Popkins is a wizard

Yep, as an M’s fan it felt like they were hitting EVERYTHING. On top of that it felt like their whole lineup was doing it too. Very very good players, very very good hitting coaches.

Jays are not traditionally a fastball hitting team, just a couple years ago we had the absolute lowest batting average and highest K rate in the league for fastballs.

Jays issue 10 years ago.

We were the homerun leaders that year IIRC, but bats went cold and KC beat us up on small ball. (Yep, Jays led league with 232)

Can’t win the game, if there’s no ball in play. 

Yeah our bottom of the order was hitting like 0.100 that series despite hitting like 0.200 in the regular season. I don’t know if it was just playoff pitching being that much better or the pressure getting to them, but it was painful to watch pretty much 3 or 4 guaranteed outs

Bryce Miller was the only starting pitcher the Jays have not hit hard all playoffs long. They got to Gil, destroyed Freid, destroyed Rodon, got to Schlittler, got to Gilbert twice, destroyed Kirby, and hit Castillo hard too. 

Somehow Miller and his 5 something ERA in the regular season held the Jays to just 2 runs over 10 innings pitched. Baseball is so weird sometimes lol  

That’s because it did. Games 3 - 7 they scored a total of 17 runs. 14 of them, came via the long ball. I know Buck said it about the Yankees, but the same could be said about the Mariners. Unless they’re hitting home runs, they’re not winning games.

Because the only way to cancel out our bad BABIP luck is by hitting the ball over the fence. The Yesavage game for example the M’s batters averaged a 92 MPH exit velocity and they proceeded to GIDP 3 innings in a row.

When there’s no traffic in front of Julio and Cal, kind of hard to score runs outside of the occasional solo HR.

When Gimenez is hitting home runs and IKF is hitting doubles, you’re in trouble

Yeah they just wore the Ms pitching down over the course of that series, and while the Ms have an abundance of above average arms, they simply lack a true stopper. I’d like to imagine how game 4 may have turned out had they been able to roll out King Felix in his prime, but a fully healthy Brian Woo may have been just enough to give them the edge

They were definitely the more versatile team offensively too as 23 of the 30 mariners runs in this series were scored via the long ball whereas only 18 of the 37 blue jays runs in this series were scored via the long ball. The M’s essentially lived and died off of hitting home runs, it’s the equivalent to modern NBA teams living and dying off of hitting enough 3-pointers 

In terms of balls in play, the mariners hitters struck out 71 times vs only 40 times by the Jays hitters.  

The turnaround since ditching the last guy is .. “night & day” doesn’t do the contrast justice

Yeah very unfortunate they do it this way

Stop the count!

The Mariners scored nearly 50% from home runs from the usual suspects.

Having those as solo HRs vs even 2 runs was the difference.

Very allegorical

Dammit Bobby!

There were plenty of meatball opportunities on both sides, Jays pitching hasn’t exactly been elite. The real difference is plate discipline and ability to contact swing 1 through 9 when the situation calls for it. Jays grind AB’s and force mistakes.

It can be both, the offense was a real slog to watch. We seemed to have 3 insta-out batters and our best hitters frequently went out swinging at wiiiide out pitches

It can include both things. With the same pitching and better offense at the bottom of the lineup I think they could have pulled through. Or just more plate discipline. They were swinging at everything. Once they settled down, even the bottom of the lineup was getting walks tho ofc then they kept hitting in to double plays…..

Yeah but it’s still a very impressive turnaround considering how the series began. I’m sure if I had asked a bunch of fans across the league whether they think the Jays can still win this series after Julio’s game 3 home run, the amount of “yes” replies I’d get would likely be close to 0 

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, you’re right, it’s pretty much what you’d expect.