Friday, October 6, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Sixty-Four (Wild Card Game Two): Twins 2, Blue Jays 0

 

I believe Yusei speaks for the room

Naturally, I would have preferred Vladimir Guerrero Jr. not to have been picked off at second base (the unpicked Vladdy; let us consider him in the realm of forms) with two runners on and Bo Bichette at the plate, two outs and a full count in the fourth, much as I would have welcomed any outcome other than than an inning-ending double play when Matt Chapman came up with the bases loaded in the sixth. But it was that kind of day: despite eleven base runners (nine hits—all singles—and a pair of walks), the Blue Jays couldn't push a thing across. This has been a theme all season long, really, with the Blue Jays' runs scored (that most vital of offensive stats) lagging behind every single way to measure the inputs that corelate with scoring runs. An awful lot of that is noise, no doubt, and variation that you can't actually do a whole lot about, and it's not not noise just because it happened again in October (after a high-end September in which it didn't actually happen very much at all); but man, what a drag. 

I must admit that I remain mystified by how much attention is being focused on John Schneider's unusual move to Yusei Kikuchi in the fourth, with José Berrios largely dealing, but having just surrendered a walk just ahead of a run of lefties in the Twings lineup. Berrios' splits against lefties this year reveal that he has struggled with them (within the overall context of a season-long performance for which we are all grateful), and Kikuchi perhaps seemed the better bet in a pinch, if that's what this was. Though he could not have been thrilled about the quick hook, Berrios, a team player if ever there was one (I really like this guy), immediately switched into cheerleader mode with deep and moving sincerity, all while the Blue Jays commentary team and the splintered legions of the Blue Jays internet went largely berserk. It's true that the inning did not unfold ideally from there: infield single, walk, ground-ball single to centre, a run-producing double play, an inning-ending groundout to Bo at short. That's one run charged to Berrios, and one to Kikuchi, and so between them, this somewhat unlikely pair held the Twins to two into the sixth, at which point Yimi, Swanson and Romano held the Minnesota bats scoreless the rest of the way. This is to say that, to me, however unconventional this particular hook may have been (and indeed was: forty-seven pitches, even under the strain of postseason baseball, is light work, to be sure), the Blue Jays' overall pitching strategy (let us not place all of this on John Schneider) was something very close to wonderfully effective. By any reasonable measure, neither the Blue Jays' pitching strategy nor the Blue Jays pitchers themselves were the problem at all, nor were they anywhere near the problem, except for in the very literal sense that the dugout isn't all that big and everybody gets pretty cozy all together in there (many of them are huggers). The percentage of baseball games you can win, even in the lower-run environment of the playoffs, while allowing two runs—or even three, as was the case in Kevin Gausman's Game One—is reasonably high! The percentage of games you can win whilst scoring exactly zero runs, though, has got to be vanishingly small (I have not fully run the numbers on that one myself, but back-of-the-envelope style, it's not looking good). 

So where do we go from here? Well, home for the fall, I suppose, in the most immediate sense. Looking ahead even a little, though, there will be a handful of departures that will change the feel of the club at least a little: Matt Chapman is sure to be tendered a qualifying offer from the Blue Jays, and is just as sure to decline it (my friend David—a Yankees fan since before the inception of the Blue Jays, making it understandable, and almost forgivable—rightly notes that the Yankees seem like a good fit); Kevin Keirmaier, fresh off just a lovely season, is by his own account likely to seek literally greener pastures, in the sense that he would like his aging knees to know real grass in an ongoing way before they are ground to dust; Brandon Belt may yet retire (I am reminded that earlier today, I read that Joey Votto would play next year were the Reds to pick up his option, that he is open to playing a final season elsewhere if it comes to that, but that he has also applied to cooking school in case he changes his mind about any of that). But the best pitching staff we have had in decades will be back next year, and while we cannot reasonably expect quite this level of performance (to say nothing of health) to repeat, it should still be a genuine strength. Varsho and Springer will still be in the outfield; Bo, Vladdy, Kirk/Jansen will still be around the diamond, with some combination of Biggio, Espinal, and Schneider filling it out. A big bat for left field? A lefty bat to DH and spell Kirk or Jansen (whichever one isn't catching on a given day)? George Springer has almost certainly entered the genteel decline stage of his fine career, but there's every reason to expect improvement (on the aggregate) from the rest of the boys. Way back in the spring, FanGraphs projected these 2023 Blue Jays at eighty-eight wins, and we finished with eighty-nine. I would expect both of those numbers to be more or less the situation next year, too. 

As I said the other day, just as the regular season was winding down (which feels weeks ago, all of a sudden), I've really enjoyed this season, just as I've really enjoyed each of these winning seasons from the dark but strangely consoling 2020 season onwards. You'd never know it from the discourse the last few days, but these are the good times: the Blue Jays are a .557 team over the last four years, and if you find yourself daunted by our oh-and-six in playoff games over that same span, then I feel that you are as-yet-untutored in the routine failures of baseball, and I mean the ones routine to the Toronto Blue Jays, a big-city team that can afford good players, that has more seasons above .500 than below, that makes the playoffs a little over twenty percent of the time, and who are in fact the only team other than the Yankees to win back-to-back World Series championships in the forty-seven years the Blue Jays have even been around. If watching the Blue Jays feels too gnarly, imagine the plight of those doomed souls attached to the Mariners, the Rangers, the poor Brewers (eliminated the same day as the Blue Jays; Bob Uecker told me all about it on the radio), or even the last thirty years of the Reds, to say nothing of, like, the Rockies, or the deliberately woeful Athletics. What I mean to suggest here is that as unpleasant as it may have been in the moment (plenty!), we'll get through Vladdy picked off at second, or a pitching change that few cared for in game that ended 2-0. It's all still very much baseball. 

As will the remaining postseason be, I'm sure! I'm honestly looking forward to it: it's all low-key and stress-free from here on in (for me at least; I have friends still deeply involved). I don't imagine I'll post again until things get going next season, though, so I will take this opportunity to thank you very much for reading throughout the summer. See you in the spring, maybe?  

