Laika

Bo plays 2B Jays win the World Series Extended as a 2B Life on easy mode for Shatkins

I think Dan Wilson had the whole game mapped out and that was the problem. They probably thought: Kirby for 4 in an ideal world. Even if he is dealing, Toronto hammered him last time so you take your 4 good innings and say thank you before a possible bloop and blast ruin his start. Woo for 3 in an ideal world. Munoz for the last 2 innings. And then he had some pecking order and matchup preferences for Brash, Bazardo, Speier if they had to finish any of the Kirby or Woo innings. The issue is just the inability to pivot from the plan based on the context! He needed to see the matchups coming up and go straight to Munoz. Bazardo vs. Springer for the second night in a row is just common sense not smart, even if you like that matchup and Bazardo has been great against righties all year. Failure to recognize that "this is the game" moment.

new rule from the Head Moderator: nobody is allowed to say "Lazaro Estrada" or "Adam Macko" until the World Series is over

This is exactly me, a rich dick who never loses, but I have 7 kids and live 5 hours away so my days of spending $200 on Budweisers at the Rogers Centre are over.

At least we are in the golden age of digital fandom You can pirate a stream in HD, have free access to Gameday and Statcast and live data to enrich your experience, and interact online for free all while drinking at home at Beer Store prices And the funny thing about being a "real fan" is that most of us still probably spend less on the product per year than the business dudes who know almost nothing about baseball but take some clients to the games a couple of times a year

That's FACE VALUE? Like what did the Blue Jays sell these for the people who had priority?

wait until game day, prices might collapse a bit

try without dark mode on

And you know Alomar celebrated his big homer by going out and spitting on a hooker, or something like that

What Dan Wilson’s decision to use Bazardo vs. Springer says about optimal reliever usage George Springer hit the game-winning home run off Eduard Bazardo in his third plate appearance against Bazardo this series. Cole Burston / Getty Images By Eno Sarris Oct. 21, 2025Updated 6:58 pm EDT In the aftermath of a come-from-ahead loss in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, Seattle Mariners manager Dan Wilson is taking heat for the decision call on Eduard Bazardo to face George Springer in the seventh inning with the season on the line. It was Bazardo’s third time seeing Springer in the series. All-Star Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz never faced him, and never would, because Springer hit the dinger that put the Blue Jays through to the World Series. Was that third bite of the apple the magic recipe for Springer’s big blast? Since 2016, when a batter has seen a reliever a third time in a postseason series, his OPS has jumped over 140 points, according to STATS Perform. This fits into more ample research that suggests that the more experience a batter has with a pitcher and his offerings, the batter’s advantage grows. So does that mean Wilson’s decision was just wrong? Maybe, but it gets a more complicated than the top-line findings suggest. And when we spin idea this forward to the upcoming World Series, we’re almost assured of seeing different approaches to this familiarity problem. Because in the end, every choice is about the quality of the alternatives as much as any other factor. Getting back to Game 7, we’ll start with the decision to bring in Bazardo, who had been dominant against righties this year (.492 OPS) and was one of Wilson’s biggest weapons out of the bullpen. His sinker/slider combo works against most righties. Though it is true that Springer had his best year ever against sinkers in 2025, it is also true that one of the other main choices at Wilson’s disposal was Matt Brash, who also relies on a sinker and was more of a threat to walk the bases loaded. But if the choice was between Muñoz facing Springer for a first time or Bazardo seeing him a third time (and with a 100-plus point penalty in OPS), the move is probably to go with the closer early and hope Brash could finish the ninth when given a clean inning. Though had Brash been the call in the ninth, he would have most likely seen Springer a third time himself. Sigh. This sort of decision came back to bite Wilson’s opposing manager in the very same series. In Game 5 in Seattle, Blue Jays manager John Schneider used left-hander Brendon Little against Cal Raleigh in the eighth inning instead of using closer Jeff Hoffman or setup man Seranthony Domínguez. Both Hoffman and Domínguez are righties, and the switch-hitting Raleigh has had better power numbers over his career against lefties. When asked about the decision to use Little after the game, Schneider said he wanted to make the sure the middle of the Mariners lineup would “see different guys” in the series. Raleigh hit a big homer, and Toronto was second-guessing their manager at that time. The two teams clearly had different approaches to this problem. Seattle currently leads teams in this postseason with 25 different pitcher-hitter matchups that have gone to three or more plate appearances, while Toronto has only allowed that to happen 10 times, mostly with Louis Varland. Why Varland? Let’s get at the source of the familiarity effect. It’s not fatigue, or a drop in command, as PitchingBot once showed us before he was hired by the Guardians: We can’t be sure that spike in success comes from the fact that batters have seen those pitchers’ pitch shapes and learned their tendencies, but if it’s not command or fatigue, that’s a natural way to think about it. Bazardo had mostly thrown inside sinkers to Springer in the previous at-bats, he went there again, and Springer had seen enough of Bazardo’s inside sinkers to take advantage. Conversely, in the Blue Jays’ bullpen Varland is the reliever with the most pitch offerings — he uses five different pitches more than 5 percent of the time — so he can theoretically give hitters different looks every time he sees them. This is something we’ve seen from starting pitchers, as well. The Athletic’s Stephen Nesbitt found that starters have added a whole pitch type, on average, over the last four years in an effort to keep batters guessing. In fact, this fits in with a very long-term trend across baseball, which is the concerted effort from teams to confuse opposing hitters by not letting them see any pitcher as often as they would like to. The end result of having both starters and relievers adding pitch types while teams are reducing hitters’ looks at those pitchers, and also changing their game plans radically late in the season, might be why the familiarity effect with relievers is losing steam, if it is. Here’s how batters have fared against relievers in a single series, broken down by year, thanks to STATS Perform. Is the third time reliever penalty real? 2016 0.583 0.697 0.665 2017 0.682 0.727 0.743 2018 0.656 0.621 0.793 2019 0.690 0.650 1.463 2020 0.704 0.727 0.856 2021 0.671 0.696 0.945 2022 0.596 0.560 0.397 2023 0.658 0.681 0.841 2024 0.695 0.610 0.728 2025 0.716 0.669 0.654 The overall trend is still clear, but now you can see that in three of the last four years, the familiarity effect hasn’t been quite as prevalent. Is this because there are more teams like Toronto this year and the Dodgers last year that are incorporating this effect into their decision-making process? Is it because everyone’s throwing more pitches? Or is it just noise, and next year relievers will have a hard time again the third time they see a hitter in a series? The World Series might tell us more about where this effect is headed. In Toronto, we have one team that’s clearly limiting looks and trying to use their high-leverage relievers against different parts of the lineup, so they’re likely to continue that strategy. With Little, Mason Fluharty and Eric Lauer, they even have enough lefties to throw different ones at Shohei Ohtani if they want to keep things fresh. Despite not having a top bullpen by any metric, the Blue Jays have had success this postseason while using eight different relievers and three starters pitching out of the bullpen. They’ll continue that varied approach in the World Series, most likely. On the other side, the Dodgers might have thought about this effect during their run to the title, even as they had to rely heavily on a patchwork bullpen. In the 2024 World Series, they had 10 matchups that did go to three plate appearances, but Juan Soto surprisingly didn’t see the Dodgers’ lefties more than once — perhaps because he’s a high ball hitter, and they preferred to use their sinker ballers, Brusdar Graterol and Blake Treinen, against him, but it’s still instructive to see that they didn’t just press the ‘lefty’ button over and over again. So far in this postseason, only one Dodgers reliever has seen the same hitter three times. One! That’s at least partially a function of their short series so far and their starters going deep into games. We thought we had this year’s biggest test of the familiarity effect when Bazardo faced Springer, but the Dodgers may yet find themselves in a predicament. They’ve only gotten 29 percent of their innings out of the bullpen so far, way less than the rest of the postseason teams, because they haven’t always had the best alternatives. Their bullpen problem has been well covered, and they’ve persevered this October mostly by avoiding using relievers at all. But in a seven game series against a surging Blue Jays team, could that change? What will happen when they are forced to use their relievers more often? Roki Sasaki hasn’t been a reliever long, but he’s held righties to a .271 OPS so far in that role. Treinen allowed a .709 OPS against them this season. As much as reliever familiarity might be a thing, expect the Dodgers to keep choosing Sasaki with the game on the line. Any choice is only as good as your options.

