TORONTO — The Los Angeles Dodgers have many strengths, including elite starting pitching, a deep lineup featuring three MVPs and plenty of postseason experience. Coming into Game 1 of the World Series on Friday against the Blue Jays, they knew that their path to victory, just like in the NLCS, would run through the rotation.

Because it’s no secret that these Dodgers have one glaring weakness: a bullpen that cannot be trusted. As a result, the path for the opponent to defeat the reigning World Series champs is to force L.A.’s relievers to cover more outs than the starter.

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The Toronto Blue Jays got that memo. On Friday at Rogers Centre, it didn’t take long for L.A.’s worst-case scenario to come to fruition, as the Jays did significant damage against the Dodgers’ relievers en route to an 11-4 rout.

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But the Dodgers’ catastrophic Fall Classic opener didn’t start with the bullpen. It began with their ace, Blake Snell. Coming into the World Series, the two-time Cy Young Award winner had been on a tear, most recently carving up the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 1 of the NLCS. But from the first inning Friday, Snell looked like a completely different pitcher.

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The Blue Jays made the Dodgers’ left-hander grind through a laborious first frame. It seemed like Snell couldn’t get comfortable, and Toronto clearly had a plan that it executed to perfection. The Jays put pressure on Snell right away, sending six batters to the plate and working Snell’s pitch count up to 29. And although Snell got out of the jam without surrendering any runs, it was the kind of inning that can have a lasting effect on a game.

“I just wasn’t locating the ball,” Snell said postgame. “It’s pretty simple. Command with the fastball wasn’t great. Changeup wasn’t great, either.”

Indeed, over the next four innings, Snell never quite found command of his pitches. The Dodgers’ ace, whose attack is built on swing-and-miss, didn’t generate much of that in Game 1. The Blue Jays, who had the lowest whiff rate of any team in baseball this season, spoiled plenty of pitches, especially fastballs, fouling off 12 of the 37 Snell offered.

It all led to the fateful sixth inning.

To that point, Snell had allowed a two-run homer to Daulton Varsho, his first homer surrendered to a left-handed batter all season, but nothing more. He was three outs away from recording six quality innings with minimal damage, considering how hard he had to work to get through most of them.

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But L.A.’s southpaw fully lost control of his command during the frame, surrendering a leadoff walk to Bo Bichette and a single to Alejandro Kirk and then hitting Daulton Varsho, which led to Snell’s exit with zero outs.

With the bases loaded and 12 outs left to cover in a tie game, the Dodgers’ bullpen was firmly in the danger zone.

“I think overall, we had a good approach off him,” Varsho said postgame. “We made him work. That was the biggest thing. They have a good pitching and starting staff, so I think for us, just to be able to grind out at-bats knowing we needed to pass the baton to the next guy, that’s been our MO all year, and we trusted it.”

“When [Blake] had count leverage, he really couldn’t put ’em away because they were putting the ball in play, and there were just a couple bad walks in there,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But you got to give those guys credit. They certainly fought.”

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Following Snell’s departure, the first reliever to take the ball was right-hander Emmet Sheehan.

Sheehan immediately surrendered an RBI single to Ernie Clement. Then he walked Nathan Lukes, still with the bases loaded, and gave up a second RBI single to Andrés Giménez, which made it a 5-2 game. After he got George Springer to ground into a fielder’s choice, Sheehan’s night was also over.

“I thought I made some good pitches, and they made some really good swings,” Sheehan said later. “Obviously, the walk can’t happen there. Not a good feeling.”

But the biggest at-bat of the game was the next one. With pinch-hitter Addison Barger on deck, Dave Roberts brought in left-hander Anthony Banda. And once Banda fell behind in the count 2-1, the Blue Jays’ right fielder made him pay.

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Barger sent a soldout Rogers Centre and likely all of Canada into an uproar when he crushed a hanging slider deep into the right-center field seats for a grand slam, giving Toronto a 9-2 lead. Barger’s blast was a historic one: the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history.

“Left a slider up right in his bat path,” Banda said afterward. “Bad pitch. He took advantage.”

The slam made it a boat race, with the Blue Jays adding two more runs in the inning on an Alejandro Kirk two-run blast that pushed their lead to 11-2. The 11 runs scored by Toronto are easily the most the Dodgers have allowed in a game this postseason, surpassing the eight surrendered in NLDS Game 3 vs. Philadelphia.

The Dodgers’ Game 1 loss was not only a failure by the bullpen. Snell’s inability to get out of trouble opened the door for the Blue Jays’ huge inning. But the bigger concern for L.A. going forward is that the thing that has always made this team vulnerable reared its head and lost the Dodgers the series opener in “grand” fashion.

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Despite foolish narratives about this World Series, make no mistake: The Blue Jays aren’t the Milwaukee Brewers. Toronto showed Friday not just that its bats can succeed against L.A.’s elite starting pitching but also that they can do serious damage against the Dodgers’ bullpen once those starters come out of games.

With their victory, the Jays announced themselves in this Fall Classic as the exact same team they’ve proven to be over the past four months. And in many ways, so did the Dodgers, who have stated time and again that their success lies with starting pitching. It’s just that when that starting pitching doesn’t succeed, neither do they.

Game 1 should serve as a wake-up call for L.A., as Toronto set the tone for this series and clearly fed off having home-field advantage. The pressure is now on Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the rest of the Dodgers to show they can respond in Game 2 on Saturday.

“Turn the page. It’s one game. Nothing we can do about it now,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “Just have to focus on tomorrow.”