KS

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Sixty-Three (Wild Card Game One): Twins 3, Blue Jays 1

 

oh no

The tying run came to the plate (in the sense of "being at bat") with two outs in the top of the ninth inning, embodied in the eager person of George Springer, who ripped a screamer just to the right of first baseman Donavan Solano. Solano, who'd come on as a pinch hitter earlier, but had struck around after, made a nice little play on it, and that was that: Twins 3, Blue Jays 1. Honestly I did not mind any of this quite like you might think? It was discouraging, certainly, that Kevin Gausman struggled early, and allowed two home runs to only-recently-uninjured rookie masher Royce Lewis in the first three innings, while all and sundry (I think I identify as "sundry" more than "all" in this instance, but I'm sure I've been both) speculated as to whether or not the Twins did indeed have something on Gausman's splitter. The extraordinarily great Minnesota crowd roared whenever a Twin laid off of a low pitch, which I'm sure was a lot of fun for them (they have suffered, and have earned whatever rewards they may gather). It was both a drag and a surprise that Gausman went only four innings, and I'm sure he would be the first to tell you that things did not go well, or at all like he'd hoped, but at the end of the day, Kevin Gausman threw two centre-cut fastballs that we did not enjoy; it's not like he walked the world, or anything truly agonizing like that. Nobody wanted to see the bullpen in action that early (unless it was to Unleash the Kooch [which did not happen]), but it must be said that every move that John Schneider made in that regard felt correct in the moment, and was then justified immediately, as every reliever turned in more of the great work we have come to expect of them over the long season: Swanson, Mayza, Green, the enigmatic (and fired up) Genesis Cabrera (it is all part of his ever-deepening enigma), and Jordan Hicks allowed nary a run between them. Great job, guys! That was a lot of innings! As to the bats: well, it would have really been something had Matt Chapman's inning-ending fly ball to the wall with two runners on somehow eluded the leaping Michael A. Taylor; I'll sure say that! Bo and Keirmaier were the only Blue Jays with two hits (Bo scored the lone run; Keirmaier knocked him in), though Vladdy doubled in the eighth and Chapman singled, too (that was earlier). The play that is getting the most attention, for what I feel are the wrong reasons, saw Bo thrown out at the plate to end the third as he scurried homeward on a Keirmaier chopper that pulled third baseman Jorge Polanco out of position, leaving the ball in what seemed like no man's land. To me, it was a good, smart, aggressive play from a player who is all three of those things, but an unlikely and quite frankly perfect play from Carlos Correa—who, like young Royce Lewis, just came off the injured list—cut Bo down at home. Although I have not actively sought anything like this out, a good deal of criticism of Bichette's decision has nevertheless appeared before me, and every bit of it is silly. Cheers to Carlos Correa, who made a great play; and to Pablo Lopez, who pitched ably into the sixth; and to the Minnesota fans, who created a perfect playoff atmosphere. I just don't feel like the Blue Jays blew this one even a little? I feel like they played a good baseball game against a good baseball team and lost the good baseball game? It's not what you want to see, but it's hard to feel bad about it.    

And so it falls to José Berrios and a cast of potentially everyone (John Schneider has said that Kevin Gausman is the only player unavailable today) to see if we can keep the series and indeed the season going a little longer. Sonny Gray is every bit as good as Pablo Lopez, I think you'd have to say, so it will be a tall task, but honestly the boys put together some really nice at-bats yesterday. A few more like that, and we're bound to put at least a couple runs on the board, and with all hands on deck, that might be all we need? 

KS 

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Sixty-Two: Rays 12, Blue Jays 8

you know what: generally not an on-field smiler

With the Blue Jays' playoff status secured by Saturday night's Texas win/Seattle loss (as Téo grounds to Marcus Semien, we remember what was [and what could be again? {no, the past is gone, never to return}]), the only real goal heading into play Sunday was to get through it unharmed, and with Kevin Gausman firmly rooted to the bench, so as to be at the ready Tuesday afternoon in Minnesota. And we did it! I was a little worried when Bo stumbled around second, and plunged, helmet over his eyes, into third base for what was admittedly a pretty sweet triple: it would be an awkward time for another lower-body injury to our best hitter who is also our shortstop! Bo, you are both of these guys at once—please be careful! But he seemed well enough, and in good cheer throughout the dugout ministrations of trainer José Ministral. To everyone's surprise, starting pitching duties fell to the unheralded and honestly unheard of Wes Parsons, harmlessly cooked for eight runs (including a grand slam!) before a single out was recorded in the second (imagine if Alek Manoah had simply accepted, in an uncomplicated way, his assignment to Buffalo, had kept throwing, and came back up to get some outs on the last day of the season; he'd have received a hero's welcome, despite his ongoing disaster). Parsons could be heard to swear as loudly as anyone has managed all season, and then, to his great credit, made it through four complete. Though his line was indeed hideous, every out he managed is one more the regulars didn't have to worry about, and we thank him for his service. There was obviously a ramshackle quality to the whole affair Sunday, but lots to like for this huge crowd assembled for the weird day. They were particularly pleasant about young Cam Eden's first major-league hit (he is a speedy guy! he might well be on the playoff roster because of it!).  

So here we are. We made it. And although we did not win the ninety games that, for whatever reason, is the only way I can truly be happy about baseball (this is not really true, but is truer than is in any sense reasonable), we did slightly outperform the FanGraphs model that had us at eighty-eight wins, as you will almost certainly recall without checking. I'm very pleased that we're off to Minnesota, rather than to Tampa, not because I don't think we can hang with the Rays (the Rays are actually not quite the Rays anymore, which probably means this is the year they finally win the whole thing), but because I have always been fond of the Twins, and this fondness has only grown in recent years (relatively speaking) once they moved into their absolutely lovely new ballpark. Though I miss the billowing pines (松濤, shōtō, pine waves) that have since been replaced by an also-good living wall, it is still a top ballpark in either league, æsthetically. Unfortunately, the Twins starting pitching is really very good, especially their top two of Pablo Lopez and Sonny Gray (simply outstanding starting pitcher names, especially in tandem like that), and if things go their way even a little, we won't even get a look at their third starter. The Blue Jays are going with Kevin Gausman for game one, obviously, and have José Berrios slotted in behind him, with Chris Bassitt scheduled for game three, should it come to be. I think I like that order after Gausman? Probably no bad calls here, but I do think I like the idea of Bassitt (aka the Mound Hound) in the potentially decisive game three over even Berrios, and if one were to counter "but we might not even get to a game three!" I would counter-counter thus: brother, if we do not win when Kevin Gausman pitches, I will be so sad that it will all be of little consequence. And Gausman actually looked shaky against the Twins this year! They were laying of the splitter! It was awful! 

