It’s always easy to sell the potential excitement of a Game 7 in a championship series, but when it features two likely future Hall of Fame pitchers on the mound, it’s an especially easy pitch.
For World Series Game 7 on Saturday, it’s looking like it will be Max Scherzer starting for the Toronto Blue Jays and Shohei Ohtani starting for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The two pitchers are at different points in their careers, of course. Ohtani is at the peak of his powers and doing historic things on the baseball diamond with an alarming rate of regularity. Scherzer, meanwhile, is 41 and could be making the last start of his distinguished career.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts didn’t confirm his Game 7 starter after Friday’s win, but did leave a hint.
“He’s certainly going to be part of the pitching plan,” Roberts said to Ken Rosenthal on the FOX broadcast after Game 6 of Ohtani.
Rosenthal, The Athletic’s senior MLB writer, took it a step further, reporting Saturday morning that Ohtani will indeed start Game 7.
A generational two-way star against a three-time Cy Young award winner. What more can you ask for?
Ohtani and the Dodgers are favored on BetMGM to win Game 7 on the road, but it’s still close. The implied odds don’t give either team better than a 60 percent chance of winning. It’s still just a single game of baseball, and as we’ve seen time and time again in the playoffs, anything can happen.
Beyond the game itself, the World Series MVP race has also tightened. Ohtani is currently -105 to win World Series MVP with teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto closing ground after picking up his second win of the series in Game 6. Yamamoto pitched a complete game with one run, four hits and no walks in Game 2. He followed that up with six innings of one-run ball on Friday.
Getting two wins in a best-of-seven series is a pretty good argument for being the MVP of the series, that is, if the Dodgers win. However, Ohtani does have three home runs and a game where he reached base nine times this series. That’s a strong argument as well.
Ohtani is hitting .318 (7-for-22) with an on-base percentage of .500 to go with five RBIs and six runs scored. The only knock is that his one start in this series didn’t go great. Ohtani had six strikeouts and one walk, but allowed four runs in six innings.
Realistically, if the Dodgers win, Ohtani is going to win World Series MVP. The opening for Yamamoto would require something like Ohtani getting shelled and doing nothing at the plate, but the Dodgers still winning a high-scoring game.
If Toronto wins, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is in line for MVP. He currently has +130 odds on BetMGM. Guerrero is hitting .360 with an OBP of .500 and a pair of home runs.