Blue Jays 4, Tigers 2: Playoffs.

You know what he's throwin'.

The part of me that is wrong and unfair was about to say that Kyle Drabek is still walking pretty much everybody, but the part of me that is decent and just intervened and pointed out that it is kind of jerk move to say "still" about a guy who is twenty-three and has started but twelve games in his young career. So instead I will say that Drabek walked six more last night, but add that his ability to battle back out of pretty awful situations -- and let's say it is an ability, rather than just a thing that is happening -- saw him through seven innings of three-hit, one-run baseball last night. Was smoke thrown? Intermittently, yes. It was hardly his best start in terms of command and control, but one run over seven is pretty rad when you don't have your best stuff. The Tigers' Max Scherzer kind of had an odd outing, too: eight hits over seven innings and just the one run, an unearned one at that? Strange game.


After Drabek worked his way out of what could have been a pretty disastrous first -- bases loaded, nobody out, Miguel Cabrera at the dish -- allowing only one run, there wasn't any scoring until the Blue Jays eked out a run in the seventh and then tacked on a couple in the eighth. The biggest blow in the eighth was the Aaron Hill double, which was like, dang, Aaron Hill, I forgot about you, girl. Remember how it looked like we were set at second base for the foreseeable future with a perennial All-Star flashing the leather and hitting mad dingers? Instead we have a guy whose team options are about to be not picked up with extreme prejudice. It is saddening. 


Anyway, Frank Francisco did his best to blow it in the ninth, giving up a pretty serious home run to Jhonny Peralta (way to spell out there, Jhonny), a walk, a fly ball to left that would have gone out of literally any other park, and a line drive to Jose Bautista to end it.


Speaking of Jose Bautista, let's! Did anybody else notice the Dave Cameron article that went up at Fangraphs yesterday, the one called "Jose Bautista Is A Massive Bargain"? Totally worth a read, if that was something that you did not already know and appreciate. Cameron concludes:


 "Combined with dumping the Vernon Wells contract, it’s probably fair to say that Anthopolous created something like $150 million in surplus value for his club this winter. I doubt any GM has ever had a better off-season than than the one the Blue Jays young GM just had."


I'm not even going to comment on that. 


I will note, tough, that after last night's relatively modest 2-5, this is where Jose Bautista stands right now: .370/.516/.849/1.365 with 16 HR and 35 BB against 19K. All of that leads the league, except for the strikeouts (he's tied for 94th). He is also now a 4.0WAR player on the season. It is May 17th.


And hey, three-way tie for second in the AL East! Three games out of first, and only a game back for the wild card! And you're always exactly how good you look during a six-game winning streak, right? 


KS