But before I descend too deeply into cares, I would like to say that whatever happens from here on out, this season has really been a lot of fun, and, to me, is an unqualified success already. And this whole era of Blue Jays baseball, for that matter, the Bo/Vladdy period, is already a success, and one of the best times there has ever been to be a Blue Jays fan (to me, it has honestly been the most fun). I would of course welcome an AL pennant, or a World Series championship! Please do not mistake me! But I am old enough that it is difficult to take anything other than the long view: the Blue Jays have played forty-seven seasons (only a few short seasons more than my own), and have made the postseason ten times; it is worth remembering that three of those ten times have occurred over the last four years (and the team that missed, the ninety-one-win 2021 team that mashed, was maybe the best of the bunch). This has been, and continues to be, a great time for Blue Jays baseball. And the way this team is put together, there's every reason to expect we'll be good for a few more summers, too. Whether or not things turn out the way we'd like this fall, or any fall, who knows? But it really is the summers that count.  

KS  

Saturday, September 30, 2023

2023 Game-One-Hundred-Sixty-One: Rays 7, Blue Jays 5 (F/10)

 

hey thanks all the same man

Although Hyun-Jin Ryu's (possible? probable?) last start as a Toronto Blue Jay did not go disastrously—two runs through three innings is not the end of the world, right?—John Schneider was not messing around, especially given the quality of contact (it was relatively high!), and went to Trevor Richards early. Richards, who has been a huge part of the bullpen this season, made a decent pitch to Harold Ramirez that somehow ended up just over the left-field wall for a two-run shot that evened the score at four (ah phooey) after Varsho had homered in the third and the Blue Jays had cobbled together a three-run fourth (Kirk single, Keirmaier walk, Chapman out on a nice play by Josh Lowe, a booted ball on a Merrifield dribbler, RBI singles from Varsho and Springer, the rare Biggio called strike three, and then Vladdy called out on strikes with two runners on to end the inning—could have used those extra runs!). The Rays, whose playoff position is unchanged and unchangeable, came into this one planning to give all of their high-leverage guys an inning or so, and then to rest them both Sunday and (of course) Monday ahead of Tuesday's first Wild Card game in Tampa (or I suppose St. Petersburg), so it was tough sledding from there. I liked literally every one of John Schneider's moves in this game, especially his decision to use Romano for the eighth and Hicks for the ninth (as speculated upon recently within these very electronic pages! the ones of this weblog!), but the Rays are a really good team who played a really good game and got the best of us. It would have been great if Biggio could have cashed in that Springer double in the bottom of the ninth, though! A walk-off clincher! But no.

There was no way around it, at least not that I could see, but it is something of a shame that we burned the back-end of our bullpen trying to nail this one down, and so now head into tomorrow's perhaps season-defining game with Kevin Gausman (who we would rather save for Tuesday! should we be playing Tuesday!) backed by just whoever didn't totally overdo it today (Chad Green did not appear, I suppose, and Yimi, as nails as ever you could hope, got through his inning on like five pitches—so that's the eighth and ninth covered, maybe!). Of course, should the Mariners lose to Texas tonight, the only thing in question tomorrow will be the Blue Jays' potential ninetieth win, and while that is an enormous deal to me personally, I could accept making it a Bowden Francis/Jay Jackson sort of affair instead of running our ace out there in pursuit of my own very particular enjoyment. Actually, let's look in live (at this, the moment of composition) to see how things are going in Seattle: oh okay it is 4-0 Rangers through three! That's fairly good! It is probably worth noting, though, that the Rangers bullpen is legitimately appalling, both morally (in that it has Aroldis Chapman), but also in terms of getting outs, so this one is a long way from over. Will I be staying up too late to attend to it? Not as late as you might think! Because of this game's much more reasonable start-time than you might expect! The walk-off this afternoon would have really been something to see, and a fitting end to today's tense and honestly fantastic game, but at this point I will gladly settle for some Saturday night anticlimax (what a sport!). 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Sixty: Blue Jays 11, Rays 4

 

hey bro good job bro thanks bro you too bro

So merry were the forty-two-thousand-or-so in attendance on this night—cheered, as they were, by home runs from Kirk, Belt, and Chapman; a four-for-five night from Bo; and Yusei Kikuchi pitching at, well, not quite at Maximum Kooch, but certainly at Kooch Sufficient—that they greeted youngster Cam Eden's MLB-début at-bat with a standing ovation, and offered him very much the same as he walked back to the third-base dugout having struck out. That was honestly pretty wild! The Rays, in keeping with their surprisingly un-Rays play of a week ago, committed three errors on the night, some of them so ghastly that you felt worse for the player involved (in this case the likeable Manuel Margot) than you felt glad about the few extra bases you'd picked up (Cavan Biggio's little-league home run tests the limits of this phenomenon, obviously). This rollicking triumph meant the Blue Jays needed only a Mariners loss later in the evening to finalize their playoff status (if not position), but it did not come, not even a little: J. P. Crawford, a night after walking the Rangers off, opted this time for a grand slam in a laugher, instead. So it goes! This does set the stage nicely, though, for what will likely be the last start of Hyun-Jin Ryu's career as a Blue Jay, and before that happens, I would like to say once more the thing that I always say about Hyun-Jin Ryu, which is that he is my favourite pitcher to watch in Blue Jays history, more than Steib or Hentgen or Clemens or even Halladay (whose 2003 Cy Young season I saw first-hand, start to finish). An elite, precision junkballer operating in an era of unprecedently high velocity is an inherently charismatic thing, but watching Ryu has been an even greater pleasure than that description would suggest. And let us not forget that Ryu's genuinely surprising decision to sign in Toronto (or was it, to the extent that Ryu moved from the home of one of North America's largest Korean communities to another such place? who can say?) was the first indication that this might be a place to play again. When that four-year deal was signed, the fourth year was really what made it happen: nobody else was offering it to a pitcher Ryu's age, and as a fan, you just accepted that an expensive fourth season that probably wouldn't hold much on-field value was simply part of the price to paid if you wanted to land a front-of-the-rotation free-agent starting pitcher as a team that hadn't won in a while. But here he is, working his way back a year after Tommy John surgery, delivering not just quality innings but quality innings utterly vital to the Blue Jays position in this race down the stretch; it's just a remarkable thing. For me, the lasting image of Hyun-Jin Ryu will be that of the big man walking off the field like nothing at all had happened when what had in fact just happened was that absolutely peak Aaron Judge, of all people, had been put so badly off balance by this craftiest of lefties that he had swung through an 88MPH fastball for strike three. On the specific day I am thinking of, I am absolutely certain that we had a big bowl of Timbits before us (we ate too many [it was mostly me]). 

