Six to watch in Blue Jays vs. Dodgers World Series

TORONTO — Blah, blah, blah, Shohei Ohtani.

Blah, blah, blah, finalist. Blah, blah, blah, charter jet. Blah, blah, blah Roki Sasaki. Blah, blah, blah, trade for Myles Straw and international bonus money.

OK, now that we’ve dispensed with the necessary narrative about the Toronto Blue Jays being jilted by Ohtani and Sasaki as free agents, let’s delve into six other players who could make a difference in the World Series.

Not that those two can’t or won’t — Sasaki’s importance became magnified on the eve of Game 1 (Friday, Sportsnet, 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT) with news that Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia was granted an absence due to a family matter — but because I’ve been guilty of feeding into the whole 'slaying-dragons' aspect of this post-season.

Aaron Judge and his ownership not just of the Blue Jays, but the whole Rogers Centre? Check. Seattle Mariners and the George Springer and Bo Bichette outfield collision in the 2022 wild-card collapse? Check.

Still …

It is safe to say that while Ohtani gets granted sainthood in 29 MLB cities, up here in Canada there’s a sense we were snubbed. None of those other cities or organizations were allegedly ready to pony up and match the Dodgers' offer like the Blue Jays. Ohtani never was rumoured to be on a plane to Cincinnati. Or Boston. Or New York, for that matter.

And so he was roundly, loudly and consistently booed and jeered in 2024 when the Dodgers rolled through for a three-game interleague series. Ohtani homered off Chris Bassitt in his first at-bat of that series but went 1-for-12 the rest of the way, managing just a single off Yusei Kikuchi.

Including his time as a member of the Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani has a 1.027 OPS at Rogers Centre with a .288 average and 12 home runs. In three games against the Blue Jays at Chavez Ravine this year, he went 5-for-13 with homers off Bassitt and Eric Lauer. 

Ohtani is, of course, coming off — let’s just say it — the best single-game, post-season performance we’ve seen in Game 4 of the Dodgers' National League Championship Series sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. He was a combination Reggie Jackson and … I don’t know … Don Larsen/Bob Gibson/Whitey Ford/Sandy Koufax/pick a name? All Ohtani managed was 10 strikeouts in six innings of shutout pitching coupled with three homers.

Until that game, he’d had a wholly mediocre post-season at the plate, coming on the heels of last year's 2-for-19 World Series, when he suffered a left shoulder subluxation in Game 2.

For his career, Ohtani is a Judge-esque .225 in the post-season. He has 23 hits in 26 games … one more than the Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr., has in half as many at-bats over 17 games.

But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts expects a different World Series for Ohtani in 2025.

“I hope it’s completely different,” said Roberts. “Certainly, having him healthy going in is a great thing. I think him kind of feeding off that last game is a good thing. Last year, it was just a matter of being able to post and stand in the batter’s box and do whatever he could sort of do to help us, where I think this year he’s equipped to have a big series.”

If the Dodgers win, they’ll become the first team to claim back-to-back World Series since the Yankees trifecta between 1998-2000.

Here, then, are our six (others) to watch:

Bo Bichette, SS/2B/DH: Blue Jays

I don’t know if his presence alone will lift the Jays past the Dodgers, but surely anything that lengthens the Blue Jays lineup will help. If he can at all swing the bat, his ability to cover the plate might help drive up pitch count. That is going to be a vital part of the Blue Jays' offensive M.O. against the Dodgers' starters: erode their starters and force Roberts to manage his lousy bullpen earlier than he wants, especially now that his most trusted lefty, Alex Vesia, is away from the team due to a family emergency.

Bichette hasn’t played since injuring his knee in a slightly less-than-textbook slide into home plate in September and his addition will require some lineup finagling. If Bichette is the DH, George Springer would need to go to the outfield. Playing second base was surprisingly put on the table Thursday by manager John Schneider, which is a helluva accommodation on the part of a guy who is two weeks away from becoming a free agent, as well as a reflection of Andres Gimenez’s claim to the shortstop spot.  

If nothing else, it raises the possibility that free-agent suitors might ask him to make the shift permanent. That aside, Bichette’s ability to handle elite fastballs and pitches in the zone out of the cleanup spot speaks for itself. And injured players have had a habit of coming through in the World Series — not just Kirk Gibson but also …

Freddie Freeman, 1B, Dodgers

We all know about Freeman’s Canadian roots, but I’m more interested in his post-season roots and seeing whether he can do something even rarer than winning back-to-back World Series: being named MVP in back-to-back World Series. Freeman, of course, hit a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the 2024 Fall Classic, one of four home runs he hit despite playing on four torn ankle ligaments.

Freeman has had an uncharacteristically wide strike zone this post-season — he has 11 strikeouts in 39 at-bats after having 50 in his previous 231 playoff at-bats and just seven in 13 games over three series last year.

