Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has been playfully addressing criticism about the team’s high spending. The Dodgers spent $509 million on their roster,…<\/p>\n
TORONTO(AP) \u2014 Asked whether he felt like a villain, Dave Roberts tilted his head and widened his eyes, startled that he was being categorized as some baseball equivalent of Darth Vader or Lex Luthor.<\/p>\n
His Los Angeles Dodgers have been criticized for spending $509 million on its big league roster<\/a>, more than seven times the $69 million of the big league-low Miami Marlins. The affable manager had yelled to LA fans after last week’s National League pennant clincher: \u201cThey said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let\u2019s get four more wins and really ruin baseball!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was just having a little fun with people that said that about the Dodgers,\u201d he explained Thursday, a day ahead of the World Series opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, \u201cbut I hope I\u2019m not the villain.\u201d<\/p>\n Los Angeles is the first defending champion to reach the World Series since the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies, who lost to the New York Yankees. No team has won consecutive titles since three in a row by the 1998-2000 Yankees, and no NL team has achieved the feat since Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in 1975-76.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one thing we cannot do is look over there and say that is Goliath,\u201d Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. \u201cThat is a beatable baseball team that has its flaws, and that has its really, really good strengths. How we expose each of them will determine who wins the series.\u201d<\/p>\n Led at the plate by Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, and on the mound by Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers are 9-1 in the postseason despite starting every series on the road. They are 14-1 over the past month.<\/p>\n \u201cJust to win once is hard and now be this close to being able to do it two times in a row, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve really grasped the weight of it,” Freeman said. \u201cLast week you\u2019re starting to get the word dynasty thrown out<\/a> and things of that nature. And if that if that\u2019s being thrown out, that means the organization\u2019s doing a really, really good job.\u201d<\/p>\n When the World Series was last played outside of the United States, Toronto won its second straight title in 1993 when Joe Carter hit a ninth-inning homer off Philadelphia’s Mitch Williams in Game 6, the second Series-ending home run after Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski against the New York Yankees in Game 7 in 1960.<\/p>\n Since then, the Blue Jays became Canada’s sole Major League Baseball team when the Montreal Expos moved to Washington, D.C., for the 2005 season.<\/p>\n Toronto’s home was renamed from the SkyDome to Rogers Centre in 2005, a year after Rogers Communications Inc. became the Blue Jays’ sole owner. The ballpark’s capacity was cut from 52,000 to just under 45,000 and more upgrades are planned ahead of 2026.<\/p>\n \u201cWe represent this entire country and we\u2019re this country\u2019s team, so we want to go out there and do everything we can to make this country proud of us,\u201d said Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old who opens the Series on the mound for Toronto in just his seventh big league start.<\/p>\n Ohtani usually prefers to take batting practice in an indoor cage, but he took BP on the field on Thursday, hitting drives off the batter’s eye behind the center-field fence like a basketball player making bank shots. He also sprayed balls off the flight deck fan area and the scoreboard above.<\/p>\n In a 2-for-25 slump, Ohtani also took on-field BP last Thursday, then had a three-homer game against Milwaukee the next day while pitching six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Left-hander Blake Snell will start for Los Angeles in his first Series appearance since 2020, when he started Game 6 for Tampa Bay against the Dodgers.<\/p>\n Trying to overcome a 3-2 Series deficit, Tampa Bay was ahead 1-0 when Snell allowed a one-out single to Austin Barnes in the sixth inning on his 73rd pitch. Rays manager Kevin Cash brought in Nick Anderson<\/a>, and the Dodgers rallied to win.<\/p>\n \u201cProbably for like a week I was thinking about it, what could have been different, what I could have done, the ups and downs of just feelings,” Snell said. \u201cBut then ultimately it led to \u2014 if I would have done more early on in my career to gain his trust, it would have been a different outcome I think.\u201d<\/p>\n Given a 5-0 lead in Game 2, Snell was removed after allowing Chris Taylor’s two-run homer in the fifth followed by a walk and a single.<\/p>\n \u201cLearn from it and ultimately it made me a better pitcher,\u201d Snell said, “just because I understand the game more than just myself, just the pieces, the parts and how it all works.\u201d<\/p>\n Snell spent 2021-23 with San Diego and 2024 with San Francisco, and the two-time Cy Young Award winner signed a $182 million, five-year contract with the Dodgers<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve matured. I\u2019ve grown up. I was kind of a kid still in 2020,\u201d said Snell, who turns 33 in December. \u201cI know I only have so much time left. I\u2019m not young .I don\u2019t really think about the ending. For now I\u2019m just more appreciative of the moments, the time and what these mean for my career.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the League Championship Series were extended to seven games in 1985, the four matchups between teams coming off seven-game series and four-game sweeps all were won by the teams who played the lengthier pennant playoffs: the 1988 Dodgers over Oakland, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals against Detroit, the 2007 Boston Red Sox over Colorado and 2012 San Francisco Giants against the Tigers.<\/p>\n Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. enters hitting .442 with six homers and 12 RBIs in 11 postseason games.<\/p>\n