Blue Jays Continue To Defy World Series Odds With Power Of Randomness

Heading into Tuesday morning, it seemed like everything was set up for the Los Angeles Dodgers to steamroll their way to an easy World Series repeat. 

A miraculous 18th inning walk off home run from Freddie Freeman in Game 3 had given LA a 2-1 series lead. Recovering from a six-hour marathon would seem to favor the home team. They had Shohei Ohtani lined up to start Game 4, coming off six innings of shutout baseball against the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS. The Toronto Blue Jays bullpen was in tatters after being heavily used throughout the series. George Springer, one of their best hitters, was out of the lineup with an injury to his side. Bo Bichette DH'd while playing hurt. And the rest of their offense, wildly overperforming throughout the playoffs, was due to regress. Right?

Nope. Not even close. 

The Blue Jays dominated Game 4 on their way to a 6-2 win, racking up another 11 hits, while the Dodgers' vaunted offense couldn't get anything going against Toronto starter Shane Bieber. Even the beleaguered bullpen was effective, allowing just one meaningless run in the 9th inning. 

How can they keep getting away with this? Because randomness is a much bigger variable in baseball than fans, commentators, or even players like to admit.

Oct 28, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (27) celebrates with third baseman Ernie Clement (22) after defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers in game four of the 2025 MLB World Series at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Blue Jays Flip The Script On Dodgers Heading Into Game 5

How the Blue Jays won Game 4 was a microcosm of how they've gotten to within two wins of a championship. Relying on offensive production from players who aren't particularly good hitters. If that sounds like an unsustainable strategy, it usually is. But in the shortened sample size of postseason baseball, it can be highly effective.

Andres Gimenez drove in a key run in a 4-run 7th inning. Nathan Lukes was 2-3 with a run scored. Addison Barger had two more hits to run his postseason batting average to .327 with a .940 OPS. And Ernie Clement was 2-4, raising his playoff batting average to .393. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is hitting .419 with a 1.306 OPS after two more hits, including a home run off Ohtani.

One of the easiest ways to see how small samples can impact outcomes is batting average on balls in play. The league average BABIP, for short, hovers around .300. Players who hit the ball extremely hard, the Ohtanis and Aaron Judges of the world, can exceed that over a larger sample. Some, particularly left-handed pull hitters, will have lower BABIPs thank to predictable ground ball patterns. But for most players, .300 is a consistent mean. 

Here are some of the batting averages on balls in play this postseason from the Blue Jays lineup:

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. - .373
• Ernie Clement - .404
• Addison Barger - .361
• Nathan Lukes - .362
• Bo Bichette - .400

Want to know why the Blue Jays offense has been so productive? That's a great place to start.

A few Dodgers have had BABIP luck this postseason, like Will Smith and Enrique Hernandez. But many of LA's key offensive players, like Ohtani, Freeman, Teoscar Hernandez and Mookie Betts, are well under .300. Andy Pages' BABIP is .103. It was .308 in the regular season. As a team, the Blue Jays' .307 team postseason BABIP is 16 points higher than the Dodgers .291. In the World Series, the Dodgers BABIP is .239, while the Blue Jays' is .300. Unsurprisingly, Toronto has scored more runs than the Dodgers.

That's not surprising, it happens all the time during two-week periods of the regular season. In the playoffs, and especially the World Series however, randomness is heightened. And it demonstrates once again the impossibility of "buying" a championship or "ruining" baseball. 

Ernie Clement is not a particularly good hitter. Over 1,404 career regular season plate appearances, he's been 13% worse than league average offensively. This postseason? He's been 64% better, hitting .393/.406/.541. Over a large enough sample, that will end. Clement is not suddenly the best player in the history of professional baseball. But in a compressed timeframe, he can outplay the likes of Freeman, Betts or peak Barry Bonds. 

Addison Barger was just 7% better than league average offensively this year. In the playoffs? He's been 63% better, hitting .327/.389/.551. His BABIP in the regular season was .284. In the postseason, it's .361. Welcome to the randomness of playoff baseball.

Then there's Alejandro Kirk. Kirk, charitably and laughably listed at 5'8 and 245 pounds, has a career .393 slugging percentage in nearly 2,100 plate appearances. He's hit 51 home runs in his career, or one every roughly 41 plate appearances. He's hit five home runs in 88 plate appearances this postseason, or one every 17.6 plate appearances. Andres Gimenez hit .253 with runners in scoring position in the regular season, and is 7-14, or a .500 batting average, with RISP in the playoffs. That's 

Nathan Lukes is a career minor leaguer, finally getting consistent at bats at age 31. He was essentially a league average hitter in the regular season with a .273 BABIP. His BABIP this postseason is .362, and he's hitting .309/.367/.382. 

Will this continue for the remaining two or three games in the series? Who knows? It might, it might not. That's the randomness of playoff baseball. It's the randomness of baseball at large. One of the most consistent features of baseball discussion is that narratives don't have to match reality. Postseason experience matters, until the Blue Jays roster, with little-to-no playoff experience, turns into a collective superstar. Dominant bullpens matter, until the Dodgers and Blue Jays reach the World Series with mediocre-to-bad bullpens. Buying superstars is the way to win, until those superstars run up against the likes of Nathan Lukes, Ernie Clement, Addison Barger, Andres Gimenez and Alejandro Kirk. 

That's the part of baseball nobody wants to accept, because there's no easy explanation. Randomness plays a much larger role in baseball outcomes than anyone wants to admit. There is no "type" of player who's better than others in October. No magic formula or approach at the plate that guarantees performance. It's simply getting hot at the right time, which is, quite simply, not predictable. And it's why the Blue Jays might actually be the favorites to win the series. Their lineup is wildly overperforming at the perfect moment.