There are only four more days remaining that could provide us with multiple baseball games. Only two of those days are guaranteed, and one of them is today. So these should be cherished, while we have them.
For the teams, though? There’s some real pressure here. The Brewers don’t want to lose the home-field advantage they worked for all year right off the bat, and the Blue Jays are under even more stress: They really don’t want to fall behind 2-0, at home.
Throughout this postseason, I’ll be previewing the next day’s action, game by game. Here is one storyline for each of the four teams taking part in Monday’s LCS action.
ALCS Game 2: Mariners at Blue Jays (SEA up 1-0)
5:03 p.m. ET, FOX/FS1
SP: Logan Gilbert (SEA) vs. Trey Yesavage (TOR)
Mariners: Imagine what these guys can do with a full night’s sleep
In Game 1 of this series, it sure looked like it was the Blue Jays, rather than the Mariners, who had played a 15-inning game less than 48 hours earlier and then flew all the way across the continent. George Springer hit a home run on the first pitch Bryce Miller threw in the bottom of the first, and then … that was it. The Blue Jays essentially went to sleep after that even though, well, they were supposed to be the team that had all the rest.
Game 1 could not have possibly gone better for the Mariners. Miller (on short rest!) gave them six full innings, most of the exhausted bullpen got the night off, Jorge Polanco continued to get big hits, and Cal Raleigh continued a career-long habit of mashing homers at Rogers Centre. Even more than that, the Blue Jays crowd, so loaded up for bear at first pitch, was pretty much silent after Springer’s homer.
The Mariners did all this despite as difficult a travel situation heading into a Game 1 as I can remember, earning at least a split in the first two games in Toronto. But now that they’ve got some shuteye, they have a real chance, in Game 2, to put this series in their back pocket.
Blue Jays: This sure is a lot to put on a rookie starter
Yesavage has been wonderful. He was electric, a real lifesaver, for the Blue Jays in ALDS Game 2, shutting out the mighty Yankees over 5 1/3 innings in a Blue Jays victory. That’s why it’s him, and not veterans Max Scherzer or Chris Bassitt, who is starting Game 2 of this series.
But this is where we should probably mention that Yesavage, as electric as his stuff here, is only 22 years old and has literally pitched in only four MLB games. (And that’s including the ALDS.) He has pitched 19 1/3 MLB innings, which, not for nothing, is 3,086 2/3 innings fewer than Scherzer has in his career.
That doesn’t mean Scherzer should be starting over Yesavage, obviously; we all saw what happened to Scherzer in September. But Yesavage is very young, and very inexperienced, and now he has the unenviable task of trying to keep the Blue Jays, a team that has been rolling for weeks, from falling behind 2-0 at home. That is asking a lot.
NLCS Game 1: Dodgers at Brewers
8:08 p.m. ET, TBS
SP: Blake Snell (LAD) vs. TBA (MIL)
Dodgers: When will Ohtani get going?
Shohei Ohtani will start as a pitcher later in this series, something all of baseball is already looking forward to. But he is currently going through one of his toughest stretches as a Dodger at the worst possible time. Not only did he go 1-for-18 with nine strikeouts against the Phillies in the NLDS, he looked downright lost at times. Do you remember ever seeing Ohtani so frustrated? (Now, to be fair, all but one of his 20 plate appearances in that series came against either a tough left-handed pitcher or electric closer Jhoan Duran.)
It almost feels a little churlish to point this out, but Ohtani is actually a .205 career hitter in the postseason — though this is only his second trip there — with an OPS of .720 that’s a full 130 points below his regular season OPS. Still, if you’re looking for a time when he looked like Shohei in the postseason, you merely need to look to last year’s NLCS, when he hit .364 (with a .548 OBP!) with two homers.
This Dodgers lineup is a little thinner, and a little older, than it has been in some of their past postseason runs. The whole thing only works optimally when Shohei Ohtani is swinging it like the best hitter in the National League, which he has been most of this year. He’s eventually going to do that again … but the earlier the better.
Brewers: Can they solve Snell?
Snell has always been a peculiar pitcher, one who can be (and, when healthy, mostly is) the most dominant pitcher in the sport despite having a higher-than-average walk rate. The reason is his low home run rate, his low hit rate and all those strikeouts: The guy is perfectly happy, and capable, of pitching himself out of trouble.
The Brewers are a fascinating matchup for Snell, because they usually hit so well against left-handers. They led the Majors in batting average against lefties (.268) and were second in OBP (.339), despite modest power output (14th with a .395 SLG; 24th with 40 homers). Then the Brewers jumped all over Cubs lefty starter Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga in the first two games of the NLDS, scoring a combined 10 runs off them in 3 1/3 innings, knocking out Boyd in the first inning of Game 1. (Boyd did bounce back in Game 4, throwing 4 2/3 scoreless innings.)
Snell is a different challenge, though, and has been outstanding this postseason, giving up just two runs in 13 innings with the Dodgers winning both games he has started. Can the Brewers, at the very least, work him hard enough to get into that soft underbelly of the middle of the Dodgers bullpen? One thing’s definitely true: This is a time they need lefty masher Jackson Chourio (who had a .973 OPS against lefties this year) to keep that hamstring healthy.
