ALCS Game Six: Blue Jays 6, Mariners 2

 

yes sir, there she goes; let's admire that one

Game seven begins imminently, so let me say now in just these few moments that remain before it what a wonderful thing game six was, and not just Vladdy's homer, or the joyous havoc he caused on the bases (no Vladdy, don't run! that ball in the dirt has not skipped nearly far enough away from Cal Raleigh for you to do so prudently! oh wait no okay he threw it into left field and now you have scored with ease! never mind, Vladdy, great job! [how fortuitous for us all that he was born ready]), or even Addison Barger's two-run shot to bring home Ernie Clement's two-out triple, or any of those obviously wonderful things, but consider please, if you will, young Trey Yesavage, in literally just his sixth major-league start, who kept his head sufficiently amidst a considerable amount of traffic on the basepaths in the early going to induce three—three!—consecutive inning-ending double plays, two of them in near-NOBLETIGER fashion from the perspective of the Seattle Mariners (they were OOBLETIGERs, I suppose, in that the bases-loaded-ending-in-team-incapable-of-getting-easy-run[s] began with one out in each such instance). All of that, obviously, could have just as easily gone the other way should even one of those three crucial groundballs found a hole; or if the Mariners had not uncharacteristically kicked the ball around for three costly errors; or had either Varland or Hoffman faltered even slightly in relief (which they extremely did not); or really any number of little things along those lines (or others!). But just about everything broke our way, which, along with everybody doing an especially good job, is really all you need to win a postseason baseball game. "We’re trying to win one game in a row," John Schneider said ahead of game six. "We’ve done that ninety-nine times this year." Now that they've made it an even hundred, would it be to much to ask for just the one more? It might well be, but at the same time, I see no harm in merely asking, right? Shane Bieber, in whom my faith is unwavering, takes the hill, with literally everybody available out of the pen, up to and including Kevin Gausman and Max Scherzer (let's get nuts). Of course, the most agreeable outcome would be one that sees the Blue Jays ahead early and easily and in such comfort that nothing weird has to happen at all, but if things are even remotely close beyond the earliest innings, I hope to see starters—perhaps exclusively starters—up in the bullpen in the truest, darkest, yet at the same time most exuberant spirit of game seven. Could be good!  

KS

ALCS Game 5: Mariner 6, Blue Jays 2

 

hoooooo boy

I am probably less hung up on that calamitous eighth inning than just about anyone who watched it, or has even heard tell (and word seems to be traveling fast!), but there's for sure no getting around the disaster of it (in the admittedly limited sense that disaster is possible in the outcome of a baseball game). The Blue Jays had traffic on the bases all night, but had only been able to score twice: Barger in the fifth, on the Springer double, and a scurrying Kirk in the sixth, on Clement's soft single to right. There was even a NOBLETIGER in there at one point, one that ended when an Ernie Clement groundball traveled directly down, right in front of the plate, and just totally stayed there for an easy double play. I've never seen anything quite like it. Colleagues stranding colleagues, suffice it to say, as happens against good pitchers who are bending but not breaking, which was what the Mariners were able to achieve. But Gausman had been so good himself (just the Eugenio Suarez solo shot in the second), and Varland, too, as the first man out of the pen, that we carried a 2-1 lead through seven. It never felt like enough, but a one-run lead in a playoff game, especially on the road, never will. Given the context, it seemed curious, then, that it was Brendon Little who got up in the pen, and desk-guy Joe Siddall was profoundly and transparently pre-spooked by it when the broadcast threw things back to the studio between innings, even before it was entirely clear Little was even going to come in (Siddall was tense and terse [he was ternse]). If Jeff Hoffman and Seranthony Dominguez—in that unusual but compelling order—had been brought in to pitch the eighth and ninth the night before in a game we were leading by kind of a bunch, why not those guys now, in a similar situation, but one made all the more pressing by this scant one-run lead? As the eighth began to unfold, Dan Schulman and Buck Martinez speculated that it must have something to with using the lefty Little to turn the switch-hitting Raleigh and Polanco around, and then dealing with the lefty Naylor behind them as his third batter, rather than leave that to Hoffman (who does not have particularly troubling lefty/righty splits) or Dominguez (who kind of does). Even if it had worked, this move to Little, it would have been quirky, but it didn't work at all, and so the word "quirky" really hasn't come up in any of the immediate reaction (people getting worked up on Reddit, as they say, is the first draft of history). Cal Raleigh's homer tied it, and, after two walks, a switch to Seranthony Dominguez, and a hit batter, Eugenio Suarez (remember him? he's from earlier) hit a grand slam to right field that might as well have been a walk-off. Not great!

And yet, while in the immediate aftermath, this move to Little—an up-and-down reliever who has definitely struggled with his command in the second-half (slightly less so in September, but problems against righties persist)—is being characterized as an all-timer of a bad managerial decision, not just on "the boards" but also on the Blue Jays broadcast itself (and it totally might be! everybody might be right!), I find that I am not actually minding it all that much? Or at least not as much as you might expect. Brendon Little had nothing tonight, poor guy, but neither, as it turned out, did Seranthony Dominguez, who followed, and Dominguez was definitely part of everyone's plan for those last six outs (I have not seen anyone argue that Hoffman should have been tasked with all six, though I'm sure if we had it to do over again, we'd all ask him to give it a real good try). John Schneider, asked about it all afterwards (if you can believe it), said he wanted to give the top of the Mariners order a different look than they'd seen last night (mission accomplished on that front, no denying it) with a guy that he trusts in big spots (more than Fluharty or Lauer, if you really wanted a lefty in there?). Really, what else could he say at that point? It was a bad decision, followed by two bad performances, but this really isn't hitting me any differently than any other bullpen loss. Actually, I think if you replace the "but" in the previous sentence with an "and so," it gets closer to the heart of it. It was a shame not to have brought more of those baserunners home in support of yet another very fine Kevin Guasman outing, but one-run road-game leads are just not something experience has taught me are especially likely to stand up, and so this loss does not sting like a bee so much as it feels like the attenuated bite of a cat you have scooped and held slightly longer than the enscoopened cat has chosen to enjoy. A disappointment, yes, but only a minor one, and understandable almost to the point of predictable.  

So, what did we actually do here, what did we actually get done this week: turns out we took two out of three games in Seattle to bring the series back home to [the] SkyDome for game six Sunday night, and quite possibly a game seven beyond. If Trey Yesavage pitches even passingly like he did against the Yankees, and Shane Bieber, aided by the full weight of the Blue Jays pitching staff, can put together a game anything like the one he just pitched against the Mariners, then even a handful of runs of support here and there (from an offense that has been the best of any team so far this postseason) means we're headed to the World Series. Not a bad place to be in October, and I remain really very stoked about it. Oh hey also, switching topics for just a sec, did you notice, too, that Shohei Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings tonight and struck out ten whilst also hitting three home runs? In what is almost certainly the finest game of Major League Baseball anyone has ever played? To finish off the Dodgers' sweep of the ninety-seven win Milwaukee Brewers (hey congrats on a great season guys)? A cynic might say that the Mariners and Blue Jays are really only competing to see who is to be granted the privilege of getting rolled by the Dodgers in the World Series, but I would suggest i) that would definitely still be pretty neat to be a part of, and ii) you never know! Baseball's pretty weird sometimes! 

