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By Jackson Roberts
Contributing Sports Writer
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Sometimes, a swing in the third inning can turn around a game, if not an entire playoff series.
On Tuesday night, Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. provided one of those extremely consequential swings against a sweeper from Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani.
Trailing 1-0, Guerrero sent a drive over the left-center field wall at Dodger Stadium on a pitch that simply caught too much of the plate. A night after the Blue Jays suffered one of the most heartbreaking losses imaginable in 18 innings, Guerrero helped them seize control early and eventually cruise to a 6-2 victory.
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Ohtani was on top of the world entering this game, having hit two home runs and gotten on base nine times in Game 3. He'd also thrown six-plus shutout innings with 10 strikeouts in his last start on the mound. But Guerrero was having none of it.
After the game, Guerrero sounded off on competing against his superstar challenger and how he framed it mentally amid the high billing from fans and the media.
“I respect Ohtani a lot, and I know basically myself and him, we are, like, the talk of the Series," Guerrero said through an interpreter, per Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com. "But when we are between those two lines, we're competing. It felt good that (Tuesday) I could hit that homer against him.”
Ohtani struck out six batters and went six-plus innings again, but a four-run Blue Jays rally in the seventh, which started with a pair of hits against the starter, earned Ohtani his first-ever postseason loss on the mound.
Meanwhile, Guerrero continues to dominate October. With another two-hit performance, he upped his batting average to .419 and his OPS to 1.306 in the Blue Jays' 15 games this month.
Ohtani and Guerrero will likely have their fingerprints all over Game 5 in Los Angeles before the series shifts back to Toronto. But the Blue Jays' own superstar may have spoiled Ohtani's lone chance to put his name in the win column as a pitcher.
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