The late great Joaquin Andujar, he of the 39 starts for Oakland and epic World Series meltdown with St. Louis, once famously said his favorite word to describe baseball was “You never know”.
Youneverknow
is indeed a terrific word and probably nothing better characterizes baseball. This was in evidence, as Exhibit Umpteenthousand003, in game 1 of the 2025 World Series. It was a mismatch, as expected, just not by the team odds makers thought it would be.
Here are a couple of the unlikely facts around last night’s 11-4 Blue Jays drubbing of the Dodgers:
Blue Jays: A Good Sense Of Snell
The Dodgers thrive on the backs of their fearsome rotation, led by Blake Snell. Prior to Friday’s game, Snell had thrown 21 post-season innings and allowed all of 6 hits and 2 ER. In his previous 2 starts? 14 IP, 2 hits, 0 ER.
So what did Toronto’s hitters do? They knocked Snell out after 5+ IP leaving 8 hits and 5 runs on his card. After 1 inning Snell had already thrown 29 pitches. In 5 innings the Blue Jays carved up Snell for 33% more hits and 250% more runs than the other playoff teams managed in 21 innings.
An early warning sign was that 1st inning when Snell’s 29 pitches were caused, in large part, by balls fouled off, many with 2 strikes. Snell has “swing and miss” stuff but when those whiffs turn into “stay alive” fouls, it portends trouble. No team strikes out less than the Blue Jays — we’ll see if that continues to be a story line as Toronto’s lineup faces more elite starting pitching in games 2-4.
Platoon Splits Out The Window
Toronto’s lineup reflected Snell’s dominance against LH batters, with only one lefty, Daulton Varsho, in so that Varsho’s defense in CF was not forsaken.
For the 2025 season, Snell held LH batters to a .224/.296/.286 leaving him with a career mark of .197/.278/.300. In his 14 starts prior to game 1 of the WS, Snell did not allow a HR to a LH batter.
So naturally up stepped Varsho in the 4th to dramatically tie the game at 2-2 by launching a 2-run HR off of Snell. Then in the fateful 6th inning, Dave Roberts countered John Schneider’s move of pinch hitting Addison Barger by summoning his best available lefty, Anthony Banda.
The chess moves appeared to heavily favor the Dodgers in that Barger’s stats against LHP are terrible: for his career so far, .195/.246/.305, 53 wRC+. In fact, in the post-game scrum Schneider pretty much admitted his main incentive for pinch hitting Barger was to force a LHP to face Vlad next.
Only Barger hit a grand slam, the first pinch hit grand slam in World Series history. And the blowout was in full regalia.
Feel free to add more selected anomalies and who’d-a-thunk-its to this list as we prepare for game 2 this evening. Suddenly, it’s looking more and more like anyone’s trophy…because baseball.
