Baseball, more than most sports, is a team game. In football, the best quarterbacks can (and often do) win games even when the rest of their team lets them down. In basketball, one shooter can account
for half of his team’s score all by himself in a winning effort. But, at least in its modern iteration, it almost always takes more than one pitcher to win a game and multiple batters to score even a single run.
Tonight will be different.
It will be different from itself, but also from those other sports. Because where a really good quarterback might win a game for his team, one really bad one will rarely lose it for his team, he’ll just need more help from his teammates. Tonight’s outcome depends almost entirely on the performance of Yoshinobu Yamamoto. If he pitches well and goes deep into the game, the Dodgers will probably win. If he fails either measure, they probably won’t.
This is the team the Dodgers have constructed for themselves. A nigh-unstoppable lineup, a fantastic rotation, and one of the absolute worst bullpens ever constructed that has somehow been made even worse by injuries and personal matters pulling guys away from the team.
The Blue Jays have a really good roster. It’s not without its flaws – for one thing, their bullpen, which appears superhuman compared to the Dodgers’, is mediocre at best as Royals fans who watched their team feast on it during the regular season can attest – but it’s a strong roster, as you’d expect from any World Series team. But the Dodgers have shown throughout this postseason that if a team can’t get to their one weakness, they will decimate you. The Brewers spent the regular season and division series looking like the class of baseball, but when they faced off against the Dodgers, they couldn’t force them to use their bullpen and they were meekly swept out of the Championship series a week before the World Series could even begin.
The Blue Jays have spent the whole postseason forcing other teams to give in and use their bullpens when they’d rather not. That held true last night when Blake Snell couldn’t finish the sixth inning.
Sure, tonight’s game will feature the Blue Jays’ ace, Kevin Gausman, but unless he pitches an uncharacteristic complete game shutout, tonight’s game, and all games of the World Series going forward, will turn on a single question. Can the Blue Jays get into the Dodgers’ bullpen? Whenever they do, they will win. Whenever they don’t, they will lose. It’s as simple as that.