One more win!    

KS

Friday, September 29, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Nine: Blue Jays 6, Yankees 0

 

the æstheticL: is houndwave

Chris Bassit struck out Aaron Judge in the eighth to end a terrific start and, no less radly, hit precisely two-hundred innings on the season. He seemed pretty emotional about it afterwards, and why not? It's a really big deal! The amount of innings the Blue Jays have gotten out of their starters this year has been remarkable, with four starters making thirty starts, and I think only seven starters pitching at all this year? The Blue Jays seem likely to finish with the second-best ERA in all of baseball, despite Opening-Day-starter Alek Manoah experiencing, let us say, several difficulties. Home runs from Varsho, Belt, and Matt Chapman (his first since August 4th) were more than enough! I stayed up late after this one to catch the end of the Mariners/Rangers games, and even the Blue Jays really could have used a Seattle loss, it was hard not to enjoy an Aroldis Chapman meltdown (as he is a really bad guy, though this is rarely discussed anymore) and a J.P. Crawford walkoff (as he is a wonderful baseball player just to, like, behold). 

Two wins and we're in! Or if any number of other scenarios play out as well! But even so! 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Eight: Yankees 6, Blue Jays 0

well fine

Surprising no one, Aaron Judge homered twice, and Gerrit Cole pitched a complete-game shutout to wrap up not just the AL Cy Young, but almost certainly every first-place vote for that award. We still need a couple wins, guys! I know that it remains a remote mathematical possibility that we can make the playoffs with just the eighty-seven we have currently but I still think we should try for more (if for no other reason than that ninety-win seasons are the playoffs of my heart; I love a ninety-win season [probably more than is sensible or appropriate {the actual playoffs I could honestly almost take or leave}]). 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Seven: Yankees 2, Blue Jays 0

 

Bo Bichette encounters a pregame quantum filament

In fairness to Vladdy, who watched a called strike three sail by with two outs and the bases loaded in the third, it was a ball outside, just off the plate. But in fairness to home plate umpire Malachi Moore (tremendous name, obviously), that's the toughest pitch to see, and with Michael King on the mound—a guy who lives on the corners, and paints them with regularity—he's going to get a lot of those calls. I'm not upset about it! It's a shame, though, that the Blue Jays bats couldn't get anything going at all after that, and wasted another wonderful Kevin Gausman start (7IP, 0ER, 3H, 5K, 2BB). It's also concerning that Romano got touched again, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings any if they decided Jordan Hicks should take the ninth the rest of the way? I see no real chance of that happening, but it is for sure a thought I have had! This makes two games out of the last four that Romano has given up runs in the ninth, and I cannot help but notice that had those two losses been wins, we'd pretty much have a playoff spot locked down already . . . but we do need to score; that also numbers among our needs. 

KS 

Monday, September 25, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Six: Blue Jays 9, Rays 5

 

send him send him send him

The George Springer game! Even had he not hit a three-run inside-the-park home run in the top of the third inning, the outfield assist (threw a dude out at second by a mile) and diving catch in the bottom half would have made it a pretty solid day for our guy. What a huge difference the move to right field has been: rather than playing an okay centre field, and DHing kind of a lot to nurse the injuries picked up from flinging himself around out there (for better or worse, the man is a gamer), Springer plays a great (if headlong) right, and stays healthy enough to steal twenty bases or so. I will take that every time! Two homers from Vladdy (his first two-homer game of the year, a little sadly), including a back-to-back situation with Bo in the ninth (somehow the first time those two have ever done that) made for just a supremely merry day. And to think I nearly turned the game off when Kikuchi had a rough first and we went down two early! Fortunately my Sunday afternoon plans did not exceed puttering about with light chores, so keeping the game on came quite naturally despite a momentary misgiving. I can't remember feeling this good after three games at the Trop ever, though I'm sure we must have swept them there once in like 2003 or something. A four-and-two road trip through New York and Tampa Bay is always to be welcomed, and would have stood us in fairly good stead regardless of what else happened around the league this weekend, but the Rangers swept the Mariners (that's good) while the one-hundred-loss Royals swept the Astros (that's great!), which is not just a favourable but in fact a literally perfect outcome. A 87-69 record is a really good thing to have with six games left in the season, and while three more wins (wouldn't ninety be tidy? I am so into ninety-win seasons) would guarantee us a spot regardless of what else happens, two would probably do it, and honestly we might make it with just one more, given the way things are unfolding. The lessons of 1987 loom large these many years later, and I cannot in heart rule out an utter, calamitous collapse. So let's just get out there and make it ninety, boys, and wrap it up before the weekend, even, so we can rest Gausman (aka Gaus Gossage [nobody says this {yet}]) for game one-sixty-two, and run out just the absolute wildest eight-man bullpen day any of us have ever seen.

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Five: Rays 7, Blue Jays 6

 

a classic "can't win 'em all" moment that barely even stung

No, Jordan Romano couldn't quite seal the deal in the ninth (though he would have been out of the inning had a double-play call not been [quite rightly] overturned). But it is remarkable that it even got that far: down 4-0 after the first inning, and 5-0 soon enough thereafter on the three (three!) home runs allowed by Hyun-Jin Ryu (tying a career high for that steadiest of guys), there was no reason to expect much from the rest of this one. These Rays, while still excellent, are not quite the Rays you remember, though: their bullpen is not a true strength, and they are prone to both defensive and baserunning miscues. They are capable of messing up! And they sure did, with two down in the sixth, as things unfolded thus(ly): Keirmaier safe on a throwing error, Tyler Heineman to first on a strike-three wild-pitch (oops!), Springer double, Bo single, Vladdy single, Biggio double. You will forgive me, I hope, for posting specific rally details two games in a row, but stringing hits together for big innings has not really been a defining feature of this 2023 Blue Jays season, and I am ready to embrace it! I'm going to do it again for the eighth, too, because this one was really something: Espinal double (the speedy Cam Eden on for Espinal), Springer groundout that moves the runner to third, wild pitch to score Eden, Vladdy walk, Chapman hit by a pitch (a fastball this time that looked brutal, very much last night's breaking ball), and a walk to Whit to force in another run. What a gift! I'm telling you, these Rays, even though they walked us off in the ninth, these Rays are beatable, even in the Trop, even by us

