The Yankees and Mets are watching the same terrific World Series the rest of us are watching, it just cost them a combined $600 million or so for their own viewing rights. The Mets spent a little more on baseball players this year than the Dodgers. The Yankees spent a little less. The Mets weren’t good enough to even make the postseason. The Yankees couldn’t beat the Blue Jays after getting rolled in the first two games of their division series. No kidding, no teams ever paid more to watch a Series than them.
Brian Cashman, the architect of another Yankee team that fell short, says that he never called the postseason a crapshoot, but rather spoke of the “randomness” of it all, and what a relief it was to have that clarified. But you know what makes everything far less random? Having one of the two best teams, which is exactly what the Blue Jays and Dodgers are, no matter how what’s felt like a classic Fall Classic comes out in the end.
Put it another way: We may miss the World Series around here. But off what we’ve seen so far, from Shohei and Vlad and Freddie and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the kid, Trey Yesavage; from all those grinders on the Blue Jay especially, is that the Series doesn’t even miss us a little bit. This has felt, truly, the way the World Series used to feel, when the games we talked about at this time of year, even with an unbelievably busy sports calendar, were baseball games.
This time we’re still talking about that 18-inning game that started on Monday night and — if you are from around here — ended a little before 3 in the morning. We’ve been talking about Freddie Freeman walking off Game 3 of this Series the way he walked off Game 1 against the Yankees last year with that grand slam off Nestor Cortes.
And there was that remarkable moment when Clayton Kershaw, who could have been throwing the last pitches of his storied career, somehow got out of bases loaded in the top of the 12th. He did that with the game still tied, the way it would stay tied until Freddie, and finally did that on a 3-2 count against Nathan Lukes. And, because this felt like a Hollywood ending even if it wasn’t an ending at the time, Kershaw did that with 89-year-old Sandy Koufax in the stands cheering him on.
We were talking about all that, and about the throw across the diamond from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. across the infield to nail Teoscar Hernandez at third base. And about the similar throw Tommy Edman made later at third to gun down Isiah Kiner-Falefa. And of course we were talking about the pitch-perfect relay play from Teoscar to Edman to Will Smith to cut down Davis Schneider at the plate.
And we know what happened after the Blue Jays lost a heartbreak game like that in the bottom of the 18th the way the Red Sox lost one exactly like it, at Dodger Stadium, Game 3 of the 2018 World Series when Max Muncy walked them off: The Blue Jays won Game 4 the way the Sox did in ’18, then won Game 5 the way the Red Sox did to close the Dodgers out. The only difference was that Boston led 2-0 going into that Game 3 seven years ago.
It all started in Game 4 with another big swing from Guerrero, who is having as much an October for the ages as Shohei Ohtani, which is saying plenty. The only World Series like his that I can remember lately was David Ortiz for the Red Sox in 2013, when the Red Sox finally beat the Cardinals in six games.
Check these numbers out: Ortiz’s batting average was .688 for that Series. His OPS was 1.948 and his slugging percentage was 1.188. He had two homers and six RBI and scored seven runs and walked eight times and all that isn’t even the best part, the best part is that his on-base percentage in that World Series was .760.
Now Vlad Jr. has two home runs and six runs scored in five games and six walks and a .500 on-base percentage and a .1.136 OPS and a slugging percentage of .636. With everything that Ohtani has done this October, hitting those three home runs in the Dodgers’ closeout game against the Brewers and, oh by the way, striking out 10 in the same game, Guerrero has carried his team to the end of October even more than Ohtani has carried his.
“It’s not over yet,” Guerrero said after he jump-started the Blue Jays with his early home run in Game 5. Before his team’s Game 7 against the Mariners in the American League Championship Series, he was asked if he was ready.
“I born ready,” the Blue Jays’ $500 million man said.
He was clearly born for this kind of stage and this kind of moment, the kind his Hall of Fame father never got; the father to whom he says he will give his World Series ring if the Blue Jays can win one more game at the Rogers Centre.
“’Tell me your ring size,’” the son said he told his father.
Now we all wait to see what happens in Toronto starting Friday night. The Dodgers have stopped hitting, and sometimes when that happens to a team it doesn’t start hitting again until next season. But this is also the Dodgers team that looked down and out down 1-2 to the Padres in their division series last season and came all the way back to win, shutting out the Padres in Games 4 and 5.
Now we’ll watch the Blue Jays try to knock the Dodgers out. So, too, will the Mets and Yankees. If they’re still watching the Series, that is, randomly or otherwise.
