The Blue Jays are back in the World Series, with nothing to lose

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Thirty-two years after Joe Carter touched ’em all to deliver a second consecutive championship to Toronto, the Blue Jays finally returned to the World Series by defeating Seattle 4-3 in a magnificent Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Monday night at an absolutely bonkers Rogers Centre.

The Jays will face Shohei Ohtani and the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, beginning Friday in Toronto at 8 p.m. ET.

Here are some extended thoughts on last night’s big win and what lies ahead:

1. George Springer hit a monumental homer.

Jays starting pitcher Shane Bieber did not have his best stuff last night, giving up a run in the first inning and a solo homer to Julio Rodriguez in the third before reliever Louis Varland surrendered a solo shot to star catcher Cal Raleigh in the fifth to put Seattle up 3-1.

But, in the seventh, the scrappy bottom of Toronto’s batting order got to Mariners ace Bryan Woo, who was on in relief of starter George Kirby. Game 6 standout Addison Barger led off with a walk, Isiah Kiner-Falefa singled, and a sacrifice bunt by No. 9 hitter Andres Gimenez put them both in scoring position for Springer.

Curiously, Seattle manager Dan Wilson opted to not bring in lights-out closer Andrés Muñoz for the highest-leverage situation of the season, going with Eduard Bazardo (to be fair, a very good reliever in his own right) instead. Springer is an extremely dangerous hitter who clubbed 32 homers this season — his highest total since arriving in Toronto in 2021. But the 36-year-old had looked like a shell of himself since getting beaned on the right knee in Game 5, and the Mariners observed the injury made it hard for him to get around on inside fastballs.

So that was the plan, but Bazardo left a 96 mile-per-hour heater over the plate and Springer hammered it into the left-field stands, not far from where Carter dropped his World Series winner in 1993 or Jose Bautista sent his iconic go-ahead bomb against Texas in the deciding game of their 2015 playoff series.

A couple friends of mine suggested on a group chat last night that, if we were building a Mount Rushmore of Blue Jays homers, Springer’s would be up there with Carter’s and Bautista’s. I agree. And, with apologies to pinch hitter Ed Sprague’s two-run shot in the top of the ninth off Atlanta closer Jeff Reardon to send Toronto to a 4-3 win in Game 2 of the 1992 World Series, I’ll give the fourth spot to Roberto Alomar’s two-out, two-run blast in the ninth off Oakland closer Dennis Eckersley to tie the critical Game 4 of the ’92 ALCS, which the Jays went on to win in extra innings.

2. Vladdy is worth every penny.

Springer played the hero last night, but the ALCS MVP award went to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who batted .385 with three homers, three doubles and a 1.330 on-base-plus slugging percentage in the series. The 26-year-old first baseman leads the post-season in homers (six), RBI (12), hits (19), total bases (40) and OPS (1.440) and is batting a Ted Williams-esque .442.

Guerrero was the AL regular-season MVP runner-up in 2021, when he tied for the major-league lead with 48 home runs, and placed sixth in voting last year, when he belted 30 homers and batted a career-high .323. But the Blue Jays hadn’t won a single playoff game since he arrived in 2019, and Guerrero was more a source of anxiety than joy for Jays fans for much of this year.

They worried he might flee in free agency until Guerrero finally agreed to a mammoth 14-year, $500-million US contract extension a couple weeks into the season. Then they fretted that the team had overpaid after Guerrero dipped to 23 homers — his lowest full-season total since his rookie year — and managed just one extra-base hit (a double) over his final 19 games of the regular season.

But Vladdy has been a monster at the plate throughout these playoffs, as well as a real emotional leader. His cheeky “Daaaaaaaaa Yankees lose!” reaction to Toronto’s first playoff series victory in nine years tapped into how Jays fans felt about eliminating the hated Bronx Bombers, and you have to love how fired up he seems every time he catches the ball for a big out at first. His post-game tears last night were another indication of how much this all means to him.