KS   

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Four: Blue Jays 6, Rays 2

 

more like Daulton Varshow

Through the first five (and a third!) innings, it sure looked as though we were going to get Tyler Glasnowed every bit as much as we'd been Gerrit Coled the night before. But things took a real turn from there: George Springer singled and stole second, Bo singled, Vladdy walked, Kirk walked (and it was honestly a beauty of a walk), Biggio walked (heck of an eye as always), Matt Chapman was hit by a pitch about as willingly as one can be without the umpire waving the whole business off, and Varsho singled. Before you know it, that's a four-run inning! Throw in a Varsho homer in the ninth and a couple doubles (Merrifield, Espinal), and we're good to go. Daulton Varsho, let it be known, has been the most valuable fielder in baseball this season by Defensive Runs Saved, and this while playing mostly left field, relieving Kevin Keirmaier only sporadically (Varsho will probably be our everyday centre fielder next year, and could easily win a Gold Glove). When he's not hitting, Varsho still contributes significantly as a fielder and a baserunner; when he is hitting, he's among, like, the very most useful baseball players there can be. And he's still pretty new! He'll be around for years! Also around for years: Chris Bassitt, who struck out eight and walked nary a dude pitching into the seventh, and Jordan Romano, who picked up the save (Jordan Hicks, who struck out all three batters he faced, will probably go make an awful lot of money somewhere the second the season ends, and fair play to him). And if all this wasn't enough, the Home Hardware Out-of-Town Scoreboard (it will never be the St. Louis Bar and Grill Out-of-Town scoreboard to me; I was forged in the fires of the Fan590 in the slim radio era) was exceptionally kind to us. The Trop is probably still cursed but this was great! 

KS  

Friday, September 22, 2023

Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Three: Yankees 5, Blue Jays 3

 

I mean, what can you even say

Despite the fairly convincing Steiner Math of my previous post, the Blue Jays did not in fact beat Gerrit Cole, who took a perfect game into the sixth, didn't walk a soul all night, and struck out nine in his two-hit, eight-inning, AL Cy Young-clinching performance (seriously, he could get shelled in his final start and it wouldn't matter a lick). So it goes, I suppose, as Gerrit Cole is a genetic freak, and not normal. Far worse than the loss itself (which didn't even sting, honestly; this one was a true "can't win 'em all"), I made the mistake of leaving the radio on in the driveway for a minute or two after the actual game ended, which meant Blair and Barker and Blue Jays Talk, and even before any calls came in it was beyond absurd: the Blue Jays will be in real trouble in the playoffs, Barker declared with an almost slobbering bluster, because of their inability to hit pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole; and in the playoffs, that's what you're going to see, pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole! Dude, how? How are you going to see pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole in the playoffs if there are literally no other pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole (this is essentially the whole point of Gerrit Cole), and he himself, actual Gerrit Cole, is absolutely not going to be in the playoffs? I am as free of sports-talk drivel as anyone who likes baseball as much as I do can ever hope to be, honestly, like I am almost never around it, and yet I still regret every single second of it I encounter. It defies parody (probably; I haven't tried). I will not speak of it again.

Thus ends the Blue Jays fairly delicious five-game winning streak. What a time it has been! And here's where it leaves us, with just nine games to play: the good news is that we're still in WC2 by half a game over both Seattle and Texas, and we have the exact same 85-68 record as Houston, over whom we hold the tiebreaker. The bad news is that we're off to the Trop for three against the Rays (oh no). But the good news beyond all of that is that starting today, one of the three teams against whom the Blue Jays are competing for a WC spot—Houston, Seattle, Texas—absolutely and certainly and without question will lose every day for the rest of the season. They cannot help but do; it is inescapable; it is schedule-inescapable. And so every day that the Blue Jays win, they will gain a full game in the standings relative to one of those three; every day that they lose, they will not lose ground against at least one of those three. This sets up about as well as it could, given that the Blue Jays have six games remaining against Tampa, and that they will almost certainly see Gerrit Cole again in the final Yankees series. Given those fairly awful things, we're looking good!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Two: Blue Jays 6, Yankees 1

 

tee hee hee

This one felt much closer than the final score might suggest, as the Blue Jays scratched out just the one run against reliever-turned-starter Michael King over the course of his seven innings of thirteen-strikeout, no-walk, somewhat upsetting baseball. But Kevin Gausman was great, too, and benefited significantly from home-plate umpire Lance Barrett's preposterously low strike zone. That strike zone paired with Gausman's splitter (among the best pitches in either league) would be one thing, but add in Alejandro Kirk's remarkable ability to frame low strikes, and Aaron Boone stood no real chance of not getting run in the second inning (I mention this because of how it totally happened). But the Yankees bullpen is really not very good, and more or less handed the Blue Jays five runs, whereas the Blue Jays bullpen is simply excellent (the best we've had since the early nineties, I think? I would have to check that statistically, but emotionally there is no question) and allowed just the one (it's okay, Erik Swanson; you've had a tough second half, buddy). And that's five wins in a row! This is all going great! Gerrit Cole pitches tomorrow, though, which is a real problem because he's the obvious AL Cy Young this year to such an extent that it's hard to see who else could even get first-place votes. Yet José Berrios, who we've got due up tomorrow, has an ERA only like 0.6 runs higher, and we don't expect either pitcher to pitch a complete game, so let's say they both go seven: that'd work out to a difference of less than half a run between them tomorrow! And our bullpen is definitely more than half a run better than this slopshow the Yankees are running out there, right? I am not even kidding when I say that I have legitimately convinced myself that not only can we beat Gerrit Cole, but that it won't even necessarily be that hard.  

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty-One: Blue Jays 7, Yankees 1

 

Bo, seen here flowing

It's hard not to wonder if this Yankee-stadium trouncing—one that offered homers from George Springer (a leadoff dinger! on his birthday!), Alejandro Kirk (first one since July! [yikes]), and Bo (who started a nice double play too), all while Yusei Kikuchi dealt at levels at or near Maximum Kooch—might end up the emotional high point of the season? Like if things don't super work out the rest of the way? Because brother, this one was merry. The only trouble, really, if you could call it that, is that Kukuchi had to leave the game after five innings because of low-key trap-cramping, but he later suggested that the reason he cramped up is that he'd only slept eleven hours the night before, rather than his customary thirteen or fourteen (when he is awake more than that, he explained, he thinks about baseball too much). So even that, in the end, was pretty good? I will note here too that my scoreboard watching has escalated to the point where I am watching actual non-Blue Jays baseball games (or parts thereof), and I would characterize watching baseball in which one is not immediately, directly emotionally overinvested as quite pleasant to do! It's easy to forget that!      

