SportsCage Major League Baseball analyst Arash Madani believes Toronto Blue Jays fans should not be overconfident with a 2-0 American League Division Series lead on the New York Yankees.
"I actually think it's an advantage for the Yankees on Tuesday, I'll tell you why. Nobody has a scouting report on Trey Yesavage. Nobody has really much of a scouting report on Cam Schlittler. This is part of the whole thing, the Yankees' hitters were all going back to the dugout looking at the tablet saying, 'Okay, I need some info on this.'" Madani said on the SportsCage.
"Shane Bieber is a former Cy Young Award winner, he's been in the big leagues for almost a decade. The Yankees are familiar with him from his time in the AL when he played with Cleveland and now with Toronto -- there's going to be a book on Bieber. You saw what happened once Yesavage left the game, the Yankees' bat started to heat up against known commodities, the Toronto bullpen. I still think this series is far from over. Remember the bat flip game of 10 years ago? The Jays were down 0-2 in that series, came back home and won it in Game 5 on the bat flip. There is a lot of baseball left to go."
What Madani referred to happened in 2015, when the Blue Jays were trailing 2-0 against the Texas Rangers and came back to win the series. The bat flip happened in the seventh inning of Game 5 when José Bautista hit a go-ahead, three-run homer. The Jays won Game 5 by a 6-3 score on October 14 that year.
Madani liked how Yesavage pitched in his Game 2 start for the Blue Jays against the Yankees.
"In any other situation, a front office is getting their legs taken right to the fire. If you have José Berríos, Max Scherzer, and Chris Bassitt not on the playoff roster, that's over 50 million dollars of salary that's not on your postseason roster." Madani said. "Instead, a kid who went through five levels of minor league baseball this year is the one getting it done for you. It's amazing how it's gone with Trey Yesavage."
In Game 2, Yesavage set an MLB record by becoming the first pitcher to record 11 strikeouts while allowing zero hits through the first five innings of a playoff game as Toronto defeated the Yankees 13-7.
Meanwhile, there is one player from the Blue Jays Madani wanted to point out who people should be surprised about -- Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
"He had a really rough September and probably the best thing that happened to Vlad was the Blue Jays winning the division, they had six days off and the rest helped him a ton. He also went into the lab and tweaked a couple of things. Guerrero Jr. is the face of the franchise and this is the face of baseball in Canada," Madani said.
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"If you go to Montreal and you say 'Expos,' there are three Expos in franchise history that matter more than anybody else, it's Gary Carter, Gary Walker, and it's Vladimir Guerrero. Vlad carries with him a lineage and a piece of Canadian baseball history. Guerrero Jr. was born in Montreal when they signed him as a teenager from the Dominican Republic. There was a promise from that moment that his dad made the Hall of Fame and Vlad's gonna be even bigger and better. There are some differences between a star and a superstar, a superstar lives up to all of it when it matters the most. Guerrero, through these first two games, has done exactly that. Now, can this continue? That becomes the question as the series heads back to the Bronx."
Through two games for Guerrero Jr. against the Yankees in the ALDS, he has six runs batted in and two home runs, one of them was the Blue Jays first grand slam in the team's postseason history.
