via Sportsnet:
“We’re OK going 0-1 instead of being 0-for-1. If you get fooled, swing through it and then battle your tail off the rest of the at-bat. But it goes back to the intent. We’re not letting them get us out on a pitcher’s pitch in the first couple pitches. If I get out on a fastball down the middle on the first pitch, I’m OK with that. That’s my intent. But if I ground out on a pitch that’s two balls off the plate outside, that’s not doing anybody any good.”
In another story focused on Popkins’ impact, The Athletic details how he helped the Blue Jays lineup shift “mindsets” on a dime during the Mariners series to reassert dominance over the zone by swinging to slug.
The approach adaptability flows downstream from keeping the fundamentals of the swing in line, which the Blue Jays have apparently gotten quite good at by using biomechanical swing tracking technology.
I’m not sure there’s an adjustment to counter what Yoshinobu Yamamoto did in Game 2, but it will be interesting to see if Popkins has a fix up his sleeve. —ZC
⚾ Another tidbit about Popkins from that story from Mitch Bannon in The Athletic: When he was washing out of professional baseball as a player, Popkins’ coaching potential was so apparent that Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc pulled strings to keep him from taking a role in the Phillies system and, despite not having an open coaching position, convinced Dodgers brass to bring him on board a different way.
They signed him to a minor-league deal as a player, and then he operated as a coach without taking a single at-bat. That began a quick rise in the coaching world that now pits him against the Dodgers and his early mentors, but Popkins’ story adds to the idea that the Dodgers are willing to pay for talent all the way up and down the organization. —ZC
⚾ After watching Game 2 alongside a couple of Canadians (hi, Liz!) I found myself craving content that situates the Blue Jays’ postseason run within the specific culture of Canada because it is pretty notable that an entire other country is involved in baseball’s biggest series for the first time in over 30 years. This story about a sports bar in Canada’s northernmost city, from Matt Monagan at MLB.com, is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.
The Storehouse Bar and Grill is located in Iqaluit, a city of 8,000 located closer to the north pole than to Toronto. During the first two games of the World Series, the bar was standing-room-only.
A choice quote about the clientele from the general manager of the bar: “We meet people in our bar every day that hunt polar bears, hunt caribou, eat seals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.” –HK
⚾ Dodgers’ catcher Will Smith — who was part of a particularly potent class of catchers from an offensive perspective this season — had the go-ahead home run in Game 2. Paired with what Yamamoto did, that was all the Dodgers needed to even the series: Pitcher and catcher. In other words:
Oh, that’s a good headline from The Athletic.
It’s worth noting that even with Cal Raleigh’s Seattle Mariners sitting at home, two of the top three catchers by fWAR this season are playing in the World Series. Neither played nearly as many games as Raleigh did, but going yard in month eight of getting banged up behind the plate is pretty impressive. –HK
⚾ Just this photo:
If you want learn a lot more about Jon Soohoo, a Dodgers photographer of 41 years, who took the above as well as so many iconic images in Dodgers’ history, he did a long sit-down interview just last month. –HK