SEATTLE — The Toronto Blue Jays kept making boxing analogies Wednesday, which was only fitting for a team that needed to get off the mat in the American League Championship Series.
“Let’s try to have a few less jabs and a few more uppercuts,” Jays manager John Schneider told the team’s beat reporters before Game 3, explaining his decision to shuffle the lineup and bat Anthony Santander fourth behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
“I always compare hitting to fighting,” hitting coach David Popkins said afterward. “When guys get a little paralyzed in the ring, sometimes the only thing to do is put your head down and start throwing some haymakers.”
The Blue Jays were indeed a little paralyzed in losing the first two games to the Seattle Mariners, scoring only four runs and managing only one hit after the second inning. Then, after falling behind in Game 3, 2-0, they threw one haymaker after another in the most difficult run-scoring environment in the majors, finishing with five homers, 18 hits and a 13-4 victory. They were so aggressive, every one of their hits came in the first three pitches of the plate appearance or less.
Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t ever try to figure baseball out. Just as it was unlikely the Mariners would dominate the first two games after their 15-inning Division Series clincher and cross-continent flight to Toronto, it seemed just as unlikely the Jays would rebound with Shane Bieber making his ninth start after Tommy John surgery against the Mariners’ strike-throwing machine, George Kirby.
But then, the 2025 season has been one long riddle, with teams going bad every time they start to look good, and vice versa. Why should the ALCS be any different? Why couldn’t the Jays transform back into the offensive machine that pummeled the New York Yankees in the DS for 34 runs in four games?
The Jays certainly thought such a reversal was possible. Not only that, they thought it was quite possible against Kirby, even though he pitched well in both of his outings against Detroit in the DS.
“They’ve been attacking us in the zone, trying to induce weak contact,” Popkins said. “If they want to fill it up, the counter to that is punish them when they do that.”
Kirby, who produced the lowest walk rates in the majors in 2023 and ‘24, was a good bet to fill it up. To Jays outfielder Myles Straw, “it was the perfect recipe for being aggressive.” Schneider wanted his hitters to take more shots, beat Kirby to the spot if a pitch in the zone was one they could handle, and be comfortable going 0-1 rather than 0-for-1 if it was not.
The plan was not much of a deviation from what Popkins has advocated all season, his first with the Jays after getting fired by the Minnesota Twins. Popkins preaches swinging with intent. Or, as he put it, “look for something to hit hard, look for something to slug, and go from there.”
The first big blow came from, of all people, No. 9 hitter Andrés Giménez, who had two stints on the IL during the regular season, each lasting about a month, and finished with a .210 batting average and .598 OPS. Giménez was 0-for-6 in the first two games of this series. After Ernie Clement led off the third inning with a first-pitch double, he told Fox’s Tom Verducci, “For a second I was thinking of bunting and moving the runner over.”
No need. The Jays, in their hitters’ meeting and in the dugout, talked about getting on Kirby’s fastball. Giménez took his shot, hitting an 0-1 fastball over the wall in right-center to tie the score. A five-run inning, capped by a two-run double by Daulton Varsho on a 1-1 fastball, followed.
The Jays wound up hitting 13 balls 100 mph or more. Eleven of them were hits. Guerrero, who was 0-for-7 in the first two games, making his last six outs on the ground, finished 4-for-4 with a homer, two doubles and a walk. His second double, in the eighth, looked like it could have been the triple he needed for the cycle, but Jays third base coach Carlos Febles gave him a stop sign.
Schneider’s insertion of Santander into the cleanup spot, designed in part to give the Jays more of a presence behind Guerrero, proved inconsequential. Santander, after missing Game 2 with lower back tightness, was the Jays’ only regular without a hit, going 0-for-2 with a walk before getting removed for defense. Not that he needed to be a factor.
Springer hit his 22nd postseason homer and now ranks fourth on the all-time list (three of those homers came during home games in 2017 with the Houston Astros, who were later found to have stolen signs illegally in their home park). Catcher Alejandro Kirk crushed a three-run shot. Third baseman Addison Barger, dropped from the cleanup spot to the seven hole, added another.
Popkins before the game spoke of the Jays’ hitters hurting the Mariners in the zone to scare them out of it. The way he described it, the Mariners’ pitchers were too comfortable. If the Jays could force those pitchers to the edges, force them to start nibbling, it could lead to better counts — and results.
“We say if they give us a first pitch, the pitch that we’re looking for, we’re going to attack and we’re going to be aggressive on that,” Guerrero said. “And we’re going to continue to be that way.”
Every day in the postseason amounts to a fresh start, so it’s hardly certain the Jays will succeed with a similar strategy Thursday against Mariners righty Luis Castillo. The Jays’ starter, righty Max Scherzer, is 41, coming off an injury-marred regular season and will be pitching for the first time since Sept. 24.
But then, the matchup of Bieber vs. Kirby seemed to favor the Mariners, didn’t it? After giving up a two-run homer to Julio Rodríguez in the first, Bieber told the Jays hitters he had good stuff and asked them to pick him up. The hitters obliged, in the most emphatic way imaginable.
“We’ve got a lot of fight,” Popkins said.
Ring the bell to start the next round. The ALCS still could turn into a slugfest. More haymakers and uppercuts to come.