TORONTO — The Dodgers were no strangers to the scene, played on repeat this week, from Joe Carter’s touch-’em-all triumph in 1993, when he lifted one over the left-field wall to win the World Series and ensured himself a lifetime of Canadian hospitality.
But on the night Carter reported to Rogers Centre for a pregame first pitch and donning of the Blue Jays homer jacket, it was the Dodgers who found that very wall to their liking.
Will Smith and Max Muncy both sent seventh-inning solo shots down the left-field line, straight into Carter country and straight into the hearts of the Jays and their fans to take down an otherwise great Kevin Gausman. And with Yoshinobu Yamamoto meeting the moment in Game 2 with another pristine, complete-game performance on the mound, those swats were the game-changers in the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory in Game 2 on Saturday.
Rather than L.A.’s middle relief muddying the waters, Yamamoto calmed them with a remarkably efficient outing in which he outlasted Gausman and once again made good on the largest pitching pact in the history of the sport. He became the first pitcher to go the distance in successive postseason games since the Diamondbacks’ Curt Schilling in 2001.
“It’s been fun these last two outings,” said Smith. “He can kind of do everything. Locate his fastball so well, he’s got the curveball, the split. Throwing some good cutters today, some two-seams. He just had everything going and really keeping them off balance.”
The “Game 2 starter” label tends to suggest second-best. But both Yamamoto and Gausman were overqualified for the assignment, treating the 44,607 to an old-school duel welcomed by those that would love to reestablish the prominence of the starting pitcher.
In other words, these were aces in every definition other than assignment.
And they pitched like it.
Yamamoto was throwing his kitchen-sink collection at the Toronto bats and had all of it working. The sick split, the yo-yo curve, the fiery four-seam, some cutters, sliders and sinkers. Everything zipping and zooming and moving and grooving. In Game 1, the Blue Jays had been successful at waiting out Blake Snell on a night in which his command came undone and were able to get into that iffy L.A. bullpen. But Yamamoto would not budge, save for the sacrifice fly he served up in the third.
“I was trying to go into the game relaxed, but it’s a World Series,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “Kind of early on, I was throwing with unnecessary tension. I just adjusted that as the game went on.”
Gausman wasn’t giving in, either. The Dodgers had struck first in the first, when Freddie Freeman doubled with two out and Smith singled to bring him home. But Gausman then retired the next 17 batters faced.
Until Smith came to bat in the seventh.
The tight tilt was looking for someone to break the tension, and Smith, who had battled a hairline fracture in his right hand late in the season and played through pain, had his first extra-base hit of the postseason. With one out and none on, Gausman’s 3-2 offering to Smith was up and in, and Smith got his hands in and turned on the pitch to lift it into the second deck, just inside the left-field line.
Just like that, Gausman’s run of excellence was over, and the Dodgers were back on top, 2-1.
One out later, it was Muncy, already established as the Dodgers’ all-time postseason home run leader, sending one out in October yet again. Gausman’s 2-2 fastball to the left-handed-hitting Muncy was up and away, and Muncy reached out and touched it to go oppo into the Blue Jays bullpen – a virtually identical landing spot to Carter’s famous Fall Classic four-bagger.
Though the 3-1 lead felt immense given the way Yamamoto was motoring along, they did add another pair off the Jays’ top setup man, Louis Varland, in the eighth. Yamamoto didn’t need it, though. He struck out the side in the bottom of the inning, then came back out in the ninth to finish what he started.
