The Toronto Blue Jays won the American League pennant for the first time in 32 years on Monday night to set up a World Series showdown with the Los Angeles Dodgers. <\/p>\n
George Springer’s three-run home run in the seventh inning put the Jays ahead in Game 7. That turned out to be the series-clinching hit. <\/p>\n
The World Series begins on Friday at Rogers Centre. Toronto earned home-field advantage by way of the better regular-season record.<\/p>\n
Game 1: Friday, October 24 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 2: Saturday, October 25 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 3: Monday, October 27 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 4: Tuesday, October 28 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, October 29 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 6 (if necessary): Friday, October 31 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Game 7 (if necessary): Saturday, November 1 (8 p.m. ET, Fox)<\/p>\n
Toronto will play in its first World Series since 1993. <\/p>\n
The Dodgers are in the Fall Classic for the fifth time since 2017. They are the reigning champion and have won their last two World Series appearances.<\/p>\n
The National League champion should be a heavy favorite because of the way its pitchers performed in the NLCS.<\/p>\n
The rotation of Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani will be fully rested for the World Series, but they’ll face a different type of challenge from the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n
Toronto had one of the lowest strikeout rates in baseball and its hitters have only struck out 64 times across 11 postseason games. <\/p>\n
The matchup would’ve been far different against the Mariners, who had a postseason-leading 129 punchouts at the plate. <\/p>\n
Toronto’s pitching staff is no joke either with Kevin Gausman, Trey Yesavage and Shane Bieber at the top. The Blue Jays can also rely on Chris Bassitt out of the pen. <\/p>\n
The Blue Jays don’t have the World Series experience that flows through the Dodgers roster, but they do have two outstanding postseason performers in Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. <\/p>\n
Guerrero has the best batting average this postseason among players on both rosters and he leads the playoffs with six home runs. <\/p>\n
If Toronto pulls off the upset, Guerrero and Springer, a champion in the past with the Houston Astros, must set the tone at the plate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Blue Jays won the American League pennant for the first time in 32 years on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-240117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}