The World Series is officially set. We get the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers have yet to be tested as they captured the NL pennant.
Conversely, Toronto survived an emotional seven-game thriller of a series over the Seattle Mariners, to reach the Fall Classic for the first time since the early 1990s. I am not sure the Blue Jays can hang with the Dodgers. But something tells me they will.
Toronto will have the home-field advantage in this matchup. It should be noted that it was just like this for the Milwaukee Brewers who were swept by the Dodgers in the NL finals. There’s certainly an air of inevitability around the Dodgers right now, but let me give you a few reasons Toronto could cause trouble.
This team is resilient. They are the only team in MLB history to win a best-of-seven postseason series after losing the first two games at home and being down in the seventh inning or later of Game 7. They’re also just the fourth team ever to win such a series after dropping the first two games at home.
The Jays are the best contact-hitting team in the league by a wide margin, facing a strikeout-heavy rotation. The Dodgers will send out some combination of Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani in the first four games. This is an immensely talented group that features, at minimum, a Cy Young winner and a future Hall of Famer.
All four of these pitchers have high strikeout rates. It will be interesting to see what happens when they do not strike out hitters and their pitch count climbs which leads to more use of the bullpen.
Saying this, did I mention that relief pitching is the lone LA weakness. I think we will have a competitive series. In the end, I still like the Dodgers.
