{"id":239411,"date":"2025-10-25T14:52:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/239411\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T14:52:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T14:52:07","slug":"blue-jays-contact-approach-to-hitting-overwhelms-dodgers-in-game-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/239411\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays’ Contact Approach to Hitting Overwhelms Dodgers in Game 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTORONTO \u2013 The Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> have run into a different kind of opponent in this World Series<\/a>\u2014the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>, who just know how to put the ball in play.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Blue Jays\u2019 contact rate during the regular season was 80.5%, best in MLB<\/a>. They struck out only 1,099 times, 29th in MLB and just three more whiffs than the Kansas City Royals, who had baseball\u2019s fewest. Toronto\u2019s regular-season strikeout rate of 17.8%, best in MLB, has dropped to 14.8% in the playoffs ahead of the World Series.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that all came into play in Game 1, as the Jays thrashed the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-4, at a raucous Rogers Centre on Friday night.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPitching is so good these days that contact is at a premium,\u201d Blue Jays\u2019 manager John Schneider said in a postgame interview. \u201cYou never know where the ball is going to go off the bat, but making the pitchers stay in the zone is important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Blue Jays scored nine runs in the sixth, including a grand slam by Addison Barger, the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history. The team sent 12 men to the plate that inning; nine of them put the ball in play, and the other three walked.<\/p>\n

\n\tToronto hit three homers in all\u2014a dividend of how they play the game.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think we give pitching staffs different looks,\u201d Schneider said. \u201cAnd being able to score in multiple ways is big for us, not waiting around for a three-run homer. If that happens, great. That\u2019s kind of icing on the cake, if you will.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dodgers have struck out 106 times in the playoffs to the Blue Jays 68. The Dodgers whiffed 12 times Friday night, compared to the Jays\u2019 four\u2014all by Blake Snell, who had his worst start of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tSnell came into Friday\u2019s game with an 0.86 ERA in his three playoff starts\u2014all victories\u2014with 28 strikeouts. Ten of those came in his previous outing in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, who the Dodgers swept.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Friday night, the Blue Jays made Snell work. He threw 29 pitches just to get out of a first-inning, bases-loaded situation without letting up a run. He walked two and allowed a base hit. When the Jays put the first three runners on to start the sixth, Snell was gone this time with the bases loaded and no one out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThen we got on a roll,\u201d Schneider said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Jays have the high-priced stars, including Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer, but it\u2019s the group Schneider calls \u201cthe grunts\u201d that did all the damage in Game 1. Barger, Daulton Varsho and Alejandro Kirk hit the homers. The big guys didn\u2019t drive in any of the 11 runs; they didn\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n

\n\tSnell was socked with the loss, allowing five runs on eight hits, and his postseason ERA skyrocketed to 2.42.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just think Blake didn\u2019t have good fastball command,\u201d Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. \u201cHe was working into deeper counts. When he had count leverage, he couldn\u2019t put them away because they put the ball in play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that\u2019s the point. The Jays\u2019 style of play is counter-intuitive to the analytical bent of the rest of MLB, which focuses on launch angle and playing for the three true outcomes: a walk, strikeout or homer. Toronto\u2019s analytics department tells the player to make contact, and they seek out or develop players accordingly.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe guys who\u2019ve been around here for a while, the regulars, they all can hit, they all hit for a relatively high average, for the most part, and they all have really good bat-to-ball skills,\u201d Schneider said.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the regular season, the Blue Jays led MLB with a .265 batting average, 20 points over the rest of the league. In the postseason, they\u2019re hitting .305 with the Dodgers next up at .250. Toronto defeated Seattle in a seven-game American League Championship Series, and the Mariners batted .215 overall in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey beat up the New York Yankees in an AL Division Series, when the Yanks batted .251, whiffing 66 times in their seven playoff games.<\/p>\n

\n\tCould the Blue Jays\u2019 mission of making contact be the next trend in baseball? \u201c[It] could be. This league sees what happens in real time and makes adjustments,\u201d Schneider said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMay the Dodgers now be wary\u2014Friday night was not a fluke. The Blue Jays have scored 82 runs in 12 playoff games, far and away the most among the 12 teams to qualify for the postseason. The Dodgers are second with 50 in their 11 games. The Mariners scored 49 in their 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tContact baseball: It\u2019s old school, and it\u2019s refreshing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEveryone gets caught up in OPS and slug and all that kind of stuff,\u201d Schnieder said. \u201cBut there\u2019s something to be said about how a lineup unfolds around one another. And I think we\u2019ve really leaned in to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2013 The Los Angeles Dodgers have run into a different kind of opponent in this World Series\u2014the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,487,501,462,82,507,24418],"class_list":{"0":"post-239411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","11":"tag-major-league-baseball","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","15":"tag-world-series"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}