What if Ohtani’s Game 4 heroics turn out to be a one-off in another ‘meh’ post-season? Freeman, Mookie Betts and old friend Teoscar Hernandez will be key. It would be cool to see Freeman against Max Scherzer at some point: Freeman is 11-for-55 lifetime against the Mad One with three homers and four doubles. He does like him some Rogers Centre, too, hitting .357 there with six homers and a 1.189 OPS in 14 games.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 1B, Blue Jays

I’d like to take the road less travelled here but, c’mon: Guerrero’s not just the best hitter in the post-season, posting a performance that has been historically significant, he’ll go head-to-head on the sport’s biggest stage with Ohtani. I’m not even going to get too deep into Vladdy’s numbers here. (He has a .333 average against the Dodgers' roster of pitchers, with eight of those hits going for extra bases, including three homers.)

I’m just going to fall on good old sportswriter cliché B.S. and go all big-picture on you. For those in the local media (and fanbase) who got tired of hearing the Blue Jays “had a seat at the table” in pursuit of Ohtani, Sasaki and Juan Soto, and had the biggest and best offer for Corbin Burnes, seeing Blue Jays ownership get Vladdy’s half-billion-dollar extension done was satisfying. Yes, they were bidding against the calendar more than against another team, but having someone finally take their money — a player who could have left as a free agent and not only decided to stay but seems prepared to be a salesman among his peers — and then post up in the franchise’s most successful post-season run in three decades? You can’t overlook that going into the World Series.

Enrique Hernandez, IF-OF, Dodgers

I mean, he’s part of the post-season furniture — Hernandez needs two games to break Justin Turner’s record of 86 playoff games in a Dodgers uniform — and the only reason the team has him is for October, when has at times been a ‘cometh the moment/cometh the man’ kind of guy.

He's slashing a nifty .306/.375/.417 in 40 plate appearances this post-season and is hitting .313 in the last two post-seasons combined. Granularity alert: he has two career homers off Eric Lauer. Every series has a WTF guy. Could be Hernandez.

Blake Snell, SP, Dodgers

The Blue Jays were playing awfully well and three games up in the American League East when they went into Dodger Stadium and lost two of three games in August, including a 9-1 blitzing in which Snell struck out 10 batters and gave up three hits in five innings. He’ll get the ball in Game 1 against 22-year-old Blue Jays rookie Trey Yesavage, who will be making his fourth start of the post-season after just three career regular-season starts.

The difference in post-season pedigree and experience could not be greater: Snell will be making his 14^th career playoff start and is coming off a near-perfect Game 1 outing in the NLCS, striking out 10 Brewers and facing the minimum number of batters over eight innings. Nobody has faced the minimum in eight innings of a playoff game since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956, and Snell became the first pitcher in post-season history with multiple outings of six-plus innings and one or no hits in the same post-season.

Scherzer is one of three pitchers to have as many as two. Springer and Guerrero Jr., are a combined 7-for-33 against him with one homer and one double. Snell, remember, was the dude Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash lifted in Game 6 of the 2020 World Series against the Dodgers after he’d struck out nine and allowed two hits over 5 1/3 innings before giving up a single to Austin Barnes.

The old “third time through,” right? Well, given the way Roberts is riding his starters this post-season after a regular season of forced and unforced load management, Snell — whose increased change-up usage has seen him get soft contact when he isn’t getting strikeouts — might get a shot at a complete game.

Should have seen this coming: the Dodgers rotation became healthy in the final month of the season and posted a historically good strikeout rate. Their rotation has covered almost 70 per cent of the team's post-season innings. A caveat? Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner, will walk some batters … and he’s had 11 days between starts.

Louis Varland, RP, Blue Jays

Pitching coach Pete Walker told us that Bassitt is going to figure prominently out of the bullpen and, oh yeah, the lefties: Brendon Little is still out there. Mason Fluharty’s dramatic strikeout against Ohtani in the three-game series at Dodgers Stadium might count for something, and Lauer could very well be located in time for Game 1 by our search party.

The Philadelphia Phillies threw lefty after lefty at Ohtani in their NL Division Series — lefties and weirdo arm angles have been a bugaboo for Ohtani. While the Blue Jays might follow suit, it sure seems as if Varland gets the first big leverage shot out of the bullpen, doesn’t it? He’s pitched in nine of the team's 10 games and there are impact righty bats in this lineup that Varland seems destined to face.

The Blue Jays bullpen has been running on fumes at times, and the answer has been to restrict giving the other team multiple looks. That becomes a great deal more difficult if the reliever with your best pure stuff who is first man up doesn’t do his job. And Varland can be miss and hit, in more ways than one.

Jeff Blair’s pick

Dodgers in six