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So, we got some World Series to get down on tonight. We've got college football around the corner. Uh my goodness. We have coaching searches going on in the uh in the world of college football, but We have us a three-game World Series left for us. One game left in Chavez Ravine, then all the way back to Toronto.
Joining us now, MLB writer for Fox Sports, Rowan Cavner, joins me here on the Infinity Sports Network. Rowan, Andy Gresh here. How are you? I'm good. I hope you can hear me.
Okay, I'm somewhere in the bowels of Dodger Stadium where there's not enough black and music that I think I can do this thing. You're very good. No, we can hear you. We can hear you perfectly. How would you describe the four games that we have seen so far?
Yeah, it's been kind of two different stories, right? You saw the Toronto offense that really got this group here in game one where they could string together this huge inning. And you're talking about a team that just doesn't chase, doesn't whiff, high batting average, high on base percentage. And you saw that team sort of with Milwaukee, and that didn't work against the Juggernaut Dodgers location. The difference with this Blue Jays group is it can plug two.
And so you've seen kind of both versions of that in games one and four.
Now you've also seen the Dodgers starting pitching That's just been elite through most of October in games two and three. And obviously, when Otani's doing what Otani can do, that just sort of changes things, and you're helpless unless you want to walk him five straight times.
So you kind of see both ways that these teams can go great, and both ways that these teams can go south. And so as you said, now it's a three game series and we'll see which one wins out. Yeah, how do you kind of handicap this three-game series with everything we know? Eighteen innings, so we know that the bullpens are all chacquad, and starting pitching is kind of all over the place. But, you know, I'm sort of I'm curious, Rowan, where you're at on the remaining three games, given the way everything now sets up.
Yeah, I mean, I think obviously neither team. The fact that you get that 18-inning game, I think the last time you want it is when you're playing three straight days of games and it's on that first game.
So that kind of changes things. I guess the nice thing for both teams, you know, Toronto didn't have to use Bieber and the Dodgers didn't have to use Yamamoto on a day of rest after a complete game.
So at least their starting pitching is all still kind of lined up. I think, you know, for Toronto to win that game yesterday, I think showed a whole lot. I mean, an 18-inning game, yes, it's one win, but that was a gut punch. And you heard Blue Jays players afterward even talking about that could have been a really back-breaking loss. And they can say all this stuff about how it wasn't deflating, but how could it not be?
I mean, it was just such a marathon that could go either way. You're in LA to lose that game and then be able to bounce back. I think shows a lot about what this team is kind of made of, the resolve, why this Blue Jays team is here. And obviously losing George Springer, we'll see his status for today. He's not in a starting lineup.
It sounds like he's doing better than thought. And he's such a huge part of this offense, an established postseason player. But you also saw what Vlad can do. I mean, that's a guy that can carry an offense, has carried it. Through October, but there's other pieces here.
Ernie Clement's been a huge part of it. This is a deeper lineup than I think. People realize, and again, I think people kind of try to compare this offense to the Brewers' one. This one is clearly more dangerous, and the Dodgers are having trouble with it. And if they can get a Dodger starter out of the game in the fifth, they have to like their chances.
Rowan Kabner of Fox Sports talking some baseball with me. Gresh in for JR here on the Infinity Sports Network.
Well, Rowan, Dave Roberts has shuffled his order for tonight's game. Will Smith moves up to the two-hole in front of Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, and Alex Call is going to draw the start in left field. After game four, Dave Roberts said in the lineup could look a little bit different, and I guess we should take him seriously. Yeah, and he's been really adamant about keeping Mookie Betts in one of the top two spots in the lineup really all year. But now, again, you're down to your last two or three games of the season.
And you just gotta kind of go off. You even mentioned it. You gotta be a little bit more reactive in this kind of spot. And you've seen Toronto's willingness. To walk Otani, you need to be able to make them pay afterward.
Right now, Mookie's hitting 147 since the start of the championship series.
Now, we know with him that can change at any point, but he's kind of just going off what we're seeing right now. This Dodgers' offense generally just has not performed to the level that we know it can. And at times, it can kind of be. O'Connor Bust, and I know Freeman and Teo have had some big moments, but the length of that lineup isn't there. They're averaging.
fewer than four runs per game since the start of the DS. Toronto has 31 more runs than them this October, and they played one more game.
So you look at these two rosters lineups and you say, oh, it's got to go the Dodgers' way, but it hasn't really played out that way. You just haven't seen the length of it yet.
So it's got to be more than just Otani or Bust, and we'll see if switching it up can kind of change anything. Hey Rowan, what kind of buzz are you hearing around Mookie Betts and why he's struggling? Whether it's in the press box, around the ballpark, whatever. Is there any rumblings? Is there something wrong?
Is he hurt? What's the deal? Mookie has not looked like Mookie at all, really, this postseason. Yeah, and I mean, we've seen it for most of the year, really, until kind of mid-August. There was a point where he was basically just like.
My season's done. And of course, he didn't mean actually done, but there was a point late in the year where his numbers were.
So bad offensively that there wasn't really any saving it. This was going to be his worst offensive season. And really, from that point on, he looked like himself again for really a month and a half, two months. He looked back to the version we'd seen.
Now it's kind of looking a little bit more like we had seen before. And I think there's, I guess, most obvious reasoning would kind of be something mechanical. know all these guys are kind of messing with that some tweaks with that every once in a while and i think for a guy his size especially when everything is not pinked up perfectly it's really hard to create power and so he has to kind of be right mechanically to be the mookie that that you know he can be and we just haven't seen the power show up yet so we'll see if something clicks in i think that's i guess the most obvious thing we can point to but you know with a guy of that talent it can kind of just click at any point Uh the uh uh what do you make of uh the Blue Jay? That 365 is paying out before the final whistle. Check out Bet365's unrivaled early payout offer.