KS

ALCS Game 4: Blue Jays 8, Mariners 2

 

they call him "Max" Scherzer because he Scherzers the most that anyone can

Frankly, guys, I'm a little surprised! There really wasn't any reason to think it would go quite this well, was there? Max Scherzer's five-and-two-thirds of two runs on three hits (four walks, five strikeouts) probably exceeded everyone's expectations besides Scherzer's own famously unreasonable ones (he is not necessarily a first-ballot "reasonable guy"). Much attention has understandably been paid to the comical intensity with which he assured John Schneider that no, he did not in fact need to be relieved; that, on the contrary, he was good; and finally, let's go (it made Ernie Clements of us all [the exchange has already been Jomboy'd, but there really wasn't much for him to add in this instance]). To me, a neater, though less remarked upon aspect of Scherzer's start (probably because it was noted on the Rogers Sportsnet Canadian broadcast, but not, I am told, the American Fox one) came in the first, when, with two runners on, Vladdy yells to get Scherzer's attention, reminding him to better conceal his grips, as the amiable Julio Rodriguez, leading off first, was in fact all over them already, and could no doubt both see the changeup grip and relay that information to the batter, which is a problem Scherzer had in New York about a month ago (as a direct consequence, he got utterly shredded in that start). Scherzer adjusted at once, got out of the early jam with a double play ball almost immediately, and away we went. Ludicrous! A ludicrous outing! And the bats, my goodness the bats: Gimenez again, somehow, not just with the two-run homer but with four runs knocked in by the end of it; Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, newly in the lineup after Santander's reaggravated injury ended his season and caused a reshuffling (Barger to right, rather than third, where he immediately made two huge catches and crucially threw Naylor out at third to cut short an inning that easily could have gotten away from us), got on and scored twice (IKF, I mean); and Vladdy homered again as part of one of the best postseason runs any player has ever had in the history of Major League Baseball, no big deal. Between being historically great at the plate, that tip to Scherzer in the first, and the concrete, specific advice you could see him offer Barger in the dugout after Barger was caught looking to strikeout in a big spot, only for for Barger to rip a double in his next plate appearance, Vladdy is far outperforming every expectation anyone has ever had of Vladimir Guerrero Jr, which is a wild, wild thing to consider (you may recall that his FanGraphs "Prospects TLDR" begins "Guerrero has a messianic bat," and that he recently signed an extension to play with the Blue Jays until 2040). But in our entirely justified Vladthusiasm (Jr.), let us not overlook the achievements of the bullpen last night, from Fluharty to finish the sixth, to an inning each from Varland, Hoffman, and Dominguez. And wasn't it interesting that Schneider went with Hoffman with a six-run lead in the eighth, rather than the ninth, so that he might deal with the top of the order; that's the kind of thing I absolutely love to see, honestly (high-leverage reliever deployment irregularities? yes please). By the end of the game, given all that had occurred—and, crucially, the heightened context of its occurrence—I found myself not only thinking to myself, but even texting to pals, that this was as satisfying as any Blue Jays' win I can recall in my forty years of attending to this sort of thing. And I guess why wouldn't it be? This is all tremendously, outrageously big. Kevin Gausman is on the mound tonight (in just a couple hours, really), with a chance to head back to Toronto with two shots to wrap this up, if things go as they very well might (the Mariner's Bryce Miller is, of course, certainly no joke). Should Gausman falter, worst-case scenario is indeed a worst-case Ontario, in that we're still headed back to [the] SkyDome for a game six at home. But maybe tonight we can slide all nimbly into a series lead, in a manner analogous to that exhibited by the sly Myles Straw below:     

It's a best of three series now, and I feel like we could probably win one of those, right? Either way, this much is certain: it is a hot-dogs-and-root-beers, Friday-early-evening start-time, perhaps the last one of the year, and we are going to savour it as such.  

KS

ALCS Game 3: Blue Jays 13, Mariners 4

ah, the cat's light . . .

Setting aside, for a moment, the Blue Jays' thirteen runs on eighteen hits last night—which is a pretty strong topic, and one to which we will for sure return—how about Shane Bieber? That first inning was a little shaky, I will grant you, with the walk, two-run homer, and then the double, too, but if ever anyone has "settled in" after "early jitters," this was like an archetypal instance of that. Bieber allowed just those two runs on four hits through six innings (eight strikeouts, one walk), and looked like he could have gone a little deeper, too, if so called, but why push it with the guy who lines up to be the game-seven starter, should we be spared? To the bats, though, the sweet, sweet bats: Andres Gimenez's two-run homer (he homingly homered home Ernie Clement, who continues to hit closer to .500 than you might even think) to tie it up was as welcome as it was unlikely (Gimenez confessed after the game that he was just trying to hit something to the right side to move Ernie, who had doubled, over to third); Vladdy's extreme double off the wall set the stage perfectly for Daulton Varsho's similar double with the bases loaded a few batters later; and from there, everybody just starting launching taters throughout the stadier: Springer, Vladdy (who was four-for-four, his last double looking like he could have tried to stretch it for the cycle), Kirk (three-run shot!), Addison Barger . . . it turned out to be another true romp in what has become, seven games in, one of the top offensive performances in the history of the Major League Baseball postseason (by any number of measures, but you can just keep it simple with OPS, which would has the 2025 Blue Jays safely within the top ten). Pretty good! That all of this happened—or the most significant portion of it, rather, the real game-deciding part—against the very fine George Kirby is all the more impressive (there were some low-leverage guys used later, as you would expect). Tonight's task is realistically a good deal taller, in that it is Luis Castillo (and just his whole cool style) on the mound for the Mariners (I wanted us to land him from the Reds so hard; why were my entreaties rebuffed [less in word than in deed]?), while we are going with first-time-in-a-month Max Scherzer, who, at this late stage of his sure-thing Hall-of-Fame career, is generally understood to be a semi-animated skeleton of some kind. Do not mistake me: I am into it, and the potential for glory here, should Scherzer even manage to get through the lineup once without major incident, is substantial. But is this less a Max Scherzer start than perhaps a bullpen day (aren't they pretty much all, though, I suppose, in the final analysis?) in which Max Scherzer is the actant performing the rôle of l'ouvreur? I'm sure the goal for Max Scherzer, personally, is to slice these guys up three times through the order and maybe hand off the ball for the ninth if his pitch count is getting up there a little, but I think the more level-headed team goal is probably two wins out of these three games in Seattle, right, so that game six and indeed perhaps game seven can follow in Toronto? And so it's Scherzer tonight, and, though nothing has been announced beyond that, you'd think Gausman in what we might as well assume will be the first of three must-win games after that, with Yesavage and Bieber to follow? I really can't think of any other way they could play it, but I am open to the possibility that I am not thinking super clearly about any of this, other than thinking about how this clearly rules. 

