Mariners 8, Blue Jays 7 in an almost unspeakable bullpen shit show

I am of course not saying he never will be, but Travis Snider isn't any good yet.

Just the worst thing ever, is basically what happened last night, and I don't even really want to talk about it that much. In the aftermath of this epic bullpen collapse -- the internet aftermath, anyway -- there has been much second guessing of Blue Jays manager John Farrell, and that's totally fair: what was "Don't Ask" Dotel doing out there against all those lefties, and what what what was Farrell doing putting the winning run on base with an intentional walk with two outs in the bottom of the ninth? How does that even occur to you as thing that could conceivably be done by anyone ever, let alone actually seem like a good idea long enough for you to actually articulate it and then communicate it to other people using language or gesture? It's baffling.


And yet what was most galling was not the strange and pretty much indefensible managing; it was the inability of anybody to get anybody out in the eighth inning. I don't know that I've ever personally seen three consecutive bases-loaded walks at any level of baseball. If it wasn't for a nicely turned inning-ending double play started by Nix (who has been a pleasant surprise, to say the least) and ultimately scooped out of the dirt by Lind at first (also a pleasant surprise: Adam Lind, pickin' machine), there's every reason to believe that the eighth inning would still be going on. (But even that play, you've almost got to put that on Mariner's catcher Miguel Olivo, who ended five innings last night. Five.)  


Before last night, the Blue Jays bullpen has been outstanding, one of the best in baseball, and it was only two nights ago that they combined to throw nine shutout innings against the Angels. This is not a bad bullpen, and they'll be fine. And the Blue Jays had no business being up 7-0 against Felix Hernandez to begin with, because, for starters, Felix Hernandez is awesome, and secondly, Jesse Litsch really didn't pitch all that well in his five scoreless innings, as odd as that sounds. And you can almost see what Farrell was thinking in the ninth, in that Luis Rodriguez should have been a really easy out, and there was no way to anticipate that he would foul-off six straight two-strike pitches before ripping one to the wall. But a friend of mine emailed this morning to say that god willing, that will be the worst Jays loss all year, and although I'm sure this was not his intention, all I could think was my god, what if it isn't? 


KS