SEATTLE — Following the Blue Jays’ resounding 13-4 Game 3 win over the Mariners on Wednesday night, the sold-out crowd of 46,471 dejected Seattle fans may want to take a glance at the messaging on their passenger window and a big gulp of nervous air: objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
Reports of Toronto’s demise in this best-of-seven American League Championship Series have been greatly exaggerated.
The Jays’ emphatic win wasn’t just about beating up on Seattle starter George Kirby, who surrendered eight runs in four innings, doubling Toronto’s entire output in the previous 18. It wasn’t just about starter Shane Bieber becoming the Blue Jays’ first starter to go six innings, making an impressive in-game adjustment to get back on track after Julio Rodríguez’s first-inning two-run homer.
Wednesday’s win was about stopping the door to the World Series from slamming in the Blue Jays’ face, avoiding falling to a near-fatal 0-3 disadvantage and instead giving them a 1-2 record in which Toronto actually has a lane to reverse course.
And it starts with Max Scherzer, who will make his 2025 playoff debut on Thursday.
ONE AT A TIME ☝️🐶 #WANTITALL pic.twitter.com/6jph0Drt9t
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) October 16, 2025
Scherzer’s season has run the gamut: he was hurt until mid-June, excellent in August and struggled enough in September to be left off the Division Series roster. There is no telling which Scherzer will show up to Game 4, but there is a chance it will be vintage Scherzer, the guy who woke up the morning of Game 7 of the 2019 World Series with the Washington Nationals unable to move his neck and still gutted out five innings of two-run ball.
“It’s easy to trust a guy who has been through what he’s been through,” manager John Schneider said, “and done what he’s done.”
Scherzer, who said Wednesday he benefited from the ALDS break, would cut off a (non-pitching hand) finger to win. There’s no predicting what his stuff will look like, but the moment won’t get to the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer, and with the way the Blue Jays’ lineup looked Wednesday, that may be all they need.
Someone to not implode, to gut through five innings and hold the Mariners to two runs while the Jays lineup, as the kids say, cooks.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. heating up should scare the Mariners, as the Jays first baseman — who was hitless in the first two games of the series — had a four-hit night and is coming off a Division Series in which he hit .529, with three homers and nine RBIs.
Toronto’s five home runs on Wednesday are tied for its most in a postseason game in franchise history, going way back to … this year’s Division Series. Yes, twice in a span of 10 days, the Blue Jays have made history. This is a lethal lineup, capable of turning a game — or a series — around quickly.
Players talk all the time about the speed at the big-league level, about how fast things move compared to the minors. The playoffs, as one former player put it, are like the regular season on fast forward. Little things don’t just snowball; they become avalanches.
“We saw it over and over throughout this year, the number of times we responded in so many different ways,” Scherzer said Wednesday. “We had so many comeback wins. We’ve played great ball. Yes, we lost two games. Yes, obviously these are must-win games. We all understand what’s at stake.”
Thursday will be the litmus test for this team’s resilience.
It is not unprecedented to win a series down 0-2, even with home-field advantage, but it’s not easy.
Teams that go down 0-2 in a best-of-seven series have gone on to win just 14 of 52 times (26.9 percent) and only four of those have been in an LCS. The 1996 Yankees went down 0-2 before turning the tables and winning the World Series. (Yes, “Daaa” Yankees are a good example for the Jays, as that team scored just one run in the first two games before its offense came to life.)
If the Jays win Thursday, the hole they dug themselves across the continent is gone, replaced by a best-of-three set in which Toronto has two games at home. That they even have a chance to do so is why Wednesday’s win mattered so much.
Just like that, Toronto is hitting again. And they’re right back in this series.