KS    

ALCS Game 2: Mariners 10, Blue Jays 3

 

Lundi-soir Vladdy, c'était nous

It wasn't the Mariners' first home run, a Julio Rodriguez three-run shot off young Trey Yesavage in the first, that was the problem, really, as we grinded out the three runs we needed to tie it back up in cheeringly short order. Nor was it the the Mariners' third and mercifully final home run of the evening, a two-run job from Mississauga's perpetually stoked Josh Naylor (he does not get stoked so much as arrives stoked, and stokes further as events dictate), as things were already fairly out of reach at that point. No, it was that three-run homer right in the middle, the Jorge Polanco one off of Louis Varland, that really felt like the one that truly sunk us (nautical metaphor). A drag! (Ships have drag.) And yet I could not help but notice, as it was all unfolding, just how less tense it feels to be losing a postseason game than it is to be clinging to a narrow lead in one. It is, if not unpleasant, very nearly unpleasant to be leading a playoff game, unless you are really, super-duper leading it; anything less than that, and each pitch feels so fraught as to compel, if not outright require, near-constant snacking (which is also fine, so long as snacks be near at hand [oh, they have been; and oh, they will be]). Much like the top-seeded National League team, those cheap (relatively speaking) and cheerful (in absolute terms) Milwaukee Brewers, our own top-seeded Toronto Blue Jays find themselves down 0-2, each team having dropped their first two games at home to their league's west-division champion. Probably better to be down a couple games to the Mariners than to the Dodgers? And yet, all the same, not good! I'm not minding any of this nearly as much as you might expect, though. The Mariners' starting pitching has looked really good so far, and is only likely to look better as their top arms now stand at the ready (to the extent that arms can stand [the mixed-metaphor minefield of synecdochic metonym has exploded yet another guy]), and the scene shifts to lovely and spacious Safeco Field (they're not calling it that anymore but those initial lead-sponsor naming rights have not yet lapsed in my heart [how can you not be romantic about naming rights?]). In game three—a pretty big one? in that we emerge either down 2-1, and very much in a series, or down 3-0, in which case, that becomes somewhat less true?—we are running Shane Bieber out there, and even though things did not go especially well for him in his game-three start in Yankee Stadium in the previous round, I remain not just hopeful, but genuinely optimistic, perhaps in no small measure because of the strange relationship that develops when you obtain a player in one of your simulation baseball games only for Blue Jays Actual to later obtain the services of that selfsame player in the primary world of our experience (this is sort of what happened between me and Yimi Garcia, honestly). I would not be surprised if he pitches well! And if he doesn't, I mean, what are you gonna do. I'll tell you what the Blue Jays are gonna do, though, one way or the other, is start Max Scherzer in game four. This, to me, is a move at once by (John Schneider, Pete Walker, Don Mattingly, perhaps even Ross Atkins et al.), of (Max Scherzer himself), and for (me) absolute madlads. Max Scherzer has pitched just awfully for ages now, almost certainly tipping his pitches in at least one of his disastrous late-season outings. And yet I love this move. Let's see if this absolute psycho (I say it with love) has one more big game left in this surefire Hall-of-Fame career. Wouldn't it be neat if he did? Wouldn't it be neater still if that game brought us back even at 2-2 in the series, and guaranteed a game six back home at [the] SkyDome (camel-case forever)? Even if all it did was bring us back to 3-1, and bought us one more day of Blue Jays baseball, I would be totally into that much, too. And if it just goes ruinously, hot on the heels of Shane Bieber maybe not going so great tonight, well I mean so it goes. You can't win them all, I have heard tell, even when you have very nearly won them all, which is how one ends up still playing baseball on October 15th, one of only four teams left, still just four wins away from the World Series, and eight wins away from winning the whole blessèd thing. At this point in this deeply wonderful baseball season, I am literally down for whatever, and choose to approach whatever remains in the come-what-may spirit embodied by this unknown (in the sense of unnamed [I suppose I just mean anonymous]) yet iconic fellow right here:

Though much separates us—time, place, whether or not we enjoy to smoke cigarettes very much at all—what unites us is our devil-may-care enjoyment of Blue Jays baseball, particularly on the Baton Broadcast System, as Fergie Oliver used to say somewhat confusingly at the start for a few years there (because we were pretty sure we were mostly just watching regular old CTV still?), very much at the height of when you could enter to win a V-Tech cordless phone whenever the Blue Jays hit a home run. But our shared enjoyment of and enthusiasm for Blue Jays baseball, his and mine, began before that era, and has long-since survived it, too, I would imagine. Unless the fellow pictured above is no longer with us (sad), or has perhaps simply moved on to other hobbies that he has found he enjoys more instead (understandable). Either way, let's play ball. 

KS  

ALCS Game 1: Mariners 3, Blue Jays 1

 

uh oh

"This one's on me" was Kevin Gausman's gracious (and suitably show) assessment of the Blue Jay's 3-1 loss to the Seattle Mariners to open this American League Championship Series Sunday night, but he was clearly mistaken: Gausman was one strike away from six very fine shutout innings when Cal Raleigh (the Big Dumper himself) crushed a solo home run to right to tie the game at one; Gausman walked the next batter, who, Brandon Little, alas, could not hold at bay in relief. That's two runs charged to Gausman's account in five-and-two-thirds innings, which you would take from your starter just about every time, right? And so I am much more inclined to agree with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s assessment of the evening, which reads as follows: "We just didn't hit." After George Springer's first-pitch dinger, the Blue Jays added only Anthony Santander's second-inning single to that initial and quite rad opening volley. Two hits! Just two! This is the same team that put up twenty-three runs against the Yankees just last weekend, and scored thirty-four runs on fifty hits in that all-timer of a four-game series. Baseball continues to be both the weirdest and the best, though I am hoping that the particular weirdnesses of game two, whatever they may be, will prove more congenial to my particular interests. A split at home, win even one of the three in Seattle, and we're back home for game six? And indeed seven? Is this too much to ask? It may very well be! And yet here I am, asking all the same. Trey Yesavage takes the mound but twenty-five minutes from this, our moment of composition, and it sure would be neat if he could slice up these totally reasonable Seattle Mariners much as he did the largely loathsome Yankees (not you, Aaron Judge; you seem pretty nice) just eight days ago. Tell you what, implied reader, check back later and I will let you know.     

KS 

Blue Jays 5, Yankees 2 (which is to say, Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1)

 

 a glad band

"What a flex," a dear old friend noted in a chat after the Blue Jays 5-2 win Wednesday night, "to eliminate the Yankees with a bullpen game." Objectively, this is undoubtedly true, but it was honestly not a thought that had occurred to me, at least not in that particular spirit, even once at any point during this deeply improbable yet highly rad eight-reliever outing, for sure the finest bullpen performance in the history of the team (what could surpass it? I mean ever?). Headed into this series, I don't think many observers would have argued that the Blue Jays' bullpen was among the team's greatest strengths; indeed, insofar as you can say that a ninety-four-win season had any problems of any real significance at all (in my view, you kind of can not), there was a several-week period in which things got a little dicey in relief, you may recall, and Jeff Hoffman outings had been at times (though have not been lately) a bit of a wild ride. But there he was, Hoffman I mean, good for the final four outs, striking out Cody Bellinger to seal the deal. What a parade of guys it was: we had Louis Varland, not twenty-four hours removed from giving up homers to both Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr., good for the first four outs of the game as the opener; Mason Fluharty gave us the next three, but allowed a Ryan McMahon solo shot to the short porch in right along the way; our guy Seranthony Dominguez came in much earlier than I would have expected, but with great success, allowing just a walk against his five outs; the stalwart Eric Lauer did just the same (though left-handedly);  Yariel Rodriguez, who I would have guessed would be one of our multi-inning guys for sure, got just the one out to end the sixth; Brendan Little got us three outs ahead of rookie Braydon Fisher, who got into a little trouble in the eighth that the aforementioned Hoffman sorted out before returning to the mound to handle the whole ninth with nobody up in the pen behind him, allowing Judge to knock in a Trent Grisham double along the way for the Yankees second run, but this was not a run anyone could mind even a little. A few times throughout an evening I spent largely in and around our cozily-lit kitchen, as I marveled at just how well this all was going, I paused to take stock of what a success here would look like; this is to say, how many runs would be a good result from this bullpen day? Obviously the realest answer is an n-1 type of deal, but beyond that, what would you say, four runs, maybe? You'd have to call that pretty good, right? So maybe if the Blue Jays' bats could somehow put up five, I figured, we'd be okay? Well they sure did! Cam Schlittler's last start, against the Red Sox, had been remarkable, but his last start against us saw him chased in the second inning. Wednesday's game was more like the former than the latter, but all the same, there was Vladdy knocking in a George Springer double to get the Jays on the board in the top of the first, and away we went: Springer's sac fly in the fifth brought home the unstoppable Ernie Clement (what a series!); Nathan Lukes had the crucial knock in the seventh to bring home Clement and Gimenez after Jazz Chisholm had booted a grounder that was just extraordinarily suited to an inning-ending double-play just a couple batters before (oops!); and light-hitting-yet-right-hitting Myles Straw brought home Alejandro Kirk (who had doubled and then also tagged up on a fly to deep right, way to go, Kirky!) to give us the five runs that would have beaten the four runs I had for whatever reason settled on in my mind as being a solid result from l'enclos des releveurs, not that we ended up needing all of them. I guess it really was quite a flex, then? Even more so, I suppose, once John Schneider revealed that he had only sent Trey Yesavage sauntering out to the bullpen mid-game, like he did, to mess with the Yankees, so far as he was able, as he had no actual intention of using him in game four (he did not say the same about about Gausman, who I assume he really would have put in under certain circumstances).  

