TORONTO — For all the talk of the Dodgers ruining baseball, there is still one aspect of the team capable of ruining their plans for world domination.
Blake Snell’s postseason dominance didn’t extend to Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night. He left the game with the bases loaded and no outs in the sixth inning. By the time the inning was over, there was wreckage all over the Rogers Centre turf.
The Toronto Blue Jays scored nine times in the sixth inning – including the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history – and blew the Dodgers away, 11-4.
With Alex Vesia away from the team, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts’ near-barren bullpen “trust tree” was shorn of an important limb. He turned to Emmet Sheehan and Anthony Banda in the sixth inning and came away with powder burns.
The nine-run inning was the most in the World Series since the Detroit Tigers scored 10 runs in an inning during Game 6 of the 1968 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
If getting into the Dodgers’ bullpen was a successful strategy for the Blue Jays, the Dodgers stuck with their own strategy against Jays rookie starter Trey Yesavage early.
They refused to chase Yesavage’s splitter or slider out of the strike zone, driving up his pitch count. He threw 29 in the second inning, 27 in the third and was done after four innings and 80 pitches.
The only damage the Dodgers could do with their disciplined approach, though, was single runs in the second and third.
Will Smith led off the second with a walk. After a force out, Max Muncy and Kiké Hernandez jumped on hanging sliders for base hits, driving in one run. Tommy Edman dribbled a ball up the third-base line for an infield single that loaded the bases with just one out.
But Andy Pages didn’t get with the program. He chased a full-count slider, striking out on what would have been ball four and another run. Then Shohei Ohtani bounced out to end the inning, also on a slider below the strike zone.
In the third, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman drew back-to-back walks to light another fire against Yesavage. Smith singled to right field to drive in one run but Freeman ran into an out between second and third. The Dodgers got no more.
The Blue Jays tried their version of the same strategy against Snell. Snell threw 29 pitches while working out of his own bases-loaded jam in the first inning and had runners on in each of his five-plus innings.
Snell was not as sharp as he had been in his previous postseason starts. His command of the fastball was not as good and his changeup (unhittable previously) let him down. Five of the Blue Jays’ first seven hits came on changeups, the most hits Snell had ever given up off that pitch in a game.
It was a changeup that Alejandro Kirk lined off the right field wall for a leadoff single in the fourth inning. And it was a fat first-pitch fastball over the heart of the plate that Daulton Varsho lined over the center field wall for a two-run home run that tied the game.
It was the first home run Snell had given up to a left-handed hitter since June 2024 and the first hit of any kind he allowed to a left-handed hitter this postseason.
It all unraveled in the sixth inning.
Snell walked Bo Bichette to start the inning, gave up another single to Kirk and hit Varsho with a pitch to load the bases.
Roberts’ first move was to bring in Sheehan. The young right-hander has resided at the top of Roberts’ favored options despite spotty results this postseason. He wasn’t the answer Friday.
Sheehan gave up an RBI single to Ernie Clement then walked Nathan Lukes to force in another run. Andres Gimenez singled in another run.
George Springer bounced into a force out, Betts going home for the out. Roberts played the matchups at that point, bringing in the left-handed Banda to face left-handed pinch-hitter Addison Barger. Barger crushed a 2-and-1 slider for a grand slam. Kirk added a two-run home run before Banda could escape the nightmare.
Ohtani applied makeup to the proverbial pig with a two-run home run in the seventh inning. Blue Jays fans who still feel jilted by Ohtani’s free-agent decision – and booed him during introductions – responded with chants of “We don’t need you” during his ninth-inning at-bat.
More to come on this story.