KS 

Sunday, September 17, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifty: Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 2

 

Vladdy is right to have run towards Chappy instead of Biggio 
(Chappy has had a rough go and needs it more)

It came as a drag, but not exactly a surprise when Rafael Devers, down to Boston's last strike in the top of the ninth, lined a fastball Erik Swanson had thrown exactly where it should have been (just above the zone) over the left-field fence for a game-tying solo home run. He's always like that. And so it fell to Cavan Biggio, whose second-half has really been something (last I saw, his OBP was north of .400 since the break), to hit a tenth-inning single and score the winning run on a double Matt Chapman ripped off the wall soon thereafter. And so it's a sweep! How do you like that! Pretty well I bet! Hyun-Jin Ryu allowed so many baserunners in his (nearly) five innings, but remained characteristically cool as he worked his way out every time, supported in this cause by some nifty defense (a diving grab in right by Biggio, a head's-up throw home by Bo so that Kirk might tag out the runner busting home from third on the contact play [it was Devers! we got him! once!]). Yimi and Chad Green got some big outs in relief, and though the enigmatic Genesis Cabrera struggled, it must also be said that he stopped things well short of disaster. With Hicks and Romano both/each coming off of back-to-back appearances, it fell to Erik Swanson to both blow the save (it actually shouldn't even count if it's Devers) and, much more crucially, pick up the win. And just like that, not only is our season not finished after The Texas Sweep, but the Blue Jays somewhat stunningly sit in WC2! This took a couple of things breaking our way, of course: as twitter user "@glenjaminc" notes, "with Toronto's win and Texas's loss, that's ten straight games in Toronto's favor [all WC-relevant teams losing] since the sweep. Chances of that: ~ %0.09, or 1 in 1024." Stranger things have happened, but not stranger by much.

On to New York, then, to face a Yankees team that has won something like fifteen of their last twenty-one games since calling up some kids (good for the kids, I suppose). It's too late for the Yankees to actually make a run towards the playoffs, but it's not at all too late to mess up our own. We must remain vigilant, probably.

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Nine: Blue Jays 4, Red Sox 3 (F/13)

 

not pictured (and yet crucial): Infield-hit Whit

Between Vladdy's third home run in as many days to put the Blue Jays on the board in the seventh, and Vladdy's homeward scurry on Whit Merrifield's swinging bunt of an infield single to win it the thirteenth (the thirteenth!), an awful lot happened, some of it baffling, much of it thrilling. The emotional highpoints, from the perspective of a Blue Jays partisan, were surely Daulton Varsho's ninth-inning triple lined directly at and low-key (yet disastrously) misplayed by promising Red Sox centre-fielder Ceddanne Rafaela, scoring Cavan Biggio to send the game into extra innings; and, once there, Jordan Romano's pair of hitless innings (the only runner to reach was the intentionally-walked Rafael Devers, and honestly they should probably just do that four times a game [emotionally]). Other things ruled as well! And yet these happenings stood out amidst the ruling. What's more, everybody else keeps losing! Seattle, Texas, Houston—you name it! It's probably more important that Houston lose than anybody else, actually, as that is the lone relevant team the Blue Jays actually hold a tiebreaker over. If the Blue Jays finish with the same record as the Astros, they are quite simply in, regardless of what happens with the Mariners and/or Rangers. But nobody is talking about this! At least not on the broadcasts! Or maybe they are but I missed it! This game was over four hours long and there were for sure parts I did not see!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Eight: Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 0

 

Vladdy: got another one

Seven shutout innings from José Berríos (La Makina, they whispered), a three-run blast from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Go Vladdy, they exhorted), and one-two-three innings from both Hicks and Romano (up the Jordans, no one said, or would ever say), and that's about the size of it! Maybe Blue Jays baseball could be this simple? For a while? Like maybe a couple weeks? Okay, Blue Jays? Let's? Play ball? 

KS 

Friday, September 15, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Seven: Rangers 9, Blue Jays 2

 

fair play to him

Hey: hey: at least it's over, right? Sure, the Blue Jays have been swept at home in a four-game September-series for the first time ever. And, yes, the Blue Jays minus-twenty-six run differential against the Rangers is their worst run differential in a four-game series in team history. And sure, beloved children's entertainer Raffi was indeed driven to dark reflections in reply to Hazel Mae tweets late into the night (it was much earlier in BC, I suppose). Only a fool would deny any of this. But maybe the weirdest thing about any of these strange and legitimately awful occurrences (in the baseball sense) is that they have somehow not ended the Blue Jays playoff hopes. With fifteen games to go, the Blue Jays find themselves a game-and-a-half behind the Mariners for WC3, two-and-a-half behind the Rangers for WC2 (having lost the season-series against both teams, you can effectively add a game with regard to each team). Got to admit I didn't see it coming! And yet, the Rangers and Mariners have seven games left against one another, which means there are seven days where the Blue Jays can game a full game on somebody with a win. You can't rule out that they might! At least a handful of times! It would seem that, gift-and-the-curse style(e), we are still in it, and it is likely to come down to the final weekend of the season. So I guess we'll just see. Red Sox in town for three! 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Six: Rangers 10, Blue Jays 0

 

absolutely

Sure, why not! If you're going to score naught but a single run on your five hits, you might as well give up ten runs! Give up twenty! A thousand! It's all the same! Yusei Kikuchi, who has limited home runs remarkably in the last little while, gave up a couple here, and was tagged for six runs in his five innings, but, again, what's the difference. A grim state of affairs! It is impossible to like this! 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Five: Rangers 6, Blue Jays 3

Hyun Jin Ryu: forlorn

It would be stolen valour for me to claim to have suffered through this one at all, as in truth I spent the evening teaching a well-received introductory judo class to a spirited group of young athletes instead, which is emotionally a very different situation. And yet it gave me no pleasure to catch the end of this one on the radio on the way home, as this result suggests pretty hard that we are going to have to win the next two to split the series.    