What a wonderful, joyous round of baseball it was, absolutely as much fun as you're ever going to have in a postseason series: two all-time romps in front of the eager home crowd, then a road loss on account of a freaky home run by the best right-handed hitter in at least a generation (and you can make a reasonable case for "ever," too) followed by a taught-though-never-quite-fraught total-team series-clinching win to eliminate the Yankees in front of their own frustrated, booing, and weirdly depleted home crowd (many headed for the gates after the Yankees left the bases loaded in the eighth, which is wild to me as someone who has stayed right to the end of some enormously hopeless and insignificant baseball games in my lightly-misspent youth). Vladdy already feels like a legend at twenty-six. Trey Yesavage only pitched once, but did so whilst utterly Juan-Guzman-maxing. Daulton Varsho had a totally unreasonable number of extra-base hits in those first two games at home. Ernie Clement was on base constantly. All of our guys who we have enjoyed so much all summer long just totally did a great job, and none of this could have been any more fun.

And now the Mariners, after Seattle's fifteen-inning win over the Tigers last night, in a game I perhaps foolishly stayed up for (I am not even convinced it was actually a good baseball game). I'm not entirely sure which team I'd really have rathered the Blue Jays face: probably the Tigers, I guess, but we've won the season series against both, and the Tigers, despite their late-season slide, pulled it together admirably against the scrappy Guardians, played the Mariners tough(ly), and had the best pitcher left in the tournament in Tarik Skubal. Unlike the Mariners' Cal Raleigh, you can't avoid Skubal by just walking him, right? So I don't know. They're both beatable teams in a seven-game series, as are the Blue Jays themselves, of course. With the Brewers and Dodgers NLCS now official, this may be the least objectionable postseason final four of my lifetime, and I will endeavour to appreciate it as such regardless of the results the rest of the way (though clearly I have preferences). Something that has perhaps occurred to you is that this ALCS will be the first postseason meeting of these 1977 expansion cousins, which is a worthy thing to note, but have you yet reflected on how this Mariners/Blue Jays match-up is also the first postseason proxy encounter between FanGraphs dramaturgical dyad Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli? Isn't that weird, that this is a thing that not only could happen, but that is demonstrably about to? I think it is okay to give in to astonishment in the face of this reality. Consider, too, that the Blue Jays are only eight wins away from getting this man a ring:

Let it fuel you, Vladdy; let it fuel you.

KS

Yankees 9, Blue Jays 6 (which is to say Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1)

should have wanted it more, I guess

So that one got away from us a little! That Vladdy homered again in the first, and that the boys rallied for four runs in characteristic fashion to go up 6-1 and chase Carlos Rodon in the second, these are all excellent things. But when you're on the road, are you really up before the other team has batted in the bottom half? Are you really? My perhaps idiosyncratic view is that all road leads are an illusion always. It is regrettable, certainly, that Shane Bieber did not have it Tuesday night, and that John Schneider understandably felt compelled to pull him in the third with things at 6-3 and Bieber both getting hit hard and missing his spots (one or the other, you maybe let it ride a little longer?). Of all our guys, I would not have expected Isiah Kiner-Falefa to boot a ball, and I would not have expected a windy popup to pop right out of Addison Barger's glove behind third, but these kinds of physical errors are easier to take than some major lapse of judgement or effort; these are things that happen. What does not really happen, and yet did, is homers being hit on 101mph fastballs that are well-in off the plate. I thought the deal with Aaron Judge's great big long arms is that he can cover off-the-plate away! Wouldn't these same super long arms mean he would be more jammable inside? Perhaps that was Louis Varland's thinking? You will literally never see a less likely pitch homered uponst, and yet there it was, ripped off the foul pole to tie the game at six, and from there, certain things followed. Other minor disappointments included Santander (who delivered a big, two-run single in the second, it must be noted) diving disastrously for a ball in right, and a gettable ball getting by Vladdy to his right—neither of these were errors, but both guys would tell you they should have made those plays. (Honestly, maybe Springer in the outfield rather than at DH when Santander is the guy you're going to put out there? Not the case when you're starting Nathan Lukes, obviously.) There's all kinds of things you can say, but fundamentally it is a drag that Bieber had so poor a third inning that we had to go to Fluharty early. Everything follows from that, really.

And so a bullpen day for game four, which has been the plan all along (Berios and Bassitt hurt, Scherzer sadly unplayable down the stretch), and either we steal one here (let's go Varland! and also Lauer! and literally all of our guys! because that is how many of them we are likely to use!), or it is back to Toronto for game five Friday night, with both Gausman and Yesavage ready to go for it. That's really what I'm expecting, the latter, but the former would really be quite something, and I would welcome it with great enthusiasm, should the universe choose to unfold its mysteries in that particular manner (please do).  

KS   

Blue Jays 13, Yankees 7 (which is to say Blue Jays 2, Yankees 0)

 

