Friday, October 31, 2025
LinkedPrime
Technology

Blue Jays Have Proven Fans, Baseball Media, Former Players Wrong In World Series

The Toronto Blue Jays are just one win away from a championship after another dominant performance in Game 5 on Wednesday night. Behind rookie Trey Yesavage, and some more early luck, Toronto jumped out to a lead they'd never relinquish. And with the Los Angeles Dodgers' shaky bullpen unable to keep the game close, it spiraled to a 6-1 win as the series heads back to Rogers Centre. Yesavage was dominant, seven innings with just one run allowed, 12 strikeouts and no walks. It was a remarkable performance, given the stage, the opponent, and the importance of the game. Davis Schneider hit a leadoff home run that had an expected batting average of .230, meaning balls hit with that velocity and that launch angle are outs 77% of this time. In Game 5? It was a home run and early lead for Toronto. Is that luck? Or did Schneider, decades before he was born, influence the architects of Dodger Stadium in the early-1960's to put the fences exactly at the right spot so that he would one day hit a fly ball the exact perfect distance to defy the odds and help his team in the World Series? We'll never know the answer. Shohei Ohtani hit the second-hardest ball of the postseason, over 117mph, that had an expected batting average of .870. It was caught for an out. It also was a microcosm of why fans, the media and former players are often completely wrong about baseball. For example, here's a few quotes summarizing the attitude of baseball media towards the Dodgers offseason acquisitions after winning the 2024 World Series. "…terrible for baseball." — Jon Heyman, New York Post. "The payroll discrepancy is not a good thing for baseball." — Rowan Kavner. "Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game… That the financial imbalance ruins the sport." — Jeff Passan, ESPN. Chris "Mad Dog" Russo calls the Dodgers’ spending "a disgrace" and debates whether it’s "ruining a level playing field." — ESPN First Take. "In 2025, the baseball world mutters about them… allegedly ruining the game." — Bill Shaikin (L.A. Times) Mark Teixiera, who signed an 8-year, $180 million contract with the Yankees in 2009, said about their spending, "…This is getting ridiculous…I think this is starting to create fissures in the fan base, and the health of the game needs to be really dissected to see if there’s a way that we can make things a little bit more equitable, a little bit more fair." Trevor May said that the Dodgers' signings meant there was "…a really good chance there is a work stoppage again." The Dodgers are now down 3-2 in the Series after being outscored 12-3 by an extremely mediocre Blue Jays lineup in Games 4 and 5 at home. Welcome to baseball. Blue Jays Show Why It's Impossible To Ruin Baseball The World Series has demonstrated, for fans willing to engage in intellectual honesty, why it's not possible to "ruin baseball" or build a superteam. Here are some examples, based on data, showing how teams like Toronto can ride luck and beneficial timing to dominant series wins. Trey Yesavage is rightfully receiving praise for his start. But Yesavage, up through this start, was a mediocre pitcher, only in the rotation because the Blue Jays had no better options. In AA and AAA, he had a 4.37 ERA, walking 22 hitters in 47.1 innings. Through his first 14 regular season innings, Yesavage allowed 20 baserunners. He had a 4.26 ERA in the playoffs entering Wednesday after giving up nine runs in his last 13.2 innings pitched, with 23 baserunners allowed. But as is often the case, pitchers with good stuff and poor command are high variance, meaning they can periodically dominate after stretches of inconsistency. That's exactly what happened. Impressive in this one game? Yes. Predictive and meaningful? Not even a little. Another simple discrepancy is batting average on balls in play. League average BABIP is roughly .300. Toronto's team BABIP in the World Series is .297. The Dodgers team BABIP is .236. Addison Barger's BABIP in the series is .538, an insane, unsustainable level. The Dodgers have been extremely unlucky. The Blue Jays haven't. The Dodgers are hitting the ball harder than the Blue Jays, with an average exit velocity of 90.1mph to 86.2mph. For context, 86.2mph is poor to catastrophically low. Were that an individual player, it would rank tied for 233rd out of 251 qualified hitters in the 2025 regular season. Toronto's barrel rate is also much lower, at 6.2% to 11.0%. The Dodgers' 11% collective barrel rate would rank in the top 10 among individual players this year, well ahead of stars like Nick Kurtz, Manny Machado, Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., and Rafael Devers. Toronto's 6.2% barrel rate is the same that Detroit's Colt Keith had this season. LA's hard hit percentage is higher than Toronto's, 39.7% to 35.2%. Consequently, the Dodgers' expected