Addison Barger and 4 more Blue Jays to blame for costing Toronto a shot at a title

The Toronto Blue Jays were so close to a World Series title they could practically taste it.

Held down by Yoshinobu Yamamoto once again, the Jays entered the ninth inning of Game 6 trailing 3-1. But with a fading Roki Sasaki on the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto rallied: First, a hit-by-pitch sent Alejandro Kirk to first base, and then a double from Addison Barger put the tying run at second with no one out. Just play a little small ball, and at worst the game would be headed to extra innings.

Instead, in a matter of moments, everything fell apart. Ernie Clement popped out, and after Andres Gimenez lined out to shallow left field, Addison Barger got caught straying too far off of the second-base bag. Enrique Hernandez's throw got to Miguel Rojas just in time, and just like that, the Dodgers had forced Game 7.

You can understand why Barger would be eager to try and get as much of a secondary lead as possible, in order to try and score the tying run if the ball had fallen in. But still: He has to know where the outfield is positioned, and how shallow they'll be playing in a situation in which a single might tie the game. Gimenez's looping liner wasn't hit all that hard, and certainly wasn't the sort of ball that seemed destined to find turf right off the bat.

But while Barger will be living down that moment for the rest of his life if the Jays don't win Game 7 on Saturday night, he shouldn't shoulder the weight of this loss on his own. Because there are plenty of teammates, and even his manager, who came up small in crucial spots, letting a title slip away as a result.

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Ernie Clement

It threatens to get lost amid the furor over Barger's base-running blunder, but you could make the argument that Clement bears even more of the blame for letting that ninth inning disintegrate. Even if Barger gets back to second, Toronto is still down to its final out, needing a hit from George Springer to even force extra innings. Clement, meanwhile, just needed to put a ball on the ground or a fly ball into the outfield in order to score Myles Straw and move Barger over to third as the tying run.

Instead, he swung at the first pitch from Tyler Glasnow, a starter coming into relief for the first time since 2018 in Game 6 of the World Series. The result? A harmless pop up to first base, failing to advance either runner and ensuring that the Blue Jays would need at least one hit to keep the game going. Clement has played some brilliant, intelligent baseball all October long for Toronto, but that was a brutal swing in the most important possible spot.

Daulton Varsho

Prior to the ninth inning, Varsho looked in line to be the primary goat from a Blue Jays perspective. It wasn't just that he finished 0-for-4 with a strikeout; it was the moments in which those at-bats game.

First, he grounded into a double play with Bo Bichette on first to end the bottom of the fourth. Then, he struck out with two men on to end the bottom of the sixth. And finally, as if all that weren't bad enough, he grounded out with two men on to end the bottom of the eighth.

Toronto didn't get many chances against Yamamoto and Co., and three of their very best were immediately short-circuited by one player — of the eight runners the Jays left on base, five were stranded by Varsho. A hit in any one of those spots may have flipped the whole game on its ear.

Andres Gimenez

Gimenez too went hitless on Friday night, including the flyout in the bottom of the ninth that triggered Barger's game-ending blunder. While Gimenez obviously isn't responsible for his teammate's decisions on the bases, it was another instance in which the light-hitting infield failed to deliver in a big spot at the plate — and it wasn't the only one in this game.

After a Clement double off of Justin Wrobleski in the bottom of the seventh inning, Gimenez came to the plate with the chance to at the very least trim the Los Angeles lead to a single run. Instead, he struck out, lowering his OPS in this series to a dismal .607. Of course, Gimenez isn't in the lineup for his bat, and his heroic homers in the ALCS were more than enough to endear him to Blue Jays fans for life. Still, it's fair to wonder what might've been had that pivotal at-bat gone differently.

John Schneider

Of course, it's also fair to wonder why Gimenez was the one taking that at-bat at all. Wrobleski had to face a third batter in that inning, and the Blue Jays had a lefty-mashing infielder just sitting on the bench in Davis Schneider. But John Schneider, for some reason, decided to sit tight, allowing Gimenez to hit despite his worse overall numbers than Davis Schneider and his struggles against left-handed pitchers specifically.

There are plenty of fans who would also get on him for intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani with a runner on second in the third inning, a decision that backfired after Will Smith and Mookie Betts both delivered hits that scored all of the Dodgers' three runs on the night. That feels like hindsight talking, considering how awesome Ohtani has been during this series (and how much Jays fans had been begging Schneider to stop pitching to him just days ago). But his pinch-hitting choices in this game left a lot to be desired, and possibly left runs on the board.

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