TORONTO — Dan Wilson finished pouring a cold, light beer into a tall to-go cup, grabbed a plastic bag containing his carry-out dinner and headed up a ramp leading out of the visitors’ clubhouse.
Then the Mariners manager turned the wrong way.
He went right out of the clubhouse doors, down a Rogers Centre hallway leading to a restricted area. The team bus, he soon discovered, was the other way.
One U-turn later, he was back on course.
It was a rare misstep during an otherwise stress-free Sunday night for Wilson and the Mariners, who turned to Bryce Miller and then turned the American League Championship Series on its head with a stunning 3-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1.
AL championship series
Mariners 1, Blue Jays 0
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Rarely has Wilson broken character during his first full season as Mariners manager. He’s calm and he’s consistent, and he’s generally not expressive with his emotions.
With the cold Canadian beer in his left hand, Wilson let loose a little Sunday night just before exiting the clubhouse.
“That,” he said, “was awesome.”
It wasn’t supposed to be.
The Mariners, all things considered, were not supposed to win this game.
Two days after their anxiety-riddled, 15-inning victory over the Detroit Tigers back in Seattle in Game 5 of the AL Division Series, the Mariners had only one real option to pitch Sunday, and that was asking Miller to start on short rest for the first time in his career.
Saturday’s “off day” offered little respite. The Mariners’ 2,000-mile flight out here was delayed, and they didn’t get into their Toronto hotel until almost midnight Sunday morning.
And the backdrop to all that: the Blue Jays were waiting at home with three days off after they’d thumped the New York Yankees in their ALDS, and they had their well-rested ace, Kevin Gausman, ready for Game 1.
And then George Springer ambushed the first pitch Miller threw in the bottom of the first inning to send the 44,474 inside the Rogers Center into a frenzy.
“That could have gone sideways very quickly,” Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth said.
Cal Raleigh would later hit a mammoth home run off Gausman to jolt the Mariners’ offense — his ninth homer in this ballpark, again silencing this Toronto crowd — but his most important contribution of the game might have been his mound visit to help Miller settle down during that tumultuous first inning.
“I just thought he was being a little picky there after [the homer],” Raleigh said. “Just told him to trust his stuff, and he was able to get out of it, which was huge, without putting up a crooked number. After that it was for the most part pretty good.”
He’s underselling it.
The Mariners could not have reasonably asked for a better start from Miller, and they could not have reasonably started this seven-game series any better.
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of Miller’s performance Sunday night — and what domino effect his six sharp innings could mean for the rest of the Mariners pitching staff in a long series.
“I’m sure lots of people saw it as you know, they had their No. 1 guy and we had Bryce — who is unbelievable, but he’s had some ups and downs this year,” M’s reliever Gabe Speier said. “And people probably saw it as a mismatch. But that guy doesn’t care. Bryce was really fun to watch tonight.”
The Blue Jays had the league’s best record at home during the regular season, and their lineup had baseball’s best batting average and the lowest strikeout rate.
Mariners pitching held them to two hits in Game 1.
After Springer’s first-pitch homer, the Blue Jays were 1 for 28 the rest of the game, and their two hits are the fewest hits the Mariners have ever allowed in a postseason game.
“Bryce was attacking; he was throwing hard; he was landing secondaries early in counts,” Woodworth said. “He was just executing at an elite rate. He was [expletive] dialed tonight.”
Miller needed 27 pitches to get through the first inning. He then retired 18 of the final 20 batters he faced.
“The year personally didn’t go how I had planned and how I had hoped for,” said Miller, who spent half the season on the injured list with bone spurs in his pitching elbow. “But we’re in the ALCS, and I got to go out there and set the tone, and I felt great. So arm, body, mentally, everything feels really good right now, so I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Speier, Matt Brash and Andrés Muñoz came out of the bullpen and closed out the final three innings, each throwing a perfect inning on, incredibly, just eight pitches.
There was some question whether one or two of those relievers would be available for Game 1 after they’d been so critical — and so worn down — in the Division Series.
But every one of the Mariners pitchers said pregame they were available to pitch Sunday, and they should all be available to pitch again in Game 2 (2:03 p.m. PT Monday, FOX).
“Bryce showed up huge tonight and saved the bullpen,” Speier said. “If the game’s close again tomorrow, you’ll probably see the same group (out of the bullpen). That’s just how it is this time of year.”
The Mariners, one step closer to the franchise’s first World Series, can get greedy now. Logan Gilbert, who threw 34 pitches Friday night in extra innings, has been announced as the Game 2 starter.
Raleigh continued his torment the Blue Jays when he launched a low splitter from Gausman and sent it 420 feet out to right field, tying the score at 1-1 in the sixth inning.
Gausman had retired 16 in a row up to that point, and the Mariners’ late rally — though not nearly as dramatic — did call back to Oct. 8, 2022, when they overcame an 8-1 deficit in an improbable 10-9 win, the largest come-from-behind victory by a road team in MLB playoff history to clinch the AL Wild Card Series win.
Gausman had started that game, too.
After Raleigh’s homer, Julio Rodríguez drew a walk, and Blue Jays reliever Brendon Little gave up the go-ahead single to Jorge Polanco — the 15th-inning hero Friday night — to give the Mariners a 2-1 lead.
Polanco drove in another run in the eighth inning when he singled through the right side to bring in Randy Arozarena, who had walked and then stole second and third.
“He’s been unbelievable,” Raleigh said of Polanco. “He’s been kind of the heart and soul over this last month.”
Adam Jude: ajude@seattletimes.com. Adam Jude is a Seattle Mariners beat writer at The Seattle Times. He previously covered UW Huskies football and the Seattle Seahawks for The Seattle Times.