slugging percentage is .446, while Toronto's is just .406. The difference in the series? The Blue Jays have either been lucky and exceeded their expected stats, or been close to their underlying performance. Toronto's slugging percentage is .389, compared to .406 expected. The Dodgers? Their actual slugging is .354 compared to .446. It's much the same with weighted on base average. wOBA, for short, is similar to OPS, but more heavily weights for important events like home runs. As an overall measure of offensive performance based on run values, it's better for separating out quality players and teams. In the World Series? Toronto's expected wOBA, based on quality of contact, is .327. For the Dodgers, it's .323. Basically even. Once again though, Toronto's been closer to achieving their "deserved" results. The actual wOBA for the Blue Jays offense is .317 to .279 for LA. Four of the top six hitters in the series by expected wOBA have been Dodgers: The Blue Jays have scored 29 runs to the Dodgers' 18 because they are either matching or exceeding their expected stats, while Dodgers' hitters have generally been extremely unlucky. The two "luckiest" hitters in the series, by gap between actual and expected wOBA have been Toronto's Davis Schneider and Addison Barger. The fifth and sixth-luckiest hitters in the series are Toronto's Ernie Clement and Ty France. Six of the eight unluckiest hitters in the series have been Dodgers: Miguel Rojas, Andy Pages, Freeman, Smith, Alex Call and Teoscar Hernandez. Playoff Narratives Are Simply Wrong So what's the broader takeaway from all of this data? Most people paid to give their opinions about baseball professionally have no idea what they're talking about. Including, and often especially, former players. Nothing matters in October. There is no predictive value to anything, no number that shows that X team will beat X team in a short series. Playoff experience doesn't matter. Youth doesn't matter. Age doesn't matter. Managers don't really matter. Home field advantage is virtually nonexistent in the postseason. The one thing that does matter? Hitting more home runs than your opponent in an individual game. Teams that do that are now 29-5 in the 2025 playoffs. It's been that way for years. What do baseball media and most former players heavily criticize? Trying to hit home runs in the playoffs. Makes sense. The Dodgers in the offseason could trade for Tarik Skubal, sign Kyle Tucker, trade for Aaron Judge, and still get swept in the World Series. The gaps between teams are minuscule in Major League Baseball. The Blue Jays' run differential was +77, worse than the 81-81 Texas Rangers. Their expected win-loss record is 88-74, the Dodgers' expected win-loss record is 95-67. Even that gap in expected winning percentage is just 4%, over the course of 162 games. That's effectively meaningless in a small sample size, like a postseason series. And that's why it's not possible to ruin baseball. There are no narratives to learn from this series. No secret formula the Blue Jays have unlocked. Nathan Lukes is a career minor leaguer having the best few weeks of his life. Ernie Clement was DFA'd by the Guardians not long ago. Daulton Varsho has been a slightly below league average hitter in his career, and is hitting like a superstar in the postseason. Over 707 regular season plate appearances, Addison Barger has been well below average as a hitter. In the postseason, he's been 73% better than league average, or roughly Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. Alejandro Kirk has a .524 slugging percentage in the postseason, while his career number is .398. Andres Gimenez is hitting .221 in the postseason overall, yet is 7-14 with runners in scoring position. If these players could simply choose to be better in the playoffs, why do they not also choose to play better in the regular season, when this level of offensive production would lead to $200-300 million contract offers in free agency or lucrative extensions? They simply don't care enough about their own financial success to try harder in the regular season or the minor leagues? Bizarre priorities! The Dodgers entered the World Series 9-1 in the playoffs. They've lost three out of five. Is it remotely surprising that an unsustainably hot team has regressed afterward? Of course not. That happens all the time in the regular season. Nobody notices or cares. The Blue Jays are now 10-6 in October, the Dodgers are 11-4. None of this means anything, but that's a boring explanation people can't accept. So they simply make stuff up to rationalize what randomness can explain. LA could recover and win the World Series, and then all the now-silent critics will return to saying they've ruined the sport. Or if the Blue Jays finish out the series in Toronto, they'll return to saying the Dodgers are chokers and act like they never stomped their feet and clutched their pearls for a salary cap. It's a joke.

