Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Newsletter Excerpt, October 29, 2025 -- "Postseason 2025: I’m a Belieber"

 

 

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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The Blue Jays have gotten heroic work from the bottom of their order this month. Last night was about the top of it, though. Vladito hammered a hanging sweeper in the third to flip a 1-0 deficit to a 2-1 lead. In the seventh, Bo Bichette somehow got a hit off Blake Treinen to make it 5-1, and Addison Barger did the same to cap the Jays’ scoring. Just outside the frame Nathan Lukes, moved up to the leadoff spot in the absence of George Springer, had two hits. All in all, the Jays had 11 hits against nine strikeouts. The Dodgers have been getting them to strike out more than they did in the first two rounds, but it’s still just 19% of plate appearances and they have more hits than strikeouts. They are, in fact, the only team in the playoffs that can make that claim -- 159 hits against 101 strikeouts. Everybody else? 709 strikeouts and just 533 hits.