LOS ANGELES — Blake Snell thinks bad luck had about as much to do with his Game 5 struggles as the Toronto Blue Jays.
“Luck plays in baseball, too,” he said.
The two-time Cy Young Award winner gave up two home runs on his first three pitches, then faltered again late in a 6-1 loss Wednesday night that put the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers on the brink of a Fall Classic defeat.
The Blue Jays took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series and can steal the title away from LA with a win Friday in Game 6 in Toronto.
Snell allowed back-to-back homers to Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the first back-to-back leadoff homers ever in a Series game. Each of the first three pitches were fastballs, and Snell’s next 22 pitches after that were offspeed.
“First pitch of the game, 97 (mph) fastball up and in, he hits it 98, it goes out,” Snell said of Schneider. “Pretty unlucky. Vlad, yeah, that’s just a bad pitch.”
He said he didn’t think he was giving away any cues on the type of pitch he was going to throw.
“I just think they’re ambushing a fastball,” he said. “They just read swings and they’re ambushing, as they should and as I thought they would.”
Snell overcame the early trouble only to give up a leadoff triple to Daulton Varsho in the fourth on a ball hit 75.6 mph.
“I’m not one to make excuses or anything close to that, but that’s pretty unlucky,” he said.
Snell couldn’t finish the seventh inning. He left runners on first and third after a walk, a single and two wild pitches, and the Blue Jays leading 3-1. Still, the sellout crowd of 52,175 stood to applaud.
“Yeah, just frustrated,” he said. “I felt good, I felt strong. I’ve been training to be ready for this and be strong. I trust me.”
Edgardo Henriquez replaced Snell and walked Guerrero. Addison Barger, who singled and moved up on Snell’s pair of wild pitches, scored on Henriquez’s wild pitch, making it 4-1.
“Against a really good pitcher like him, you have to be ready to hit. He’s going to come after you, he’s going to challenge you,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “There’s a time to grind ’em and there’s a time to be ready to hit. Just pretty cool it worked out the way it did.”
Snell gave up five runs and six hits in 6 2/3 innings, struck out seven and walked four on 116 pitches.
“He gave us everything he had,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think that early on they were just on the fastball, and you got to sort of adjust if that’s the case.”
Snell began strongly in his first postseason with the Dodgers, who signed him to a $182 million, five-year deal last winter. Snell had an 0.86 ERA in his first three starts.
In the NL Division Series, Snell allowed one hit in six shutout innings and struck out nine as the Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-3 to take a 2-0 series lead.
The left-hander nicknamed “Snellzilla” was stellar in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, a 2-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. He allowed one baserunner in eight shutout innings and struck out 10 while facing the minimum, something no one had done in the postseason since Don Larsen’s World Series perfect game in 1956.
The Dodgers went on to sweep the Brewers in four games and go into the World Series with a shot of momentum.
Then Snell got shelled in Game 1, losing 11-4. He gave up five runs, including three of the nine Toronto had in the sixth inning. Before that, Snell had allowed just two runs in 21 innings and struck out 27 batters.
On Wednesday, Snell got no help from a stone-cold Dodgers’ offense that managed just one run and four hits. Shohei Ohtani was hitless with a strikeout. Will Smith and Mookie Betts struck out twice, while Freddie Freeman had three strikeouts.
“We all know what we’re capable of, and we haven’t done it for two games,” Freeman said. “They just outplayed us.”
The defense let Snell down, too.
Betts and Tommy Edman faltered in the first couple innings on potential ground-ball double plays, forcing Snell to work longer.
“Blake pitched a heck of a ball game,” Roberts said. “But, yeah, giving up bases and not converting outs when you have an opportunity to convert outs, that came back to bite us.”