Unknown •
Blue Jays Have Proven Fans, Baseball Media, Former Players Wrong In World Series

The Toronto Blue Jays are just one win away from a championship after another dominant performance in Game 5 on Wednesday night. Behind rookie Trey Yesavage, and some more early luck, Toronto jumped out to a lead they'd never relinquish. And with the Los Angeles Dodgers' shaky bullpen unable to keep the game close, it spiraled to a 6-1 win as the series heads back to Rogers Centre. Yesavage was dominant, seven innings with just one run allowed, 12 strikeouts and no walks. It was a remarkable performance, given the stage, the opponent, and the importance of the game. Davis Schneider hit a leadoff home run that had an expected batting average of .230, meaning balls hit with that velocity and that launch angle are outs 77% of this time. In Game 5? It was a home run and early lead for Toronto. Is that luck? Or did Schneider, decades before he was born, influence the architects of Dodger Stadium in the early-1960's to put the fences exactly at the right spot so that he would one day hit a fly ball the exact perfect distance to defy the odds and help his team in the World Series? We'll never know the answer. Shohei Ohtani hit the second-hardest ball of the postseason, over 117mph, that had an expected batting average of .870. It was caught for an out. It also was a microcosm of why fans, the media and former players are often completely wrong about baseball. For example, here's a few quotes summarizing the attitude of baseball media towards the Dodgers offseason acquisitions after winning the 2024 World Series. "…terrible for baseball." — Jon Heyman, New York Post. "The payroll discrepancy is not a good thing for baseball." — Rowan Kavner. "Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game… That the financial imbalance ruins the sport." — Jeff Passan, ESPN. Chris "Mad Dog" Russo calls the Dodgers’ spending "a disgrace" and debates whether it’s "ruining a level playing field." — ESPN First Take. "In 2025, the baseball world mutters about them… allegedly ruining the game." — Bill Shaikin (L.A. Times) Mark Teixiera, who signed an 8-year, $180 million contract with the Yankees in 2009, said about their spending, "…This is getting ridiculous…I think this is starting to create fissures in the fan base, and the health of the game needs to be really dissected to see if there’s a way that we can make things a little bit more equitable, a little bit more fair." Trevor May said that the Dodgers' signings meant there was "…a really good chance there is a work stoppage again." The Dodgers are now down 3-2 in the Series after being outscored 12-3 by an extremely mediocre Blue Jays lineup in Games 4 and 5 at home. Welcome to baseball. Blue Jays Show Why It's Impossible To Ruin Baseball The World Series has demonstrated, for fans willing to engage in intellectual honesty, why it's not possible to "ruin baseball" or build a superteam. Here are some examples, based on data, showing how teams like Toronto can ride luck and beneficial timing to dominant series wins. Trey Yesavage is rightfully receiving praise for his start. But Yesavage, up through this start, was a mediocre pitcher, only in the rotation because the Blue Jays had no better options. In AA and AAA, he had a 4.37 ERA, walking 22 hitters in 47.1 innings. Through his first 14 regular season innings, Yesavage allowed 20 baserunners. He had a 4.26 ERA in the playoffs entering Wednesday after giving up nine runs in his last 13.2 innings pitched, with 23 baserunners allowed. But as is often the case, pitchers with good stuff and poor command are high variance, meaning they can periodically dominate after stretches of inconsistency. That's exactly what happened. Impressive in this one game? Yes. Predictive and meaningful? Not even a little. Another simple discrepancy is batting average on balls in play. League average BABIP is roughly .300. Toronto's team BABIP in the World Series is .297. The Dodgers team BABIP is .236. Addison Barger's BABIP in the series is .538, an insane, unsustainable level. The Dodgers have been extremely unlucky. The Blue Jays haven't. The Dodgers are hitting the ball harder than the Blue Jays, with an average exit velocity of 90.1mph to 86.2mph. For context, 86.2mph is poor to catastrophically low. Were that an individual player, it would rank tied for 233rd out of 251 qualified hitters in the 2025 regular season. Toronto's barrel rate is also much lower, at 6.2% to 11.0%. The Dodgers' 11% collective barrel rate would rank in the top 10 among individual players this year, well ahead of stars like Nick Kurtz, Manny Machado, Corbin Carroll, Bobby Witt Jr., and Rafael Devers. Toronto's 6.2% barrel rate is the same that Detroit's Colt Keith had this season. LA's hard hit percentage is higher than Toronto's, 39.7% to 35.2%. Consequently, the Dodgers' expected slugging percentage is .446, while Toronto's is just .406. The difference in the series? The Blue Jays have either been lucky and exceeded their expected stats, or been close to their underlying performance. Toronto's slugging percentage is .389, compared to .406 expected. The Dodgers? Their actual slugging is .354 compared to .446. It's much the same with weighted on base average. wOBA, for short, is similar to OPS, but more heavily weights for important events like home runs. As an overall measure of offensive performance based on run values, it's better for separating out quality players and teams. In the World Series? Toronto's expected wOBA, based on quality of contact, is .327. For the Dodgers, it's .323. Basically even. Once again though, Toronto's been closer to achieving their "deserved" results. The actual wOBA for the Blue Jays offense is .317 to .279 for LA. Four of the top six hitters in the series by expected wOBA have been Dodgers: The Blue Jays have scored 29 runs to the Dodgers' 18 because they are either matching or exceeding their expected stats, while Dodgers' hitters have generally been extremely unlucky. The two "luckiest" hitters in the series, by gap between actual and expected wOBA have been Toronto's Davis Schneider and Addison Barger. The fifth and sixth-luckiest hitters in the series are Toronto's Ernie Clement and Ty France. Six of the eight unluckiest hitters in the series have been Dodgers: Miguel Rojas, Andy Pages, Freeman, Smith, Alex Call and Teoscar Hernandez. Playoff Narratives Are Simply Wrong So what's the broader takeaway from all of this data? Most people paid to give their opinions about baseball professionally have no idea what they're talking about. Including, and often especially, former players. Nothing matters in October. There is no predictive value to anything, no number that shows that X team will beat X team in a short series. Playoff experience doesn't matter. Youth doesn't matter. Age doesn't matter. Managers don't really matter. Home field advantage is virtually nonexistent in the postseason. The one thing that does matter? Hitting more home runs than your opponent in an individual game. Teams that do that are now 29-5 in the 2025 playoffs. It's been that way for years. What do baseball media and most former players heavily criticize? Trying to hit home runs in the playoffs. Makes sense. The Dodgers in the offseason could trade for Tarik Skubal, sign Kyle Tucker, trade for Aaron Judge, and still get swept in the World Series. The gaps between teams are minuscule in Major League Baseball. The Blue Jays' run differential was +77, worse than the 81-81 Texas Rangers. Their expected win-loss record is 88-74, the Dodgers' expected win-loss record is 95-67. Even that gap in expected winning percentage is just 4%, over the course of 162 games. That's effectively meaningless in a small sample size, like a postseason series. And that's why it's not possible to ruin baseball. There are no narratives to learn from this series. No secret formula the Blue Jays have unlocked. Nathan Lukes is a career minor leaguer having the best few weeks of his life. Ernie Clement was DFA'd by the Guardians not long ago. Daulton Varsho has been a slightly below league average hitter in his career, and is hitting like a superstar in the postseason. Over 707 regular season plate appearances, Addison Barger has been well below average as a hitter. In the postseason, he's been 73% better than league average, or roughly Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. Alejandro Kirk has a .524 slugging percentage in the postseason, while his career number is .398. Andres Gimenez is hitting .221 in the postseason overall, yet is 7-14 with runners in scoring position. If these players could simply choose to be better in the playoffs, why do they not also choose to play better in the regular season, when this level of offensive production would lead to $200-300 million contract offers in free agency or lucrative extensions? They simply don't care enough about their own financial success to try harder in the regular season or the minor leagues? Bizarre priorities! The Dodgers entered the World Series 9-1 in the playoffs. They've lost three out of five. Is it remotely surprising that an unsustainably hot team has regressed afterward? Of course not. That happens all the time in the regular season. Nobody notices or cares. The Blue Jays are now 10-6 in October, the Dodgers are 11-4. None of this means anything, but that's a boring explanation people can't accept. So they simply make stuff up to rationalize what randomness can explain. LA could recover and win the World Series, and then all the now-silent critics will return to saying they've ruined the sport. Or if the Blue Jays finish out the series in Toronto, they'll return to saying the Dodgers are chokers and act like they never stomped their feet and clutched their pearls for a salary cap. It's a joke.

Read original article →

Related Articles