there she goes

A top-five-or-so all-time Blue Jays home run, then? Somewhere in the mix with Joe Carter (1993 WS),  José Bautista (2015 ALDS), and Edwin Encarnacion (2016 WC), with neither Roberto Alomar (1992 ALCS) nor Ed Sprague (1992 WS) quite in the same register on account of those last two having being on the road (through no real fault of their own)? It's hard to say how many times I've watched the at-bat in the two days since (FOX, Sportsnet, and FAN590 calls here; truly comical Yankees radio call here; TVA call here [ooh que c'était frapper fort!]), but what stands out now is really the same thing that stood out to us as we watched it together on the couch as it happened: watch Vladdy between the pitches; look how loose in he is in the shoulders, the hips. It's not a natural looseness, but a practiced, disciplined one. This is Vladdy remembering that he needs to be loose, and remembering how to effectuate that looseness, or to take steps that will allow him to achieve something that resembles or functions close enough to looseness as to offer some, or perhaps even many, of its benefits. The swing itself will, of course, transport those of us of a certain age and inclination twenty years or more into the past, seeing his father in every movement from the first twitch all the way to the huge, wraparound follow-through, and while there's nothing new about that, it still strikes me just about every time (and possibly moves me somewhat [hard to say]). The moment felt enormous, and has been taken up as such already not just among Blue Jays fans but around baseball more broadly, probably out of proportion to the actual role it played in the game objectively—the Blue Jays were already up 5-0, and rookie Trey Yesavage was well into his unreal eleven-strikeout, no-hit five innings of work in not just his postseason début, but his fourth start in the majors at all—as Vladdy's grand slam didn't pull one out of the fire for us so much as it turned an already solid lead into a laugher (the Blue Jays went up 12-0 before the Yankees started stringing things together against our low-leverage relievers). But that was part of the joy of it, too: two games into the ALDS, this hasn't just been a romp, but an historic romp, putting up twenty-three runs—twenty-three!—against the Yankees fourth starter and on-again-off-again bullpen, sure, but also against their ace, Max Fried, who will certainly pick up some Cy Young votes for the season he's just turned in. The Blue Jays have more home runs so far (Vladdy, Kirk, and Varsho for two each, with Springer and Clement getting in on it, too) than they have strikeouts. Daulton Varsho had twelve total bases Sunday, which is good for about the fifteenth-best postseason game by any hitter ever, and his day has already become an afterthought, while Vladdy's swing has become the defining moment of this improbably wonderful weekend (given the respective temperaments of both guys, this turn of events would seem to suit them both well enough). There can be no expectation that things will continue quite like this as the series shifts to Yankee Stadium, but I don't just like that we have Shane Bieber going for us tonight in what will surely be a pretty intense situation; I super-duper like that we have Shane Bieber going for us tonight in what will surely be a pretty intense situation. Carlos Rodón can be excellent, but the Blue Jays have hit him well this season, just as Max Fried can be excellent, but the Blue Jays, for whatever reason, have been all over him this year. Without checking, I feel comfortable asserting (or at least speculating) that Vladdy hits better in Yankee Stadium than any other road park, and not just the three-homer night in 2022 that led to Gerrit Cole literally tipping his cap to Vaddy while the ball was in play on what turned out to be a double down the right-field line. What if we can put together a couple hits early? What if Springer, who homered Sunday, is locked in again after a tiny stretch of being slightly less so? What if the boys—stick with me here—continue boppin'? What then, I ask you?

KS

Blue Jays 10, Yankees 1 (which is to say Blue Jays 1, Yankees 0)

 

a big stretch from a long guy

Pretty ticklish until the seventh! And that sixth was intense! Kevin Gausman had been dealing until then, of course, and on like no pitches, as the Yankees' clear game-plan of swinging early in counts to avoid the two-strike splitter meant Gausman was only throwing ten-or-so pitches an inning, and he can do that pretty much indefinitely, right? Especially behind a two-run lead on early homers from both Vladdy and Alejandro Kirk (hey thanks guys, seriously, for real)? And some characteristically strong defense (go Vladdy; go, Vladdy)? That sixth, though: bases loaded, nobody out, Aaron Judge at the plate . . . things could have gone south in a hurry. The three-two splitter low and away that Judge chased for strike three was really a heck of a pitch, as was Louis Varland's belt-high 101MPH fastball that beat Giancarlo Stanton down the exact middle of the plate a few batters later. To escape bases loaded, nobody out, against Judge, Bellinger, Rice, and Stanton with only one run coming in is of course not a true NOBLETIGER, but I would argue that, especially given the context, it was a NOBLETIGER of the spirit (I imagine it may well have felt that way to Yankees fans). The Blue Jays' four-run seventh and the four-run eighth that followed made this one a true thrashing down the stretch, with everybody hitting everything off a Yankees bullpen that had, until then, performed admirably (called upon in the third inning after Louis Gil's low-key struggles), but let us not forget the super-tense tension that tensioned tensely before Andres Gimenez singled home the Blue Jays' third run through a drawn-in infield when the outcome of this game still felt very much in doubt. Kirk's second homer of the day (and the fifth in his last ten plate appearances, somehow [Kirk joins Johnny Bench as the only catchers to hit two home runs in a postseason game against the Yankees]) was the clear highlight of those eight runs that sort of felt like they fell from the sky, but there was much to admire all around, and really a lot of fun to be had. In a five-game series, each win is enormous, obviously, but it seemed especially important for us to win this one, with our best pitcher on the mound against the Yankee's number four starter; it seems less likely we'll be able to put ten on the board in game two with Max Fried starting, but the Blue Jays actually hit Fried pretty well this year! So who knows! Young Trey Yesavage will be our guy Sunday afternoon, and it sure would be a whole lot cooler to go into Yankee Stadium up two games to none rather than all squared up. Someone should communicate this important truth to the Toronto Blue Jays, lest they, in their haste, overlook it. 

KS

The Alejandro Kirk Game, Sunday, September 28th, 2025

 

touch 'em all, Kirky

I don't think it was just the heightened emotional state caused by an afternoon of reading the poetry of Anne Carson that led me to actually well-up when Alejandro Kirk hit the first-inning grand slam that put the Blue Jays ahead 5-1 in their AL East-clinching, final game of the regular season, but to be fair to both (to Kirk, to Anne Carson), I do have to acknowledge that it may have played un rôle. What a game! You would think 13-4 would have just been a laugher, and by the end it was, sure, but this was the most fraught 13-4 game I have ever experienced: the Rays scratched out a run in the first (Kevin Gausman, who only pitched three-and-two-thirds, alas, did not have his best stuff), only for Vladdy to single-home George Springer to tie it in the bottom half, just a little bit ahead of the biggest hit of Alejandro Kirk's already quite delightful career; but the Rays pulled back to within a run, which is where things stayed until Kirk's second home run of the day put two more on the board in the fifth, and a jubilant five-run romp of seventh inning sealed the deal. For Kirk to have had this game, of all games, just a few days after being on the wrong end of a 9-3, right-fielder-to-first-base putout to end an important game against he Red Sox (one poster described this, in all sympathy and solidarity, as "every chubby kid's little league nightmare"), is I think as much a factor as The Autobiography of Red in how feelingly I felt his trip around the bases in the first. The end of that Red Sox game clearly tore him up in a way that was uncomfortable to watch, and to see the usually low-key Kirk swing from that dark display of emotion last week to this was really something (there was an intervening home run Saturday, let us not forget, but this was of a different order and register entirely). I've just now watched it again (you may do so here, should you so choose), and honestly it got me again, and at the exact same point, just as he rounds second (I just watched it again, and it got me again, what is going on). This should be unsurprising, though, I suppose, in that I have found this era of Blue Jays baseball—these 2025 Blue Jays for sure, but really this whole era of the team since the sad and awful yet crucial 2020 season—to be strangely emotionally resonant. I'm sure no small part of it is simply that I am older, and increasingly soft-hearted, and, for sure most importantly, these are the baseball summers that I'm sharing with my kids when they're at the perfect age for all of this to be happening. Maybe that's the entirety of it. But I'm thinking, too, about Davis Schneider's answer to the stock question of what makes him proudest of this team this season: the not-especially-bashful Davis Schneider looked down, as though he was a little shy about what he was going to say, which was "just the way we all treat each other." Chris Bassitt, asked about the challenge of integrating so many new pitchers into the staff this year, said that it wasn't hard to bring people in when you show them "that you genuinely care about their well-being." Vladdy, asked when it was that he knew that this season was going to be different from last year's last-place finish, said that it was in spring training, and just how it felt when they were all playing catch together. These were unusual answers to usual questions, and felt genuine, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—I was moved. I believe that these answers at once arose from, and subsequently gave rise to, baseball feelings.

