Big nights for backers in first two games of World Series

Carl Rowley’s stellar season ended with the Mariners being eliminated from the ALCS, but that doesn’t mean the catcher’s high-impact hits are gone in the postseason. So far in the World Series, the Blue Jays’ Alejandro Kirk and the Dodgers’ Will Smith have been the core of their respective teams’ offenses, building on their stellar regular-season contributions.

Neither Kirk nor Smith had a season like Raleigh’s, but the same can be said for nearly every other receiver in AL/NL history. Still, both starting backs from this World Series were named to their respective All-Star teams and ranked second and third in the majors in catcher WAR behind Raleigh’s 9.1. Kirk, 26, is slashing .282/.348/.421 (116 wRC+) while hitting a career-high 15 homers, and he’s also posting the second-highest mark in the majors in Statcast Fielding Run Value (21) and our own frame metric (11.3), the latter of which powers his career-high 4.7 WAR. The 30-year-old Smith spent much of the season in contention for the NL batting title, finishing with 17 homers and a 153 wRC+ at .296/.404/.497, his best all season and second-best on the team behind Shohei Ohtani. He posted a solid 4.1 WAR despite poor defense (-8 FRV and -6.8 FRM) and only 10 appearances in September.

The Dodgers couldn’t get Kirk out on Friday night in Toronto as he not only went 3-for-3 but also drew a walk in the first inning, setting the tone for the Blue Jays even though it didn’t lead to a run. Facing Blake Snell with two outs and a runner on the corner, Kirk took a 3-1 lead and then fouled out on four straight pitches before throwing a curveball in the dirt. His tenacious home plate performance lasted nine pitches; the two-time Cy Young winner had thrown 29 pitches when Snell retired Dalton Valshaw on a fly ball to end the threat.

With the Blue Jays trailing 2-0, Kirk took the lead in the fourth inning and he struck another eight pitches with Snell, this time trailing 2-0, before fouling out on four pitches. Finally, he reached out and hit a 97.9 mph, 334-foot ball into the right corner for a long single that ended with a funny crawl back to first base, as if he’d suddenly remembered his 200th-percent sprint speed. Snell followed with his next pitch, a 96 mph four-seam in the center of the zone, and Washoe crushed it for a game-tying home run.

Kirk had two hits in the Blue Jays’ nine-run sixth inning. He followed Bo Bichette’s leadoff walk with a 99-mph single to right field against Snell, then scored when reliever Emmet Sheehan walked Nathan Lukes with the bases loaded. After scoring seven runs (four off Addison Bugg’s backup grand slam), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. led off the scoring and Kirk hit a two-run, 403-foot homer off Anthony Banda to limit Toronto’s scoring.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto held Kirk in Game 2, but the catcher made his presence felt despite going 0 for 3. He scored the Blue Jays’ only run of the game and brought home George Springer on a sacrifice fly in the third inning to tie the game at 1-1. That flyout started Yamamoto’s second consecutive hitter strikeout, securing his second straight complete game, but between that pitch and the one he struck out in the ninth inning, Kirk can lay claim to being the only Toronto hitter to hit at least 100 mph off the Dodgers ace multiple times.

In fact, Kirk has been playing lately just like he did during the regular season. Like many other Blue Jays players, he’s swinging harder in 2025 than before; his average ball speed jumped to 72.5 mph from 70.1 mph in 2023 and ’24, while his fast swing rate more than doubled, from 12.2% to 28.5%. Not only did he do all this by lowering his strikeout rate (from 13.2% to 11.7%), but his harder swing led to better contact. After two slightly underwhelming seasons with a slugging percentage just under .360 and a wRC+ in the mid-90s, Kirk increased his average exit velocity by nearly two mph and improved his xSLG by 99 points:

As you might surmise from those increased launch angles, Kirk has lowered his ground ball rate, from 50.2% in 2023 to 45.3% in ’24 to 44.2% in ’25; during the playoffs, it was 31.8%. His slugging percentage was indeed 70 points lower than expected during the regular season, in part because when he hit the ball in the air, he tended to hit it toward center field. This postseason, he’s been squirting those hard-hit fly balls around the outfield more often, and as a result, his SLG and xSLG are within 10 points of each other.

Kirk has been a vital part of the Blue Jays offense from the beginning of the postseason. In the Division Series opener, he hit two home runs in the Yankees’ 10-1 victory, first in the second inning against Louis Gill and then in the eighth inning against Paul Blackburn. He singled, scored and drove in the second game and hit a double and scored in the fourth. He had six hits in seven games in the ALCS, with Caleb Ferguson’s three-point shot in Game 3 being his biggest breakout. Overall, he’s slashing .255/.316/.529 (130 wRC+) while catching all but one inning in Toronto’s 13 postseason games so far.