George Springer's HR in Game 7 had the highest Championship Win Probability Added of any play in ALCS history. 🤯

Buddy Kennedy gets a ring

Game 7 winning homer > Game 4 homer

That's pretty harsh on Little If they don't roster him they lose a lot of utility. I'm not sure Lauer and Fluharty are enough to get advantage of the sizeable career splits from Ohtain, Muncy, and Freeman. Yes they are still good against LHP but you can kind of turn them from mashers into normal hitters in a tight spot. Ohtani career 169 wRC+ vs RHP 130 vs LHP Muncy 130 and 113 Freeman 151 and 120 The gamble with Little is the same as it has been all year. Walk risk. In certain situations he makes sense against these guys. Lauer and Flu have less walk risk but a higher chance of getting touched up. I do want to dump Yariel off the roster for Nance though.

Don't need Berrios anyway? Have better long and short relief coverage from Bassitt and Lauer

We didn't talk about this enough IKF pimping a double play feed Dwayne Wade style

What was the lowest get in the door price you guys saw for last night's game? Resale.

This offense though. If you can tag George Kirby for 8 runs, and Max Fried for for 7 runs, then you can blow up basically anybody.

Yes the path to victory would include some 8-6 style of victories but you probably can't win four games that way. Would need to sneak out one or two 4-3 kind of wins supported by clutch pitching. And luck. Get lucky!

Huge underdogs but the Jays: Have hit good SP all playoffs long Have a superior, rock solid defense Have enough tricks in the SP bag to keep it close The Dodgers have a good pen but it's not invincible. Sasaki, Vesia, Sheehan, Banda, Treinen. Banda and Treinen were near replacement level in the regular season. Vesia is a lefty sitting 93. Sasaki taking over that closer role could be a sneaky blessing - what if the gas can Sasaki from the regular season shows up? Yeah he throws 100 and looks nasty but his K-BB isn't dominant in the playoffs. He's giving up contact. It might be a closer matchup than oddsmakers are telling you. I do trust that the Jays will have a solid gameplan against these Dodgers SP and will do better than the Brewers, who probably also had a solid gameplan because that's what they do but probably didn't have the actual raw talent to support it that the Jays do. Milwaukee was a bit worse than Toronto at the core offensive skills in the season, and they were perhaps too reliant on sneaky-good role players and value adds, whereas Toronto kind of has all of that but also the big boppers in Vlad and Springer. Chourio, their preternatural star, was hobbled all series with a nasty hamstring strain. Andrew Vaughn and Brice Turang don't exactly make anyone nervous. Steal game 1 and make it a series. The Jays bullpen is terrifying at this point and I am not sure what the hell they will do. Gulp.

Why not Gausman??? I don't get it

Maybe Bieber can settle in now. They didn't hit anything hard there. Made good pitches to finish off Rivas and Robles. Also was a good pitch to Randy

Okay Bieber I need to relax

I have diarrhea