TORONTO — The crowd of media members moved from locker to locker in search of answers, but on a night like this, there wasn’t much to say.
For one, Yoshinobu Yamamoto had just thrown the first World Series complete game in a decade, leading the Dodgers to a 5-1 win and sending the series to Los Angeles tied 1-1. Within a quiet Blue Jays clubhouse at Rogers Centre, there was only one explanation to be found and it wasn’t especially satisfying. Yamamoto had simply dominated.
But beyond that, the Blue Jays have faced adversity many times and afterwards the script tends to be familiar: ‘tomorrow’s a new day,’ ‘we believe in this group’ or, after especially tough losses, ‘flush it.’
This group offered comments along those lines late in September, when the AL East seemed to be slipping away from them, at Yankee Stadium, when defensive mistakes cost them Game 3 of the ALDS and within this same Rogers Centre clubhouse after the Mariners went up 2-0 in the ALCS.
They’re clichés, yes, but there’s truth behind them and the mindset seems to be working. So after a gem from Yamamoto, it was no surprise to hear variations on the same theme. It’s a little predictable, but what were they going to do, blame the Jonas Brothers? No, it was time to move on and catch a plane.
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“I mean that’s why it’s seven games,” said starter Kevin Gausman, who kept pace with Yamamoto until the seventh on his way to an impressive World Series debut. “We feel pretty good about our team.”
“It’s the World Series, but it’s another game,” added Nathan Lukes. “We know what we’re capable of doing. Just put it behind us and go into Monday.”
Or as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. put it from across the locker room: “We’re the type of team that never gives up.”
When the stakes are this high and something goes wrong, it can be tempting to demand some kind of change. But change for the sake of change doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything, and some Blue Jays coaches believe it can be a kind of trap.
After all, entering play on Saturday, Blue Jays hitters led all post-season teams in home runs (23), batting average (.305), on-base percentage (.365), slugging percentage (.534) and wRC+ (149). They haven’t just gotten by, they’ve dominated. And it happened again in Game 1 against two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell.
With that in mind, changing what they’re doing would probably not help. As cliché as it sounds, maybe they really do have to tip their collective caps to Yamamoto, the 27-year-old with the balance of a gymnast and a book full of handwritten notes on opposing hitters.
From their lockers near the centre of the clubhouse, Chris Bassitt and Jeff Hoffman certainly weren’t advocating for an overhaul.
“Play the same style of game we’ve been playing,” Bassitt said. “Nothing changes. We’re 1-1 against a really good team.”
“Each game is just an independent game,” he continued. “The reality is we’ll just play our style of baseball and hopefully that works.”
Between the regular season and post-season the Blue Jays have now won 102 total games, including the franchise’s first World Series victory since 1993. The way Hoffman sees it, they’re doing a lot of things well.
“Our mindset stays pretty consistent,” he said. “We want to show up and play our brand of baseball, dictate what happens in the game through our at-bats and through our pitching, so we’re gonna take this off day the same as we have any other one throughout this run, get our legs back under us and get ready to play a big game on Wednesday.”
Make that Monday, but who’s counting? At this point in the year, Hoffman’s not the only one who’s a little disoriented by the demands of the last few weeks. Getting this far has taken lots of work, and the loss to Yamamoto hurts because Gausman pitched so well and the possibility of a 2-0 lead was so tantalizing.
But big picture, the Blue Jays are in an enviable position here. The best-of-seven series just became a best-of-five and home-field advantage flipped from the Blue Jays to the Dodgers. But only three wins separate the Blue Jays from a World Series title now, and they’re certainly capable of going 3-2 if they play near their potential.
Gradually, the mood lightened ever so slightly as the clubhouse came to terms with this new reality. Players showered, packed for their upcoming trip to Los Angeles and coordinated with loved ones over the phone. At one set of couches, Lukes and Davis Schneider started playing cards while Myles Straw chatted with them from a few feet away.
That part is familiar, too. Now the challenge is to do what they’ve done so many other times this season and recover from adversity. To win three more, they must start with one.