And so here come the New York Yankees, fresh off their Wild Card Series win over the Boston Red Sox, to begin this first ever postseason meeting between these two AL East teams that finished with the same excellent ninety-four win record. The way things played out with the seeding, the Blue Jays' half of the draw ends up the tougher side, despite having the top record in the league, but what can you do—and the whole reason we got to skip a round, and the reason this series begins in Toronto, is that the Blue Jays got the best of the Yankees in their head-to-head games this year, so there's nothing to worry about here, except for the usual stuff, and plus Aaron Judge. The other half of the AL draw seems perfectly agreeable (Detroit and Seattle: why not?), and so too the NL matchups, really (Dodgers vs. Phillies feels classic, and Brewers vs. Cubs isn't hurting either). The attentive reader may recall that I am a regular-season guy, generally preferring the half-year dailiness of baseball to the lightly-related tournament that we have for a few weeks in the fall (it can be good too, but it insists on itself), and so I am less invested in this coming series than you might expect from someone who thinks about baseball as much as I do (it is arguably excessive!). But it would be really great to beat the Yankees, wouldn't it? Whatever should befall us after that? 

KS  

"'So you live to die another day . . . '—James Bond"—The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays

 

hey great job, Shane Bieber (also Kirky) 

Nathan Lukes is an interesting case, a guy who didn't really get a chance as a more-or-less everyday player until he was thirty-one, but then immediately turned out to be an exactly league-average hitter who plays a solid right field. He's a useful guy! Weird that it took so long for anybody to fully notice! And yet here we are now, very much enjoying both his RBI-single in the first, and his two-run homer in the fifth, which, together, proved entirely adequate, given the strength of Shane Bieber's five innings, and the quality bullpennery that followed. Did things get a little ticklish in the ninth? Was Jeff Hoffman bailed out by some truly remarkably helpful calls from a seemingly confused home-plate umpire? Well sure. But perhaps we need to simply accept this as Jeff Hoffman's method: despite these many recent ticklishnesses, Hoffman has allowed but one run in this whole nearly-done month of September, and literally everybody would sign up for that from their closer, right? As alarming as his saves can be—which is very!—I do not agree with those calling for a last-second switch to the noble Seranthony Dominguez in his closer-stead: Dominguez rules, and we are so lucky to have picked him up, but he has a real problem with lefties, and is best deployed in his current deployment (late-innings righty-mowing). I'm sure we all wish Yimi Garcia's arm hadn't exploded—I have been, and shall remain, a true Yimi Ultra—but the sad truth is that it is has, and the bullpen is what it is in his absence . . . which is actually pretty good! Wasn't it wild how seemingly all the contending teams went into a collective bullpen spiral right after they all added totally good guys at the deadline? Wasn't that weird? I thought it was! But it's mostly all sorted out now, with the partial exception of the Dodgers, I guess, whose bullpen guys, as I understand the matter, are still at least lightly "going through it." Not ours, though, as we secured our ninety-second win of the season Friday night to keep pace with (and stay tiebreakingly ahead of) the New York Yankees, who looked awfully good against a strong Baltimore starter in the first game of their series. Perhaps the Yankees will falter against the oft-perplexing Tomoyuki Sugano, who gave us fits not long ago? A light falter, even? A Yankees loss (Saturday afternoon) and a Blue Jays win (slightly later Saturday) afternoon would seal the deal on the AL East, and wouldn't that be a lovely way for it all to go? It sure feels like it's all going to come down to Sunday, though, and why shouldn't it, I suppose.

KS

Another Day (in first place [technically]), Another Hard Dollar (in first place [technically])

 

with a spring in his step (jauntwæve)

A six-run sixth—Daulton Varsho's grand slam, followed in due course by George Springer's dinger—and six literally perfect innings from a Varland-to-Lauer-to-Rodriguez bullpen day (three imperfect but still very welcome innings from four worthy others followed thereafter) were all it took to forestall doom (an exceedingly limited kind of doom, and yet a doom) for another day. Let's go! Still in first place over the Yankees, by dint of a tiebreaker, with three games left to play! It is not great that those three games are all against the Tampa Bay Rays, among our peskiest foes for the better part of two decades now, but we've got Shane Bieber going tonight ("Buck," Dan Shulman rightly noted during a recent Bieber outing, "I think moustaches are coming back"), and young fireballer Trey Yesavage tomorrow. Sunday remains, at present, a bit of a poser: if everything is settled by then (Blue Jays locked into first, or locked into fourth, both entirely possible), one might well run out Max Scherzer for what could be his final MLB start, a kind of valedictory outing for a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and appealingly weird guy; if things remain unsettled, meaning there is still a chance for the AL East title and a perfectly delicious bye into the second round, you've pretty much got to go with Kevin Gausman, right? Even though burning him on Sunday would mean he'd be unable to pitch on regular rest in the Wild Card series that would begin Tuesday if things did not work out in that Sunday start? It's really not obvious! I have been burned in situations just like this in the secondary (arguably tertiary) worlds of subcreation engendered by baseball simulation! Reflecting on this, I wonder how far up the "org chart" the consultations would go on a decision like this? With whom would John Schneider either literally need to clear this decision, or just feel that he should clear this decision, given that it is, or at least could turn out to be, super duper fraught? Even assuming the Yankees end up sweeping the Orioles—no easy task, as the Orioles are a decent team, with two good pitchers starting this weekend—the Blue Jays would I guess only need to win either tonight's or tomorrow's game, singular, to keep Sunday in play for the division title, right? And since all the games on Sunday start at-or-very-near(ly-at) the same time (a tremendous innovation in recent seasons), you've pretty much got to make that decision about Sunday as soon as either the Blue Jays win another game (tonight would be great!) or the Yankees lose one (tonight would also be great!), n'est-ce pas? 

There is, as you can see, much to consider—all of it pretty good, and also maybe a little tense.  

KS   

Hey: hey.

 

hey.

Hey. Hey. It's the final Thursday of the 2025 regular season—the very last one! for real! no more Thursdays!—and the Blue Jays are still in first place not just in the AL East, but in the whole great big American League itself (and it really is a lot of teams when you check). That the season, alas, stubbornly—some might say foolishly—runs through Sunday is, I grant you, a bit of a drag, given that this looks likely to the be last day of the Blue Jays' truly remarkable and super enjoyable run atop the division that began, you may well recall, with a four-game sweep at home over the Yankees that occurred both on and around Canada Day, and really a good chunk of that whole first week of July. Remember all that? George Springer's Canada Day grand slam? Wasn't that the greatest? Things have of course gone less great this last little bit, with just one win in our last seven (we won six in a row right before, so who knows man), and yet that one win, I'm sure you will also recall, was the Blue Jays ninetieth of the season (such a crucial number [in terms of my enjoyment, if nothing else]), the playoff-clinching 8-5 Sunday afternoon win in Kansas City, and so there is a very real limit to just how badly we can crash out of this thing over these final four games. Imagine being the Tigers, whose fifteen-and-a-half-game-lead over the Guardians has somehow proven insufficient (haha I can tell you "how"), and who may very well miss the playoffs entirely; or the Astros, recently overtaken by the AL West-clinching Mariners (first division title since the incredible 2001 team, Ichiro's first year), who currently sit a game behind those same sad Tigers heading into play today. It's looking very much like all three teams that led their AL divisions to start September are going to have to settle for wild card spots or worse (and the "worse" is of course much worse). It's been pretty brutal! Given that brutality, we're actually getting off fairly light(ly) here, I think, as the prospect of a slide from holding the best record in the league and the top playoff spot to having the second-best record in the league and the fourth playoff spot looms large(ly) over these final four games. It remains very much the case that if the Blue Jays "win out," they cannot be caught or surpassed or exceeded in any way, as we have winning records against both the Yankees and Red Sox, and so hold those tiebreakers, but that prospect seems . . . let's say unlikely? Things sure would feel a whole lot different had the Yankees, down to their last strike against the White Sox the other night, not tied the game on a wild pitch and walked the Sox off moments later; even just that one more game in the standings would be massive for us with so few remaining. It might make today's bullpen game—featuring Louis Varland as the opener!—seem a little less grim? But enough! I banish all such thoughts! And instead I will say simply: let's get through the weekend without anybody getting hurt; let's forget about running Kevin Gausman out there on the final day of the season trying to clinch anything; and let's just give him the ball on Tuesday and see if we can't win a Wild Card series. I continue to feel that it is totally possible that we can, and also that things are actually, on the whole, good?  "It feels like the sky is falling right now," John Schneider said after the game, "and it’s fucking not. We’ve got ninety wins, we’re in the playoffs, and if the season ended today, we’re winning the AL East." I like it when John Schneider and I are on the same page. I feel that we are stronger as an organization when that it is the case.   

