The Toronto Blue Jays needed Shane Bieber, acquired precisely for games of this type of magnitude, to shut down the Seattle Mariners.
Untimely mistakes in the zone cost them a tight American League Championship Series opener and then led to Game 2 unravelling in a big way. Having Bieber, who didn’t escape the third inning in a rough ALDS outing versus the New York Yankees, pin down Seattle’s damage-seeking offence was obviously going to be essential.
Still, the way Mariners pitchers exploited the Blue Jays’ high-contact hitters to induce weak contact was really the more pressing issue. “You’ve got to think create runs first, you know what I mean?” manager John Schneider said in his office before the game. “We obviously have to score more in this series. Start there and then see how Shane goes.”
Start there, the Blue Jays did Wednesday night in the crisp low-teens air at T-Mobile Park, with both Bieber and the offence shaking off a slow start to Game 3 in what became a 13-4 win.
A five-run third — catalyzed by Ernie Clement’s leadoff double and Andres Gimenez’s game-tying home run, the first of his three hits — surpassed their total offensive output from the first two games and they just kept swinging from there before a stunned crowd of 46,471.
Their offence suddenly awake, the Blue Jays can now pull even in the best-of-seven series Thursday when Max Scherzer starts against Luis Castillo, the road before them suddenly less daunting than it was before the first pitch.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., hitless through the first two games of the series, singled in the first, doubled and scored during the pivotal third, homered leading off the fifth, was walked intentionally and scored on Alejandro Kirk’s three-run drive in the sixth and doubled again in the eighth.
George Springer, who crushed a 431-foot homer to straightaway centre leading off the fourth, had three hits, Addison Barger added a solo shot in the ninth while Daulton Varsho, with a two-run double that capped the third, Clement, and Kirk each had two hits apiece as the Blue Jays blitzed George Kirby and three relievers by taking the types of shots Schneider had preached before the game.
“It comes down to taking more shots at where you think they’re going to be pitching and if not, be OK with being 0-1 instead of 0-for-1,” he said. “We’ve been saying that all year. It’s an adjustment. It’s kind of a cat-and-mouse game. Kirby may be different, but we have to really, really focus on understanding where we can do damage against this pitching staff.”
Bieber, meanwhile, shook off a rough first inning that included Julio Rodriguez’s two-run shot that opened the scoring to deliver easily his most important performance since joining the Blue Jays. He allowed three runs, two earned, on five hits and a walk versus the Yankees in his last outing, but this time cut up the Mariners with a five-pitch mix that kept them guessing throughout.
The slider was especially dominant, with seven whiffs on 12 swings, but Seattle hitters whiffed through at least one of his other offerings — fastball, changeup, curveballs and cutter — for 17 total misses on 45 cuts.
After Jorge Polanco’s double followed Rodriguez’s homer in the first, he didn’t allow another runner past first base, including a vital 12-pitch shutdown bottom half against the top of the Mariners lineup once the Blue Jays opened a 5-2 lead in the third.
Yariel Rodriguez allowed back-to-back homers to Randy Arozarena and Cal Raleigh in the eighth while Mason Fluharty mopped up in the ninth.
Despite dropping the first two games at home, the Blue Jays were confident they could pull themselves back into the series, with veteran right-hander Chris Bassitt saying that “we’re not really shook by being down 2-0.”
“It sucks, but, again, we just have confidence in what we’ve built,” he added, noting that the group was “pretty excited about the opportunity that we have just to see what we’re made of, honestly.”
They made one change to the batting order, pushing Anthony Santander up to the cleanup spot and dropping Barger down to seventh, partly to simply “try to get something going,” said Schneider, but also to encourage “taking some shots.”
“Tony’s at-bats have been good. Addy’s at-bats have been fine,” he added, “but trying to have a different look of, can you clip a two- or three-run homer here?”
The Blue Jays went out and did just that, swinging their way back into the ALCS. Game 4 will be Thursday night in Seattle with first pitch at 8:33 p.m.