As for Smith, his receiving ability was in question when the postseason began. During the game against the Buccaneers on September 3, he fouled on his right hand and left the game early. X-rays, CT scans and MRIs came back normal and the diagnosis was a bone bruise but nothing more serious. After sitting out for five days, Smith returned to the starting lineup and went 1-for-4 with a double, but after a few more days of rest, he felt so uncomfortable that the Dodgers scratched him 15 minutes before the first game on September 13. They placed him on the 10-day injured list and quickly had him undergo additional imaging tests.

On September 20, the Dodgers revealed that Smith suffered a hairline fracture that had previously gone undetected due to inflammation. The belated diagnosis put his playoff status in jeopardy. It’s a bitter irony because the team is managing his workload with an eye toward making him more dynamic in October than he was last year, when he hit just .143/.246/.321 while playing just two playoff innings during the Dodgers’ championship run.

Although the Dodgers placed Smith on the roster for their wild-card series against the Reds, he did not appear in either game. Instead, Ben Rortvedt — who played just 18 games with the team after being acquired from the Rays at the July 31 deadline and never appeared in the postseason — played in two games while Smith and rookie Daulton Rushing waited in the wings. Roetveit also started the first two games of the Division Series against the Phillies, but only had one at-bat each before being replaced by Smith, who caught the remainder of each game. Smith’s first hit of October was a big one, a bases-loaded two-run single off Orion Kerkering in the seventh inning of Game 2 that extended the Dodgers’ lead to 3-0.

Smith has caught every inning of every Dodgers game since Game 3 of the NL, collecting at least one hit in all but one game (Game 4 of the NL). In the NLCS against the Brewers, he went 6-for-15 with two runs and three runs, including the go-ahead run in the sixth inning of Game 3 after giving up Jacob Misiorowski’s second hit in the 4 2/3 inning. In Game 4, the Dodgers allowed three runs in the first inning and he also singled and scored against Jose Quintana before Ohtani’s fireworks overshadowed everything else.

In 32 postseason games in the NLCS, Smith hit just .286/.375/.286 with 10 strikeouts — slightly better than last season, but still below par. While he hit five of 18 pitches in the game, only two of them were in the air: Kerkering’s single (15-degree launch angle, 89.3 mph) and Misiorovski’s (10-degree launch angle, 108.1 mph).

In Game 1 against the Blue Jays, Smith led off the second inning with a walk to Trey Yesavich; in that game, he was forced out, but the Dodgers did score. Smith followed with a single to Yesavich in the third inning to extend the lead to 2-0, but from then on, it was all Toronto’s.

The next night, in Game 2, Smith again got an early start when Freddie Freeman hit a two-out first inning off Kevin Gausman and an RBI single up the middle to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead. After that, Gausman retired the next 17 batters, and after Kirk’s bag flew out, two starters were tied at zero and the teams remained deadlocked. With one out in the seventh, Smith faced Gausman’s four-seamer, and when the 34-year-old right-hander left a ball third inside the zone, the Los Angeles catcher blasted a 107.5 mph, 404-foot ball to left field for a solo shot and a 2-1 lead. Gausman’s spell was broken; two batters later, Max Muncy homered.

Smith reached base again in the eighth inning against Jeff Hoffman. He hit a slow chipper to infield shortstop Andrés Giménez, who attempted to start a double at second rather than hit a home run to force the out. His long underhand throw to Bichette provided enough lag time for Smith — who was running well… at 46 percent sprint speed for a receiver — to beat the opponent and extend the lead to 5-1.

One thing to note about that home run: Smith’s average swing speed during the regular season was 69.8 mph, and he basically maintained that level in the postseason. However, his home run swing speed of 74.6 mph was his fastest since June 29 and his first home run since September 2.

Manager Dave Roberts later tied Smith’s homer to the Dodgers’ break between the Nationals and World Series, saying: “I think that week off got him through it. It was the first time he’d hit a ball like that in a while. I think that’s part of the rehab process.”

While it would be easy to attribute the Dodgers’ recent strong start to Smith’s return, the rotation throughout the lineup did play a role during his absence in September, and his guidance didn’t sprinkle magic fairy dust on a shaky bullpen. That said, Roberts cited the catcher’s calm demeanor at and behind the plate as he guided Yamamoto through a Blue Jays lineup that averaged 6.83 runs in Game 1 of the World Series. “I think the game calls, the relationship with the pitchers continues to get better,” the manager said. “He always has the ability to hit the ball, the ability to hit all the pitches… He knows when to pick his spots. He does his homework. I think at the end of the day, he’s a guy who doesn’t panic. He really has a steady heartbeat, and in the playoffs, that’s what you need.”

With the Dodgers hitting just .185/.284/.338 in their first two games, their offense will need all the help it can get against the Blue Jays. We’ll see if Smith’s big night shows he’s ready to reclaim his role as the team’s heavyweight and help Los Angeles win its second straight title. As for Kirk, he’s already one of Toronto’s most impactful bats; he’ll need to keep the Blue Jays going to win their first World Series in three decades.