KS 

A Six-Game Winning Streak to Maintain The 2025 AL East Lead, And, More Importantly, To Further Solidify Profound Long-Term Mediocrity

 

oh hey by the way, great job the other night
in your MLB début, Trey Yesavage 

Six wins in a row, and seven-of-eight (against Houston and Tampa Bay, with the Orioles snuggled right in between), would be welcomed by any team at any time, surely, but it seems especially nifty halfway through a September in which one is attempting to seal the deal on both the American League East title and, radder yet, the best record in the American League, full stop. The Blue Jays, up five games (effectively six, given tiebreaking realities) over the fairly contemptible New York Yankees in the East, and four (effectively five, for the same reason) over the noble Detroit Tigers in the American League broadly conceived, are in about as good a September position as they have ever been in their history. And believe me, I'd know! I've been around for almost all of it! Which brings me to my point, one that is at once both broader and narrower than this season's standings, and also a little silly, and it is this: after Tuesday night's 6-5 squeaker over the Rays, the Blue Jays' all-time regular-season record throughout their forty-nine summers now stands at a perfectly balanced—I am inclined to say exquisitely balanced—3850 wins and 3850 losses. This is the first time the Blue Jays have been perfectly .500 (to as many sig figs as you've got) since May 20, 1995, at which point their record stood at 1416 and 1416. It's been a minute, as they say! (It's also pretty wild that the Blue Jays had been above .500 cumulatively at all by that point, so early in their history, even allowing for the amazing ten seasons running 1984 through 1993 in which they had been the best team in baseball.) The Blue Jays now join the Houston Astros as the only expansion teams to be at (or above) .500 over their entire history, and you will recall that it has taken the Astros this last decade of true excellence after deeply strategic deep-tanking of a rebuild for them to get there. It is in this respect, though, that the Blue Jays and Astros (who are also alike in that they have both won two World Series titles [no expansion team has one three]), extremely part company to the max in recent years: while the Astros have been all about peaks (yay!) and valleys (oh no), the Blue Jays have chosen a different path, that of deep and abiding mediocrity, a mediocrity unsurpassed in the recent history of the game. And this is not only a subjective expression of what Werner Herzog might call an ecstatic truth, or, after Worsdsworth, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; no, we've also got charts about it! Math charts!  

In a recent r/baseball post titled "The most consistently mediocre MLB teams from the last 25 years," user "No-Comfortable-9418" shared remarkably compelling evidence to this effect—the text at the bottom is pretty small, so I will note here that it reads "1999-2024, Formula: Percentage of Mediocre Seasons (0.45—0.55 winning %) x (1-Distance from 0.500 overall record.)" And look: 

We haven't just been mediocre; we have been mediocre with such intensity—with such ferocity, really—that we are outliers at being mediocre. "Makes sense," another redditor notes in that same post; "I remember the 2000's. Every year I was pretty confident we were going to go 83-79." Oh ho, not so fast, user "BillNeedleMailbag"! In my own personal favourite season of the 2000s—the ineffable 2003 season in which Roy Halladay won the Cy Young, and Carlos Delgado lost out on the AL MVP to the otherwise-deserving but admittedly enhanced Alex Rodriguez (I attended every home game on an $81 Toronto Star Season Pass, and have both the scorekeeping book and Vernon-Wells-autographed baseball to prove it)—the Blue Jays managed a stirring 86-76! (The Yankees won 101 that year, the Red Sox 95 to take the lone Wild Card.) Oh hey, let's note, too, that our now perfectly .500 baseball team, the one that has been far and away the most mediocre team of the last twenty-five years, has also, with its back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, won a perfectly average number of championships over its forty-nine seasons. Two titles is exactly what you'd expect of the average team in a league of this size over that much time! Isn't this wild? In a moderate sense?

In sum, I think this is just great. I would also like to say in closing that I am so, so, so stoked about the possibility of wrapping up both the AL East title and the AL itself should the next week-or-so go at all well—playing even just a little better than we did throughout the 1987 collapse would pretty much do it at this point. On the subject of injured shortstops (Tony Fernandez getting slid into was the instigating incident in 1987, you may recall), it is regrettable, certainly, that Bo Bichette's sprained knee is going to keep him out the remainder of the regular season, but Gimenez and Clement up the middle really is a real treat to watch, isn't it? If Bo could DH in the playoffs, that would put Springer in a corner outfield spot, but maybe offer a stronger overall team defense? Especially when you've got Myles Straw to plug into the outfield in the late innings? There is much to consider going forward. But as I am well and truly a guy of the regular season, the next eleven games honestly feel like a bigger deal to me personally than whatever happens in the wacky tournament that happens afterwards. I would also definitely like us to win that wacky tournament! Do not mistake me! And I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that mine is in any sense the enlightened view. But to play 162 games, and come out of it with the best record in the American League—with an outside shot, still, at the best overall record in either league, a feat we did not manage even in the never-to-be-repeated 1984-1993 run—is honestly enough for me, and far more than I expect from or even hope for in any season.

KS  

We'll Still Be In First Place Through Sunday

 

Kevin Gausman, seen here dealin' 

After Monday's tremendous late-inning comeback (Vladdy's throw to third in the tenth: best Vladdy throw ever?), Tuesday's late-inning-comeback-later-thwarted (alas, Jeff Hoffman), and Wednesday afternoon's two-hit, one-walk, Kevin Gausman complete-game shutout (oh boy!), the Houston Astros, probable AL West winners, are behind us. Good! They're pesky! The Yankees' middling performance at home against the Detroit Tigers this week (they dropped two laughers before laughing back just this one time right at the end) has the Blue Jays again leading by three games (functionally four, as the tiebreaker remains deliciously ours), thus assuring us at least one more weekend atop the AL East. The Orioles, who are in town this weekend, are very much at the bottom of that same division, but they've also won eight of their last ten, and have played the Blue Jays reasonably tough(ly) in recent years, so I take little for granted, other than that I will have a nice time watching baseball, or at the very least having it on in the background whilst I pursue complementary pursuits. The Yankees and Red Sox play this weekend—each other, I mean—which means each Blue Jays in the coming days will expand our lead against one or the other. A cheering thought! We're deep enough into all of this that, if the Blue Jays can wrap their final sixteen games at a perfectly .500 eight-and-eight, the Yankees would have to end their season on a twelve-and-four tear, or the Red Sox at twelve-and-three (those tiebreakers are huge). Eighty-four wins is really a very fine place to be with two-weeks-and-a-bit left in the season, and it would be a real shame to make anything less than the most of it, I feel. 

