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Blue Jays pitcher throws one of the strangest playoff games ever in ALCS Game 2 loss
Dan Hamilton-Imagn Images

Yariel Rodriguez wasn’t fooling anybody during the Toronto Blue Jays’ loss in Game 2 of the ALCS.

Toronto fell into an 0-2 hole in their best-of-seven series against the Seattle Mariners with a 10-3 loss on Monday. In the seventh inning at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ont., Rodriguez was summoned from the bullpen after teammate Braydon Fisher gave up a two-run homer to Seattle’s Josh Naylor to make the score 9-3 in favor of the Mariners.

Rodriguez then proceeded to throw one of the weirdest playoff games in MLB history. He faced three batters … and walked every single one. In fact, of the 16 pitches Rodriguez threw, he wasn’t able to induce a swing on even one.

The righty Rodriguez fired 12 balls to just four strikes (all of which were called strikes at that). Here is the pitch chart for Rodriguez’s outing.

If it is any consolation for Rodriguez, who was then pulled for Chris Bassitt after issuing the three straight walks, his performance didn’t really matter since the Blue Jays were already trailing big at the time. Still though, that was an uncharacteristically poor performance for a reliever who was fairly reliable during the regular season, posting a 3.08 ERA over 66 total appearances.

The bigger problem for Toronto is that they have now lost the first two games of the series at home with the ALCS shifting to Seattle from here for Games 3-5. The Mariners torched them on the day with three home runs as part of nine hits and clearly look like the more spry team right now (which comes as a surprise given Toronto’s big rest advantage heading into the series).

This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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