In the top of the sixth inning of Game 2 of the ALCS, FS1 ran a surreal segment of play-by-play broadcaster Joe Davis demonstrating how to carve up a turkey live on air, in honor of Canadian Thanksgiving, which took place that day. Bird carving had already established itself as the theme of the broadcast, as the Seattle Mariners were, at that point, already up 7-3 on the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Mariners went into their series against the Blue Jays on Sunday hoping they could steal one game out of the two from the hottest offense in baseball. Even that hope felt faintly contingent on being able to deploy Bryan Woo, who was left off the ALDS roster due to pectoral inflammation, to patch up their starting pitching woes; just two days prior, the Mariners were forced to exhaust many of their high-leverage bullpen arms and use two extra starters in a 15-inning grindfest against the Detroit Tigers. Woo was not available to pitch in either of the two ALCS games, and yet the Mariners will, somehow, be leaving Toronto with a convincing 2-0 series lead. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
Instead of writing an insane sentence like "All of this is happening because Humpy the salmon finally won the salmon race in the middle of the 15th inning on Friday," I will acknowledge the on-field explanations for how the Mariners got away with it. Game 1 was highlighted by a gutsy Bryce Miller performance on short rest. Miller allowed a first-pitch home run by George Springer to open up the game, kicking off a 27-pitch first inning, then proceeded to shut down the Blue Jays through the sixth inning on just 76 pitches total.
As the broadcast will inform you, the ethical Blue Jays do not strike out. In fact, they do it the least in all of baseball. Unlike other "punt the ball and pray" teams like the Cleveland Guardians, however, the Blue Jays have legitimate hitters who can still do real damage, making them the fourth-best regular-season offense in baseball by wRC+. This creates an interesting match-up conundrum with the Mariners pitching staff, who cannot accurately be described as contact-y, ground-ball pitchers—Logan Gilbert, Woo, and Luis Castillo all rank in the top 20 of swing-and-miss percentage in the league—but do collectively love a sinker and a splitter, which are two of the most ground-ball happy pitches out there.
A team like the Blue Jays can wind up living by BABIP and dying by BABIP. The flipside of not striking out is that while a strikeout will always take at least three pitches, outs made by balls hit in play can be much more efficient by pitch count. If the hits are not landing, quick outs can instead let a pitcher on short rest—or, more broadly, an entirely exhausted staff—off the hook. Pair that with a defensive benefit called "facing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. while not being the New York Yankees," and in total, the Mariners' staff only needed to throw 100 pitches in Game 1 to limit the hottest offense in baseball to just one run. They could have already left Toronto happy to have stolen a Kevin Gausman start and thus taken one from Toronto's most reliable pitcher.
The weakness of the Blue Jays in the playoffs was always going to be their pitching. While the Mariners' rotation has been underwhelming this year compared to last, thanks in part to being injury-stricken enough that only two pitchers, Castillo and Woo, have pitched enough innings to be qualified, the Blue Jays' starting rotation is in or around 23rd in all of baseball, and their bullpen is average at best, depending on the metric you choose to use.
Logan Gilbert, who threw 34 pitches on Friday, did not look sharp for the Mariners to start Game 2. He gave up two runs in the first inning and another in the second, not able to generate his usual amount of swing-and-miss during his short, three-inning start. But Seattle's offense was able to step up against rookie pitcher Trey Yesavage, who'd been so successful against the Yankees, thanks to a first-inning, three-run homer from Julio Rodríguez, and a fifth-inning, three-run homer from Jorge Polanco. (I will note here that it was very mean and nasty of Blue Jays manager John Schneider to make Yesavage intentionally walk Cal Raleigh before immediately pulling him for reliever Louis Varland, who gave up the Polanco home run and tacked on an additional earned run for Yesavage.)
Raleigh has been the Mariners' best postseason performer, but it is Polanco who has been the clutch king for the Mariners this season. The second baseman, who has a notably wide-eyed demeanor at the plate, is known to teammates as "George Bonds" and, according to Mitch Garver, "has a Porsche 911 and drives the speed limit." After Monday's game, Polanco said, "Yeah, I love these situations. I don't know what to say man. I'm clutch, but I'm just trying to keep it simple." Or: What, like it's hard?
The Mariners would go on to win by a very comfortable 10-3 margin, thanks to home-run power and perhaps whatever aerodynamics were going on in Toronto that evening with the roof open. Daulton Varsho took several wonky-looking routes in center field midway through the game, including one play that allowed Mitch Garver, who has 16th-percentile sprint speed, to leg out a triple, and Josh Naylor tallied a .230 xBA home run late in the seventh inning. The run margin meant that the Mariners could give their relievers a longer leash, getting two innings each out of Eduard Bazardo, Carlos Vargas, and Emerson Hancock, without needing to break out more of their high-leverage arms.
Going into Toronto, the expectation for the Mariners was to maybe steal one game before the rest day, and hopefully reset the starting rotation at home. Instead, the team will waltz out of Canada with: a 2-0 series lead before playing a home game; George Kirby and Luis Castillo ready to start on regular rest; and Bryan Woo presumably available for Game 5. It's a situation that is so absurdly positive, you can only repeat Polanco's Elle Woods sentiment with greater disbelief: What, like it's hard?