KS

Another 83 310 Loonie Dogs Last Night, if The Auxiliary Scoreboard in Right Field Can Be Trusted

 

bring it on in, Tyler Heineman; bring it on in 

It was easy to feel relatively okay heading into last weekend's series in Yankee Stadium, given that there was no possible result in that three-game set that could see the Blue Jays unseated as AL East leaders heading into the season's final weeks. And yet! It sure would have been a drag to just get dragged, would it not? Have been? How fortuitous, then, that we could set even that possibility aside with so thorough a 7-1 Friday night drubbing that, in that very drubbing, the Blue Jays chased young Yankees starter Cam Schlittler (Buck Martinez's pronunciations did not disappoint) in just the second inning. That the Blue Jays dropped the next two closely contested close contests was no great matter, even if the two-game lead with which they departed New York was not, strictly speaking, enormous. The greater loss, for sure, is that of Bo Bichette, who, correctly sent home on a fly ball to right just ahead of a looming and obvious rain delay Saturday afternoon, slid awkwardly into the catcher's shin guard, and sliced and sprained his whole deal down there. What a rough couple of seasons it has been for Bo Bichette's poor knees: it is no wonder that his once exquisite baserunning has fallen off a cliff (he is a little slower than Vladdy now, which I did not see coming) and his range at short has been hampered. But his bat will be sorely missed, I'm sure, over this stint on the ten-day IL. Maybe he will benefit from just the general rest, this far into the long season? And then rake all October? (On the field of play, is my hope, rather than the field of his yard.)

Last night's game, though, was really something. Before my commitments with regard to the exquisite art of 講道館 柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō took me away after the top of the first, I did manage to both see and lament the two-run shot the Astros' Carlos Correa visited upon Shane Bieber; I lamented further when I put the game on the radio after the gym and learned that, aside from a lone Springer dinger in the sixth, there was really nothing doing, 3-1 Astros late. At least the Tigers had gone up big in New York, I consoled myself, and every day that we can just hold fast brings us one day closer to the AL East title, I could be heard to remark (internally). Imagine, then, my delight, when the Blue Jays put together a Kirk walk, Clement single, Schneider walk, IKF two-run single (IKF! he's back!) bottom of the ninth to send it to extras, whereupon Vladdy made a throw across the diamond to nail Altuve (in his rôle as Manfred Man) with a throw I'm convinced no other first baseman in the league even attempts, let alone makes, before he himself—that self-same Vladdy!—legged out an infield hit in the bottom of the tenth ahead of Tyler Heineman's walk-off fielder's-choice grounder towards a helpless and hapless Christian Walker ten feet off first. Heineman ran through the bag, exultant, and instead of maybe heading towards home plate, where Myles Straw had slid in just ahead of the throw, went straight to Vladdy at second (he had been running on the pitch!) for just a great big hug of a great big hug. I'm not sure by what process Heineman was unshirted before he got to Hazel Mae for the postgame interview alongside Isiah Kiner-Falefa, but in the end he was as shirtless as anyone has ever been; it was a shirtlessness so profound that one could not but ponder on it. 

So here we are, three games up on both New York and Boston—functionally four, in each case, having won the season series against both—with now eighteen to go, and things seem as plausible as ever, or at least as plausible as they've seemed at any point in these last ten years. This has all been, and continues to be, just wonderful. Lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, I will note, too, that even with the top non-playoff team, the Texas Rangers, low-key surging, the Blue Jays should still be safe for at least the final Wild Card spot with literally two or three more wins this season, literally two or three out of the eighteen games that remain. In the spring, I would have totally signed up for an eighty-six-win, final-wild-card-spot 2025 season, and even now I would welcome it, even amidst the sheer madness of the kind of collapse it would take the rest of the way for us to end up with only that. I actually think I may have just talked myself into wondering pretty hard what that would be like? Almost to the point of wanting it to happen, a little? I will push those strange thoughts to the side, though, and stay focused on the task at hand. We've all got to do our part down the stretch, guys.      

KS

. . . And Just Like That, We're The Top Team in The AL Again

 

what like that's hard?

Two crushing bullpen collapses against the scrappy and likeable Milwaukee Brewers were forgiven, though not forgotten, after a super pleasant 8-4 sunny Sunday afternoon semi-romp against those very same Brewers. But then all at once it was off to Cincinnati, to watch ninth-inning homers from Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho drift away on the summer breeze, both in the sense that they lofted their way out of the park quite sweetly, and also that they proved super ephemeral, as the bullpen once again got torched. However! Our time in Cincinnati was on the whole a great boon, as what followed were two truly wild wins—the first 12-9 after leading 8-1; the second 13-9 after trailing 5-0 (Dan Shulman rightly noted that Shane Bieber weirdly put together one the best 5-0 outings you're likely to see)—that are perhaps best understood as living manifestations of the immutable R.B.I. Baseball ethos. It really has been quite a time! With the Blue Jays off today, but the Yankees playing the last of their set in Houston, our AL East lead will sit at either three games or four as the big series gets going in Yankee Stadium on Friday, and I would much prefer the four games to the three, I'll say that much! Though it is true that the Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker by dint (or at least by partial dint) of their unreal four-game sweep of the Yankees in and around Canada Day—and so even a tie at the end of the weekend would still be a Blue Jays lead, of a kind—that would be altogether too ticklish for my liking. So long as the Blue Jays go unswept this weekend (hopefully not too much to ask), we will remain very much in business headed into these final weeks, as far as the AL East is concerned. Setting aside that rightly coveted divisional title for a moment, I would note, finally, that the Blue Jays remain nine-and-a-half ahead of the first AL team that is not in a playoff position, which, with just twenty-two games to go, really makes October baseball very nearly a certainty, for good or ill (I find that it can be . . . a little tense?). 

KS 

Here Come the Brewers

 

George Springer: gets stoked; stays stoked

After a stirring series at home against the Twins—a win over the very fine Joe Ryan in game one; a thorough and crushing bullpen collapse in game two; and a bananas 9-8 win in the series finale (in which my preferred Twin, Byron Buxton, homered twice, but so too Davis Schneider; so too Davis Schneider)—the American League-leading Toronto Blue Jays are set to host the National League-leading Milwaukee Brewers at the SkyDome this final weekend of August and I, for one, am about as stoked about it as a late-innings George Springer who has only recently slid home with a go-ahead run (pictured above, really very stoked). It's going to be a tough set, no doubt, and, on the whole, the Blue Jays' schedule is not an easy one down the stretch. Sadly, neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees seem to be going anywhere, but every day in first place (in one's own division, let alone la ligue entier) is a good day; let us savor this one, and the next, and maybe one and a half of them after that, too (we are three-and-a-half games up, you see). As I have been texting to my baseball pals for a while now, if we can play out the season at a .500 clip—literally fourteen up and fourteen down the rest of our narrow way—that would put us at an absolutely classic ninety-two wins (a number of wins that is truly "show"), and require some fairly remarkable play from either Boston or New York (against both of whom we hold tie-breakers! which could matter!) to catch up. Should you find yourself habitually inclined towards thoughts of doom (not something that can be helped, even if you wanted help), you might note, too, that in order to be left out of the postseason entirely, the Blue Jays would have to be overtaken by the Kansas City Royals (ancient foes of 1985, slightly-less-ancient-but-still-getting-there foes of 2015), who currently sit nine games back; this would require a Blue Jays collapse of 1987 levels (please, no questions; it's still too soon). But man! Wouldn't it be nice! To be tops in the whole league! And skip a whole three-game-coin-toss of a round entirely! And for sure play games at home! But first, these games at home, against the ever-likeable Milwaukee Brewers, accompanied this year by the friendly ghost of the great Bob Uecker ("if they ever turn this park around, I'll be corporeal!"). Shane Bieber and Freddy Peralta on the bump for game one! Let's go!  

KS