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Four: Rangers 10, Blue Jays 4

 

I too am haunted, Vladdy; I too (am [that])

With a score like this, one is inclined to say something like "10-4, good buddy!" except for how it is not good, and how the Texas Rangers are not my buddy (except for Marcus Semien, forever our pal). It was really the five-run seventh that was the difference here, you'd have to conclude, what with the grand slam yielded by the enigmatic Genesis Cabrera, but Chris Bassitt's five runs allowed in five-and-a-third didn't really start things off on the right foot, either. Not a great way to open a crucial four-game series!

KS

Monday, September 11, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Three: Blue Jays 5, Royals 2

 

call Vladdy both Strunk and White because he is demonstrating elements of style

The one-hundred-loss Royals have exactly two (2 [II{ii}]) players that are concerning at all: A) ultra-fleet shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who looks like he will end up with thirty home runs and forty-five stolen bases, give or take, in this, his second full major-league season (he drove in one of the two Royals runs Sunday with a ringing double [he scored the other one]), and 2) hard-throwing lefty Cole Ragans, who hadn't allowed a run since the middle of August, and who was totally cruising through five-and-two-thirds innings Sunday. But then Ragans, in a way that I at once welcomed and yet felt was no fun at all, came completely unglued after a stumbling wild pitch, and just lost himself out there: two more wild pitches followed consecutively, and before you knew it the Blue Jays had tied the game at two. Out of basic human empathy I hope Ragans is okay (emotionally, I mean [physically he seemed fine]); that was simply brutal in a way I have never quite seen before. The Blue Jays did not look back from there, as they say, and added a Keirmaier's home run and a couple more "insurance runs" which I welcomed hard once Jordan Romano's ninth got a little ticklish (it ended up fine!). 

And so the Blue Jays come out of this fifteen-game stretch against sub-.500 teams with a totally creditable record of 10-5, and, given the mixed returns from both the Texas Rangers and, as luck would have it, the Seattle Mariners, the Blue Jays return home for their big four-game series against Rangers not just in Wild Card 3, but having actually snuck into Wild Card 2. Who'd have thunk it! A split against the Rangers over these next four would probably be just fine, and anything more than that would put the Ranger is a really tough spot the rest of the way. This, I think, is probably what we should aim for? To do that? To them?

KS   

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-Two: Blue Jays 5, Royals 1

 

a cunning slide from the big man

Kevin Gausman can give up just two hits and a walk in eight terrific innings, and George Springer can have his first two-homer game of the whole season (so far! let's go!), but Vladdy will still be the star of the show, especially if he elects to utterly book it around the bases and score all the way from first on a Cavan Biggio double, which he totally did on this rad day. Even in a year where he has never really quite looked how you would hope Vladdy to look, exactly (home run derby aside, obviously), this is still very much his team, and it might come as a surprise to you (it did to me!) to be reminded that even with all of the recent call-ups from Buffalo, Vladdy is still the youngest player on the roster. This, to me, remains just wild.  

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty-One: Blue Jays 5, Royals 4

 

now pitching for the Blue Jays: Yusei Kikuchi but he's really tiny

A four-run seventh! That's one of the best kinds to have! And so much of it wouldn't have, had George Springer's two-strike, two-out "checked" swing been adjudged a swinging strike (its true identity). But, as it happened, Springer walked, Bo singled (hey he's back!), Vladdy ripped a double to the gap, Davis Schneider walked, and the super-clutch-thus-far Ernie Clement singled. Add that all up and you've got four! I felt great about it!

KS

Friday, September 8, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Forty: Oakland 5, Blue Jays 2

 

congratulations, Davis Schneider, on posting the highest OPS
in MLB history through one's first twenty games (seems good!)

Sweeps remain hard to do! Hyun-Jin Ryu did his part, but Trevor Richards ran into trouble, and the bats didn't have a whole lot happening. So it goes: two series wins on the road against two poor teams, and the Blue Jays, aided mightily by the solid play of the Houston Astros and the continued slide of the Texas Rangers, find themselves heading home all comfers/cozers (relatively speaking) back in good old Wild Card 3 (arguably the best of the three! you get to go to Minnesota! we have discussed this!) for the first time in kind of a while. Wouldn't it be lovely to be more than a half-game ahead, though, by the time the Rangers roll into town next week? A weekend series against the Royals makes that feel possible, but, at the same time, the Rangers will be playing these same Athletics we are just now leaving, so there may not be gains to be had? Then let us forestall losses! Or endeavour to! 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Nine: Blue Jays 7, Athletics 1

 

The Mound Hound

I'll take as many of these as you can give me, in that sense that I will forever welcome eight terrific innings from Chris Bassitt, and seven runs on ten hits from the bats of Springer, Kirk, Keirmaier et al. Great! But throughout this lopsided affair I found myself reflecting, time and again, on the sad way of things in Oakland in recent years, but especially this year. The sadness of it all was heightened somehow by Bark at the Ballpark night, with all kinds of good dogs in A's colours here and there amongst the several (but not that several) thousand fans scattered throughout the vast, awful stadium that used to be a vast, totally fine stadium before it was ruined by a football team that doesn't play there anymore. I don't know. It was all too much. 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Eight: Blue Jays 6, Athletics 5 (F/10)

 

the beloved Tony Kemp

Although I am of course pleased with another win on the strength of late-inning heroics from call-ups and role players (excuse me: rôle players), what stood out to me most in this one was Oakland's crafty deployment of the speedy Esteury Ruiz as a pinch-runner in in the DH spot (Ruiz promptly stole two bases, and it wasn't even all that close). This is precisely how I made use of his skills in my most recent Baseball Mogul save! I felt a kinship!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Seven: Blue Jays 7, Rockies 5

 

Vladdy got one (and felt characteristically certain of it)

"My god jays just beat the Rockies please," wrote one of my baseball correspondents as this sometimes-worrying but ultimately quite satisfying conclusion to our time in Colorado took shape. It took a couple of late runs manufactured by guys like McCoy, Clement, and Horowitz to get it done—not the first few to come to mind when you think of the 2023 Toronto Blue Jays, but hey: thanks guys!

