Mariners Have Found the Blue Jays’ Biggest Flaw in the ALCS - But What Is It?
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The American League Championship Series (ALCS) is well underway and it hasn't exactly gone how most would have expected it to. The Seattle Mariners have dismantled the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre no less. The Mariners have a two game lead headed back to Seattle with a trip to the World Series on the line.
Now, the Blue Jays took care of business easily in the divisional round against the New York Yankees, primarily with their offense. However, that hasn't been the case in the first two games of the ALCS, and a lagging offense hasn't been the only concern.
Bats will grow cold for any team, no matter how good the lineup is from one through nine in the order. But the main concern that the Mariners have exploited as arguably the biggest weakness of the Blue Jays is their bullpen.
Issues With Relief Pitchers
Despite Kevin Gausman going nearly six innings in the opener, the Jays still had to use five relief pitchers to finish the game. A pair of guys were able to finish an inning of their own (Jeff Hoffman and Louis Varland) without allowing a run, but they were the only ones. However, the opener was nothing like the game 2 shelling that the Mariners put on the pitching staff.
Trey Yesavage did not get a quality start in the Game 2 loss to say the least, and another six relievers had to come out of the bullpen to finish off the beatdown that the Mariners started.
Varland came out of the pen with a pair of runners on the bags and no outs. So, when he threw a home run ball to Jorge Polanco, it was a three-run homer instead of a solo.
This Blue Jays bullpen is so bad and I have no idea how they got through a bullpen game in Game 4. The Yankees, outside of Judge, were terrible in that game.
— Randy Wilkins (@pamsson) October 13, 2025
Yariel Rodríguez was the lone relief pitcher who couldn't get a single out, but managed to walk three in the seventh, which forced Chris Bassitt into a nightmare of a situation for his first time pitching in a month, but he got out of it.
Bassitt, along with Eric Lauer, were the only high points of the pitching staff in Game 2 as the two pitched for the final eight outs with a combined four strikeouts and only one hit. But, at that point, the Jays were already down seven.
Sometimes there is a reverse effect with too much rest. While the Blue Jays had a few days off because they took down the Yankees so quickly, it clearly didn't give them an advantage.
Where the Mariners could have been lagging, they rode the wave from their ALDS win. Now, if Toronto hopes to redeem themselves at Rogers Centre they will have to win three straight at T-Mobile Center in Washington.
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Maddy Dickens resides in Loveland, Colorado. She grew up with two older brothers, where their lives revolved around sports. She earned a master's degree in business management from Tarleton State University while simultaneously playing basketball and competing in rodeo at the collegiate level. She successfully parlayed a reserve national championship into a professional rodeo career and now stays involved in upper-level athletics by writing for On SI on several different MLB teams' pages, along with some NCAA sites.