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We've built a space where athletes, change makers, and people creating the future of women's sports can show up and show off as their full, unapologetic selves. Follow and listen to The Recap Show wherever you get your podcasts. And how they're kind of handling their starting rotation, not only tonight, but here on out. Yeah, I mean, look, if you're the Dodgers right now and you have a multiple-time Cy Young winner going up against a guy who made three regular season starts before the postseason, and you lose both of those games, then you don't really deserve to win a World Series.
So I think that the Dodgers have to feel pretty good about their chances about. Bouncing back. I mean, he'd been so elite up until that first game of the World Series. He wasn't terrible. It just didn't go the way that it could have gone.
And he was just so dominant against the Brewers. And I think for him, this is what he came here for. This is what he wanted. This is obviously a veteran Dodgers group overall, a group that. you know, been battle tested from last year, but they brought in these guys who were hungry for a championship.
He's gotten the highest award an individual award that a player can have. He came here for these opportunities.
Now he has it in front of him.
So we'll see if he can kind of bounce back and give more of kind of that Milwaukee look that he gave. I know he's taken a lot of pride in you know, not just being a guy who's labeled as You know, a little bit wild, or a guy who walks people or talented, but you know, and this is an opportunity. It's the biggest stage now. Can he kind of bounce back and deliver what he did against a lot? Started to cramp up in game three, gave up four runs yesterday, even struck out a couple of times yesterday.
Now, what for Shoe Otani? I hope that. I think if you're the Dodgers, you're okay with him just sort of being a really good hitter. You'll take three for three with three homers again. I think that's the version you're looking for.
But really, no, I think the dangerous spot for LA is you've seen sometimes where he's trying to take on too much. You saw it a little bit. uh last postseason where he can be kind of uh Vulnerable to maybe chasing a little bit again, trying to do a little bit too much. You don't want him to have to feel that way. And I think that's incumbent upon the rest of the lineup.
Uh you know, taking care of of What it can, and not making him feel like he has to be Superman every night.
So it'll be interesting to see what they want to do with him from a pitching perspective. You're not going to see him obviously in relief tonight, but I could totally see a world where he's out there in the ninth inning of a game six or a game seven, and you're seeing sort of a repeat of the WBC. Like he will be available. If this gets down to an elimination situation, I'd be shocked if he wasn't available in the Bullfinch. Rowan Kabner of Fox Sports with Gresh here on the Infinity Sports Network.
Rowan, if this thing goes to extra innings tonight, is it pure? Don't put it in there. But from the pitching standpoint, would it be pure chaos? Yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be.
And again, you go back to that 18-inning game. I think that really sort of changes everything. The interesting thing is, you know, we've seen the Dodgers sometimes and Dave Roberts, and he kind of had to do this last postseason where if the game script gets kind of negative, he'll punt on a game. If he's down by three or four runs, He won't use these leverage guys and he'll say, Let's live another day. It's a different situation now where you're 2-2.
It's not a must-win. You saw the Blue Jays last series go, you know, have two elimination games and they won it, but you certainly do not want to be going down 3-2, heading back to Toronto.
So the other part of this, too, is who's even a leverage guy for the Dodgers. That bullpen group right now is a pecking order. It's sort of Roki Sasaki and everybody. And I think losing Alex Vesia is a huge, huge loss for this group. And they're still sort of figuring out who they can kind of rely on.
It's been Blake Treman for so long. He hasn't looked right for months. You know, you're putting a guy like Anitihan, a young guy who's a starter in relief, and it's not worked out great sometimes. It's worked out okay other times.
So yeah, I would say it's pretty much, you know, sort of all hands on deck, but guessing kind of the pecking order right now, if you're if you're Dave Roberts and what you're doing in the seventh and eighth innings to get to Roki, it's complicated. You need these starters to give you at least six and maybe seven. I know we can't script this stuff, and I understand it, but Rowan, if MLB. could pick the way this ends. What do you think they choose?
Like, what would be the beautiful ending of this World Series in the mind of MLB if they could have their drothers? Yeah, well, I'm sure they'd love it to go seven. That would be nice. And then look, I mean, you're going to get to the whole if the Dodgers win this back-to-back, you're going to get.
So much more of this is ruining baseball. What's going on? These teams can't compete, yada, yada, yada. I mean, I don't know exactly what we want. I'm sure again, they want seven games of this.
But that's going to be the chatter. The other point of this, though, is like Toronto is not a small market team either. This is a top five payroll team. They have huge money guys. They just gave Vlad $500 million.
So this isn't the same thing as, you know, a Dodgers Brewers type series.
So I don't know. I mean, look, certainly we're going to be talking about, you know, is there going to be a salary cap? What are the owners going to be pushing for a year from now? That's going to be all the chatter if the Dodgers win. Probably going to be all the chatters, even if they don't win, but certainly that's going to be heating up if they do.
Hey, so we have one more year left on the CBA, correct? We do. We do. So if the owners are going to lock out the players, it would happen this year so they had maximum leverage. I would think, might these be the final couple baseball games that we see for a while?
Does the labor stoppage kind of heat up in the offseason? No, I mean, it'll be a topic of conversation. They'll be playing next year. The big question is, you know, the. What happens the next season afterwards?
We're going to be talking about it all year, but no, I don't see that happening. I think we get a Season next year, who kind of knows after that? I mean, look, the players are not going to want a salary cap. I think they're going to stay in. You know, packed with that.
It's just a question of how hard does that become a push and how far does it get? And I'm hoping we get to see two straight 162-game seasons, but we'll see. Yeah, hoping for the best on that. Rowan, thanks a bunch. Appreciate the breakdown.
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