KS


2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Six: Rockies 8, Blue Jays 7

 

max-effort Kuch

The Blue Jays put two across in the ninth, and got the tying run as far as third base, and yet it still felt doomed the whole time? Weird! There was much to overcome on this night, as Yusei Kikuchi was tagged for six runs—though, to be fair, only two were earned (the defense was . . . inexpert). It really would be swell to sweep teams that are as lowly as this year's lowly Rockies, but sweeps are tough; you have to be undisappointed when you are unable to sweep, or else you are going nearly the whole entire season disappointed, and that is way too long of a time to feel that way. 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Five: Blue Jays 13, Rockies 9

 

nice play, Davis Schneider

The final score here makes this one look a whole lot closer than it ever really was, and would have remained, had Chad Green not been just creamed for four runs in two-thirds of an inning in his first Major League appearance in really quite a long time. I bet John Schneider wasn't wild about bringing Jordan Romano in for a single, game-ending out, but Jordan Romano was probably fairly psyched about it (he certainly seemed psyched). Coors Field! The ball carries! Plus the park is gigantic so it is doubles and triples all over. Fun!

KS

Friday, September 1, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Four: Blue Jays 7, Nationals 0

 

okay see now "hey Kirky rip a double of the wall please"
is an appropriate thing to ask Alejandro Kirk to do

A welcome laugher! Nary a homer, either, as the Blue Jays put up their seven runs, which meant just a tonne of neat hits and the great fun of dashing around the bases: a two-run Alejandro Kirk double following a Davis Schneider/Vladimir Guerrero double-steal is just about as good as it gets! Chris Bassitt only struck out three, but allowed just three hits and a walk over his eight full innings, which obviously you will take every time. And so while it is not ideal to enter September outside of any (and indeed each) of the three wild-card spots, we do head to Colorado to play the lowly Rockies just two-and-a-half games behind the still-struggling Texas Rangers, who have a weekend series against the totally-decent Minnesota Twins. The Astros, who it would also be neat to catch, are a further game ahead, and play the completely finished Yankees, so probably no help there? Regardless, we've got the Rockies, the poor A's, and the Royals over the next nine, which makes this not just "go time", but, like, Mandelbaum-level "go time."     

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Three: Nationals 5, Blue Jays 4

 

Kirk himself is spotless as a lamb in all of this

It is not second-guessing to be like man oh man I do not understand why John Schneider did not pinch-run for DH Alejandro Kirk as he stood at third base with one out in the eighth inning of a two-run game in a wildcard playoff race as September draws near oh no he has been thrown out at the plate on a flyball to medium-depth CF; everybody was first guessing it! There is extensive evidence of this through both internet postings (timestamped) and the SMS text messages exchanged between pals (no less timestamped)! It was a close enough play (Kirk, ever hustling, is blameless in this) that literally any other player on the roster would have made it home safely! If Kirk had been catching, and pinch-running for him would have meant sliding Danny Jansen out of the DH spot, thus losing the DH spot the rest of the way, who cares? It's the eighth! You just pinch hit! But that isn't even what he had to think about; you can (and should!) always embrace the freedoms afforded by the DH: endless substitution with no defensive consequence! Schneider's post-game explanation that he would have pinch-run for Kirk had they been trailing not by two but by just one (what?) but that he needed to keep Kirk's bat in the lineup in case he came up again (like in the eleventh?) was just brutal. Pushing across a single run in a ninth-inning that the Nats seemed content to totally just hand to us (bases loaded, nobody out) was even worse. That's two out of three games with season-worst vibes, and the teams we need to catch are pulling away. The realm harshens by the day!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-Two: Blue Jays 6, Nationals 3

 

pleased: to have doubled

My keen analytics suggest that the four-run second inning was the key in this one, and, further, that Vladdy's two-run double was itself key within that selfsame four-run second. Kevin Gausman's serviceable five-innings and a clean run from Richards, Cabrera, and Hicks didn't hurt either! Have the vibes been totally restored from Sunday afternoon's utter vibes debacle? Probably not, and yet you can call me a Buffalo Bisons starting pitcher being taken out of the game because I am minorly relieved (thank you).

KS

Sunday, August 27, 2023

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-One: Guardians 10, Blue Jays 7 (F/11)

 

this photo suggests Jansen was even more out than I perceived in real time
(and honestly he seemed pretty out even then [not his fault])

A legitimately crushing loss! This is true of pretty much all extra-inning ones, I suppose, but this one really did feel especially bad. After Yusei Kikuchi battled through a tough start to keep the Blue Jays within striking distance, as Buck Martinez noted, they struck: Davis Schneider homered again, but after the enigmatic Genesis Cabrera and Jordon Hicks held the line through the seventh, Tim Mazya could not in the eighth, yielding a pair of runs. No worry! Schneider will double in the bottom half, Varsho will drive in the run, and after Jordan Romano gets five huge outs, we'll win it in the bottom of the ninth after Danny Jansen hits a ringing lead-off double to get things started! Ah, but no: Biggio's bunt will bounce towards first, rather than third, and Jansen, who had not been pinch-run for (had they used the whole bench already, maybe? with Bichette and Chapman both leaving the game, maybe so . . .), will be tagged out on a nice play from Calhoun to the great José Ramirez. And the tenth won't be a whole lot of fun either, despite Yimi Garcia coming through huge again: Belt, Vladdy, and Springer will each, in their turn, leave Santiago Espinal very much stranded on second base, where he began. In the end, Jay Jackson will give up four in the eleventh, but it was the bats that lost this one, first (and most egregiously) in the ninth, and then (less egregiously but it was still pretty bad) in the tenth. Dreadful, awful stuff.

So where does this leave us? As I noted in a textual message to my pal Jordan, two-and-a-half games back is not an insurmountable situation with thirty-one games to play, especially not with Houston still not looking like the team they were last year, and with the Rangers having recently dropped eight straight (of the Mariners, winners of ten of their last eleven, we shall not speak). The Blue Jays' next twelve games are against teams well under .500, and then they play the Rangers, a scuffling team that they're chasing, for four at home (including a Loonie Dogs night). When you look at it somewhat dispassionately, this all remains entirely possible, and not much has to even go all that exceptionally well in order to put us very much where we would like to be (I will not say "need" to be, as this is a very clear besoins vs désires situation). But just in terms of vibes—on the level of vibes alone—this one felt like we're through. My sincere hope, of course, is that I am just totally mistaken with regard to the vibes, but even the most optimistic among us (which could very well be me!) must have been given pause be the true debacle of these supper-hour Sunday innings. 

KS