The Starter's Revenge and the (Low Low!) Price of MLB's Soul

Last week, I joked about how silly pregame “Keys to the Game” stories and segments tend to be. I still believe that. They are silly — if we could really predict exactly what’s going to happen in sports, then, well, what would even be the point of sports?

BUT … I have to say I can never remember a clearer plot-line than what’s happening in this World Series.

Posnanskeys to the Game
(thank you to multiple Brilliant Readers for the title)

Thank you. Goodnight. Please be safe driving home.

This is exactly how Games 1 and 2 played out, and while two games is an insignificant sample size, it really feels like this is how the series will go. The Dodgers are Achilles. They were dipped into the River Styx by the Baseball Gods, and thus they are Shohei and Mookie and Freddie and Yoshi and Blake and Teo and Tyler and all the rest, and thus are mostly invulnerable.

But they were held by the heel, and the heel is not invulnerable, and the heel is that ghastly bullpen. The individual pitchers in that bullpen should be able to get some outs. But they can’t. It’s like they believe themselves cursed. In Game 1, the Blue Jays were able to pick and prod and annoy Blake Snell enough to get him out of the game in the sixth inning with the bases loaded. The Dodgers’ bullpen did its worst. And it was a blowout.

It looked like the Blue Jays might do the same to Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 — they knocked two hits off him in the first and made him throw 23 pitches. They knocked another hit off him in the second and scored a run off him in the third, had him at 46 pitches through three innings. You know that scene in action movies where the hacker pounds a bunch of keys on his computer, then smiles and turns to the Tom Cruise/George Clooney ringleader and says, “I’M IN!” That was undoubtedly how Blue Jays manager John Schneider felt in that moment. He was into that bullpen.

Only he wasn’t because Yamamoto decided at that point to go thermonuclear. We’ve seen some astounding pitching performances in these playoffs, but I don’t know that anybody has been quite as suffocating as Yamamoto was in the last six innings of Game 2. The Blue Jays just went down quietly, obediently, helplessly.

And that was that, 18 batters retired in a row (20 if you count the last two outs of the third) — nine by groundout, four by strikeout, three on fly balls hit to the outfield, two by infield pop-out. Everybody has been talking about just how loud the Skydome has been (it will always be the Skydome to me), and Yamamoto just kept turning the volume down on the crowd, inning by inning, until they were mute at the end.

Yamamoto made some recent history — he became the first pitcher to complete a World Series game since 2015 (Johnny Cueto!). He became the first pitcher to complete consecutive postseason games since 2001 (Curt Schilling). He became the first pitcher to complete consecutive postseason games on the road since 1979 (Scott McGregor!). And so on. With Yoshi, we are seeing the return of something that seemed gone — it’s like waking up and seeing that your favorite record store is back and selling compact discs.

What’s fascinating to me about all this is that it cuts in precisely the opposite direction of where baseball seemed to be heading. Many of us have lamented the diminishing starting pitcher. During the regular season, they throw fewer innings than ever. They win fewer games than ever. Relievers with 100-mph fastballs and ungodly sliders and sweepers and cutters pop up everywhere like mushrooms.

Only now here we are, the most expensive team ever built is relying on starters to go the distance — or at least as much of the distance as they can — and it’s, um, wonderful? Glorious? We go into every game wondering, “Will the starter have his stuff? Will he be able to get through the lineup a second time, a third time, even (gasp!) a fourth time? Will Tyler Glasnow demand to stay in the game a little longer tonight? Will Dave Roberts ask a bit more of Shohei than he’s ever asked before? This is fun! And it’s something I felt sure we’d lost.

Speaking of pitchers demanding to stay in games — wasn’t it a blast watching Max Scherzer tell John Schneider to get the #@%@ off his mound in Game 6 of the ALCS? Yes, of course, some of it was show … but that doesn’t make it less delightful. Baseball needs more show. Max starts tonight, and I hope he’s awesome, and I hope Schneider tries to take the ball away from him, and I hope Scherzer goes medieval on him. I’m pretty sure Schneider hopes for that, too.

OK, before we go, I do have a quick baseball rant. It’s not specifically about the very weird Jonas Brothers mini-concert that baseball decided to have in the fifth inning of Game 2 as part of their Stand Up 2 Cancer event. But it’s kind of about that.

Every year, MLB does a Stand Up 2 Cancer event (sponsored by MasterCard!) and while it’s overwrought and way too corporate, it’s also generally pretty touching. Everybody stands up and holds up a sign with the names of family members, friends, and heroes with cancer. I’ve done this myself at World Series games, and I’m always for anything that connects us, even if it is, as mentioned, overwrought and way too corporate.

Well, on Saturday, MLB and MasterCard took it to another level — they had the Jonas Brothers write a special song for the drive called “I Can’t Lose,” and they decided that the fifth inning of the World Series was an excellent time for the JBs to perform it live. It was so utterly bizarre and exasperating and off-putting* that it was actually kind of hard to comprehend. Like, they started singing, and then they kept singing, and the baseball mind was buzzing, “Um, what is happening here? Are they really going to sing the whole song NOW in the middle of a World Series Game 2 pitcher’s duel?”

Yes. They were. And this is the rant — what’s astonishing to me is not that MLB will sell its soul for money. That’s been true since the dawn of time. No, the astonishing part is how CHEAP it is to buy MLB’s soul. I mean, every single batting helmet has the word STRAUSS written across it (on both sides!). What is Strauss? It is, get this, a EUROPEAN WORKWEAR company. Yeah. They sell work pants and stuff.

This is what they have on their homepage.

“A celebration of the work that goes into America’s pastime — and those who make it happen?” What the heck does that mean? What AI bot wrote that line? I don’t have anything against Strauss — I’d never even heard of Strauss (which I guess was the point) — but, seriously, how much money did they spend to get their name on EVERY SINGLE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HELMET FOR FOUR YEARS?

And, whatever they spent, how was that enough money?

That’s how I felt about the Jonas Brothers thing. I like the Jonas Brothers. My daughters like the Jonas Brothers. But, I mean, they’re obviously on the Spinal Tap “no, I just think their fans are getting more selective” descent in their career — they just canceled six stadium shows for smaller venues — and I don’t think they’re being considered to headline the Super Bowl halftime show anytime soon. This wasn’t exactly Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Ed Sheeran releasing a world premiere song. No, this was the Jonas Brothers singing a Mastercard song that debuted back in July and has gotten fewer than three million YouTube hits.

It breaks my heart to see MLB constantly rifling through couches in search of nickels. Come on, Rob, baseball is the national pastime. It says so right on the Strauss homepage.