From elevated fastballs to selective walks, the Dodgers have a blueprint for limiting Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

For the first time since 2019, there will be a Game 7 in the World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers outlasted the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 6 on Friday night (LA 3, TOR 1) thanks in part to Addison Barger's game-ending baserunning mistake. Mookie Betts provided the long-awaited big hit and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was great once again.

"We're just going to leave it out there," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said about Game 7. "I don't think that the pressure, the moment's going to be too big for us. We got to go out there and win one baseball game. We've done that all year. Everyone's bought in. So I don't know how the game's going to play out, but as far as kind of the moment, winning a game, I couldn't be more excited to get to sleep and wake up to play a baseball game tomorrow."

World Series Game 7 pitching outlook: The state of each staff, ideal gameplan for Dodgers vs. Blue Jays

R.J. Anderson

To clinch their second straight World Series title, the Dodgers will have to contain Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in Game 7. Guerrero is having an all-time great postseason, slashing .412/.506/.824 with eight home runs. Relatively speaking, the Dodgers have kept him in check. Guerrero is hitting "only" .360/.500/.640 in the World Series. He is a man on a mission right now.

How can the Dodgers keep Guerrero down in Game 7? Here are three ways to limit his potential impact in the final game of the 2025 baseball season.

Keep the bases empty

Lineup protection comes from the hitters in front of you, not behind you. The best protection is hitting with men on base, when the pitcher has less margin of error and is often pitching from the stretch rather than the full wind up. League-wide, hitters had a .740 OPS with men on base during the regular season compared to a .703 OPS with the bases empty. It's a big difference.

In the relatively small sample that is the postseason, Guerrero has been a bit better with the bases empty (1.361 OPS) than with men on base (1.285 OPS), though he's been ridiculous in all situations. Keeping the runners ahead of him off base is more about limiting the damage Guerrero can do than putting him in a situation where he performs slightly worse.

The Dodgers have done a pretty good job of this in the World Series. Guerrero has 21 plate appearances with the bases empty and 11 with men on base. That has to continue in Game 4. Keep No. 9 hitter Andrés Giménez, No. 1 hitter George Springer, and No. 2 hitter Nathan Lukes off base, and it will limit how much damage Vlad Jr. can do in a given at-bat.

Hard stuff up, spin away

Guerrero is a hitter without holes. He has his father's prenatural ability to get the fat part of the bat on the ball with power, plus he is very disciplined. Now 17 games into the postseason, Guerrero still has more home runs (eight) than strikeouts (six), and there are times he's felt impossible to get out. The best the pitcher could hope for was a walk.

When Guerrero has expanded the zone and chased this postseason, it's been at breaking balls away and off the plate (the game's most common chase pitch). He's also been unable to do much with elevated fastballs. So, that's the plan for the Dodgers in Game 7: hard stuff up and spin away. Here are two Vlad Jr. postseason heat maps:

Elevating fastballs is easier said than done. Miss up and it's an easy take, miss down and you might as well put it on a tee. The Dodgers have pitchers who thrive with elevated heaters though, namely Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, and Blake Snell. We know we'll see Ohtani and Glasnow in Game 7. We can't rule out Snell either. It's all hands on deck, after all.

There is no "right" way to pitch to Guerrero. He's so good and he's so quick to make adjustments that, if you feed him two elevated fastballs in one at-bat, he'll hammer the third. This is just what's worked so far this postseason. Guerrero hasn't made good contact against fastballs up in the zone and on the rare occasions he chases out of the zone, it's been against breaking balls away.

When in doubt, put him on

This has been a very intentional walk-happy World Series. The two teams have issued 11 intentional walks in the six games (five to Ohtani plus six hitters with one each, including Guerrero), which matches the number of World Series intentional walks from 2021-24 combined, and is the most in a single World Series since 2011 (12, including five to Albert Pujols). It's a lot of free passes.

The math doesn't support intentional walks -- analytically, giving out a free baserunner is almost always a bad idea -- but it sure can feel like the right move in the moment. With the way Guerrero is swinging the bat right now (locked in and on everything), if the Dodgers have a base open, yeah, putting him on intentionally isn't the worst outcome, especially in a close game.

To be clear, I'm not saying put up four fingers every time Guerrero is at the plate. Just that, if the Blue Jays have runners on and are threatening to put a crooked number on the board, taking the bat out of the hands of the best hitter on the planet is a defensible move, even with Bo Bichette having been so good in the cleanup spot behind him. It's a textbook "don't let him beat you" situation.