Everything went the way of the Toronto Blue Jays during Game 1 of the World Series as the Los Angeles Dodgers lost 11-4 at Rogers Centre behind bad pitching and poor offense.
While it’s just one game and won’t fully dictate the rest of the series, history is against the Dodgers in more ways than one.
Teams that win the first game of a World Series have gone on to win the championship 64.2% of the time, including 18 of the last 22 (78.4%) and 23 of the last 27 (85.2%) Fall Classics.
The Dodgers’ lopsided loss brought about more questions about the layoff they enjoyed after sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
“You know, honestly, I really don’t think the week layoff had anything to do with tonight,” Dodges manager Dave Roberts said. “I really don’t. We were rested. I thought we were in a good spot.
“We had a 2-0 lead and then (Daulton) Varsho hits a homer and we didn’t pitch well after that. So I really honestly don’t think that had anything to do with it.”
To Roberts’ credit, the Dodgers had six days off compared to three for the Blue Jays, which isn’t a huge difference overall.
It’s also reminiscent of the narrative that the first-round bye in the postseason was a negative for teams, until it was shown to be mostly randomness in a small sample.
However, teams that swept their opponent in the League Championship Series have never won the World Series when their opponent advanced after playing seven games.
That has happened on four separate occasions since the LCS became a seven-game series in 1985, and the Dodgers look to become the first team to break the trend.
But four such matchups is still a tiny sample size, and the MLB schedule has been flexible in previous years to prevent the team from going seven to have the extra days off.
Still, for the Dodgers to win the World Series this year, they’ll have to buck MLB postseason history.
Prior World Series matchups with sweep and seven-game LCS
The Dodgers were actually on the better end of this history to begin with in 1988 as they defeated the Oakland Athletics in the World Series after they went to seven games in the NLCS while the A’s swept the ALCS.
The next three instances all came in the 2000s and the St. Louis Cardinals (2006), Boston Red Sox (2007) and San Francisco Giants (2012) all went to game seven in the LCS before winning the World Series while their opponents, Detroit Tigers (2006), Colorado Rockies (2007) and Tigers (2012) swept their way to the Fall Classic.
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