Guerrero was born in Montreal while his Hall of Fame dad played for the Expos and was raised in Vlad Sr.’s native Dominican Republic. He still considers the Dominican his home country, but Guerrero seems to have an authentic connection with Toronto and Canada as a whole, which has followed him closely since the Jays signed him as a 16-year-old.

“I was born here,” Guerrero said last night. “I grew up in the Dominican, and then from the moment that I signed here, I knew I was going to be here my entire career. I knew I had to somehow make all the fans, the entire country, proud of me, of my team. And like I always say, my challenge is to bring the World Series back to Canada.”

3. Bo Bichette says he’s coming back. We’ll see.

Sidelined since Sept. 6, when he suffered a knee sprain in a sliding collision at the plate with Yankees catcher Austin Wells, the Blue Jays’ star shortstop said in the midst of last night’s post-game celebration he intends to play in the World Series. “I’ll be ready,” Bichette vowed, adding, “I probably felt comfortable enough to play about four days ago.”

Toronto manager John Schneider was more circumspect earlier in the day, telling reporters Bichette is making “significant progress” in his rehab work, which has included hitting and light running. “I think the base running and the defence is something hopefully we can advance and we can check those boxes in the next few days,” Schneider said. “He’s done some light stuff but hasn’t been like full go at short and not back on the bases yet.”

It seems there’s a gap here between how Bichette says he feels and Schneider’s impression of his health. But, if we take Bichette at his word, there’s at least the possibility that the Jays put him back on their roster for the World Series.

Bichette was the major-league leader in hits at the time he went down, so getting his bat back in the lineup would, in theory, be a big plus. But Gimenez has done a great job filling in at short, and the Jays’ chemistry is off the charts right now. Do they want to risk it by reinserting a rusty — and, it sounds like, less than 100 per cent — player? And is Bichette perhaps overstating his health as he eyes a big contract in free agency this winter? Or maybe he just got caught up in the moment last night?

The Jays will have to answer these questions as they decide what role, if any, Bichette should play in the World Series.

4. Now bring on the Dodgers.

There’s no need to sugarcoat it: Los Angeles is heavily favoured to beat the Blue Jays. The current betting odds imply the Dodgers have about a 2-in-3 chance of becoming the first team in a quarter century to win back-to-back World Series.

But, hey, 1 in 3 ain’t bad! Especially considering where the Jays were a year ago.

Coming off three first-round playoff sweeps in the past four years, they missed the playoffs altogether in 2024, finishing dead last in the AL East with a 74-88 record. No one expected them to improve to an AL-best 94-68 and capture their first division title in a decade, much less reach their first World Series since Carter helped them go back to back in ’93.

That year, the Blue Jays had the largest payroll in baseball, just shy of $46 million US, while Carter was the AL’s highest-paid player at $5.5M (so quaint). Now it’s the Dodgers who are the biggest spenders, shelling out an MLB-high $350M this year, not including their huge luxury tax bill.

It’s no wonder, then, that most American baseball fans and media speak of the Dodgers like the Death Star. Though L.A. meandered to a 93-69 regular season that forced them to play in the wild-card round, they’re now 9-1 in the playoffs after sweeping top-seeded Milwaukee in the NLCS. That series ended with Ohtani smashing three home runs, including a 469-footer that cleared the outfield stands at Dodger Stadium, while striking out 10 batters over six-plus shutout innings on the mound in probably the greatest two-way performance in the history of post-season baseball.

But it’s worth remembering the Blue Jays won one more game in the regular season than the Dodgers, which is why they get to host the first two games of the World Series as well as Game 6 and the deciding Game 7 if those are necessary. And, though it can no longer outspend the likes of the Dodgers and Mets, Toronto is no small-market poveretta either: the Jays had the fifth-highest payroll in baseball this year at $255M, including $28.5M for Guerrero in the last season before his extension kicks in.

Speaking of money, the Blue Jays are playing with the house’s right now. They basically have nothing to lose against the Dodgers. But they also have a real chance to write a truly legendary final chapter to one of the best stories in all of sports.