Dave Stewart Warns Dodgers Fans Betting On A Sweep Of The Blue Jays

Highlights:

• Stewart is the rare pitcher who appeared in the World Series for both the Los Angeles Dodgers (1981) and the Toronto Blue Jays (1993), and he still doesn’t “buy the super team” narrative in October.
• Stewart’s October bottom line: the team that plays clean, rides one hot pitcher and one hot bat, and handles the layoff best usually wins—no matter who looks bigger on paper.

If you’re already penciling in an easy World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dave Stewart has a warning.

He’s the pitcher who worked a World Series for both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. More importantly, the Oakland A's great has lived on both sides of a World Series mood swings.

His rule hasn’t changed. He shared it Wednesday morning on MLB Network's MLB Now.

“I don’t buy into the super team… it only takes one or two guys… a pitcher that gets hot, [and] hitters that get hot. That’s the team that’s going to win this thing.”

Why He Went North

Stewart didn’t leave Oakland lightly. “I wanted to be an A for the rest of my life… I grew up in Oakland,” he said. Free agency pulled him into a real choice: “It was going to come down to the Yankees or the Blue Jays.” Toronto won on relationships and fit. “Pat Gillick… said, ‘If we don’t bring Jimmy Key back, you’re going to be the first call.’… Paul Molitor had already signed… Joe Carter was a person that I had always wanted to play with… and you had Jack Morris in that rotation.”

The sell wasn’t just the roster; it was the manager.

“Cito Gaston… is the ultimate player manager,” Stewart said. And the clubhouse ran like a traveling masterclass. “Paul and… Oly and Joe and Robbie [would] sit at the front of the dugout and watch pitchers in their warm-ups and just really focus… little things that they could pick up… These guys were the ultimate teammates… it was a learning experience every game.”

He still stumps for the city that adopted him. “Toronto is… one of the best kept secrets… Beautiful people, great restaurants, clean city… and now they’re a great baseball town.”

Stewart's Red Flag

Stewart’s Oakland years are the caution sign for anybody throwing around “wipe them out” talk. “Quite frankly… 88, 89 and 90, I believe we were favorites in all of them,” he said. The lesson: the favorites don’t always cash. “In ’88 it was [Orel] Hershiser… [and] a guy on one leg hits a walk-off. In 1990 we came up against the Nasty Boys… and there was a young man named Hatcher there that was hot… seemed like he came up in the right situation at the right time.” Result: “They beat us four games to none.”