2021 Game Twenty-Three: Nationals 8, Blue Jays 2

 

I can't even be mad, these guys seem pretty cool.

Coming off of the huge high of Vladdy's three-homer game, it would have been better if Steven Matz hadn't gotten shelled in his first less-than-excellent start of the year (not that five hits were probably going to get it done anyway [even if two of them are home runs from Bo Bichette and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.]) but to be honest I had streaming issues and we spent much of the evening doing our taxes, so my engagement was not such that I truly suffered.  

KS

2021 Game Twenty-Two: Blue Jays 9, Nationals 5

 

I'm not even sure which one this was.

I thought the story of the game was going to be that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the third grand slam of his young (indeed yung) career off of no less of a guy than Max Scherzer -- who has allowed but three such slams (grand ones) throughout his totally-Hall-of-Fameable career -- to bring the Blue Jays back from the three solo home runs allowed early by Thornton and Milone (bullpen day!). I was also ready to remark on Cavan Biggio maybe getting it going a little bit, with a nice bunt single against the shift, and a couple hard hit balls (and a little luck!) en route to a really nice 3-3 day with a sac fly, too. Alexander Kirk had some catlike moments behind the plate I was going to bring up. And I was for sure going to note that Nationals shortstop and leadoff-hitter Trea Turner hit two home runs, the fist of which came on an 0-2 pitch (just an egregious hanger, Thornton was like goll-ee I would like that one back). But instead Vladdy ended up hitting three last night, and drove in seven runs, and that has sort of become the totality of what happened. To my great surprise, it turns out Vladimir Guerrero père never hit three in a game -- would you have believed that? I may not have! As I have mentioned more than once, I was lucky enough to have been at the SkyDome September 25, 2003, when Carlos Delgado hit four, and while this was not that, it does not feel like much less than that, either, in all honesty. Kaitlyn McGrath was not alone, I don't think, in expressing on Twitter last night how much she wished this could have happened in Toronto, with fans tossing there hats onto the field, but so it goes. In closing, here's a picture that was making the rounds again last night, and delights anew each time it does. What a game! 

KS

UPDATE: Ben Wagner notes that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Sr. both have two home runs off Max Scherzer! That's wild! 

père et fils

El béisbol es un deporte

de maravillosos altibajos

y oscuros mínimos.

2021 Game Twenty-One: Blue Jays 1, Rays 0

 

There's something wrong: with his butt.

Had I been asked to set the over/under on how many 1-0 games the Toronto Blue Jays would win, or even be involved in, throughout the entirety of the 2021 Major League Baseball season, I would have without pause set it at zero, and then when you patiently explained to me that this is not at all how this works, I would have said zero once more, but this time with emphasis, like zero. And yet here we are! The Blue Jays were getting no-hit until all of a sudden they weren't: singles from Semien, Gurriel, and Santiago Espinal (alright!) and there you go, there's the only run it turned out we needed. Hyun-Jin Ryu was dealing, but dealt no further than the fourth, as he suffered what has since been characterized as a "minor right glute strain" but to refer to anything involving Hyun-Jin Ryu's considerable glute as "minor" is in my view not only inaccurate but dangerously trivializing. Ryu himself has said he doesn't even consider this an injury, but just, like, a thing, and he shouldn't miss any time at all. Here's hoping! The bullpen went Mayza, Chatwood, Borucki, Phelps, and Dolis, and the only hits were a pair off Mayza, and the only walk came from Phelps. The bullpen continues to be just terrific, and the Blue Jays have won a series in Tampa! This does not happen often! Up next: some interleague, which should bring some interesting guys around. But not until Tuesday. Rest up till then!  

KS

2020 Game Twenty: Rays 5, Blue Jays 3

I like the vibe here but I am still upset.

I tuned into this one just in time to see Mike Brosseau's two-run shot off Robbie Ray tie it up in the sixth, and stuck with it long enough to see Cavan Biggio let a ground ball go right through his legs for a couple of runs in the eighth, and then watch Vladdy's on-base streak end at nineteen games to end the ninth with the tying run aboard. None of this was good! The Vladdy streak, though, brought forth this item of interest from the "Sportsnet Stats" Twitter account: 

"Longest on-base streak to begin a season in #WeAreBlueJays history

Jose Bautista (2014)   37

Vernon Wells (2006)   29

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (2021)  19

Alex Gonzalez (1997)   19"

José, sure, but go Vernon! But man that Alex Gonzalez one kind of comes out of nowhere, doesn't it? Noticeably absent is Carlos Delgado, who spent like the better part of his whole life on base (or circling them). Weird stat!

I must say that the Cavan Biggio situation really does concern me at this point, and for a couple of reasons: firstly, I would just like this to work out, obviously, but secondly, I refuse to give Keith Law the satisfaction of being right about Cavan Biggio; that could ruin the whole season for me. He's just so smug.

KS

2021 Game Nineteen: Blue Jays 6, Rays 3

 

You are looking the wrong way, Tyler Glasnow

A four-run first? With a three-run Marcus Semien dinger? Off Tyler Glasnow? What a start! When Lourdes Guriel Jr. threw Yandy Díaz out at the plate in the bottom half it felt like maybe this was the most fun inning we've had all year. Steven Matz is now 4-0 with a 2.31 ERA, if you are still inclined towards those measures, and the bullpen (Chatwood, Phelps, Mayza, my man Dolis) didn't allow a hit: all the Rays runs came on a three-run homer from Randy Arozarena, and I mean, what are you gonna do. Bo Bichette is still struggling in the field and it is an unfine sight to see. Bichette to third, Semien at  short, Bigio at second? Wouldn't that be a better infield without actually changing anything? I believe it was "Tao of Stieb" who suggested on Twitter that Bo Bichette, Centre Fielder is an intriguing notion, and I would totally totally agree with that were it not for the five-year, gazillion dollar contract recently signed by George Springer, whom it would be super cool to see healthy -- apparently he is feeling much better! And Téo, too. Things are looking up! Better days ahead!

KS

2021 Game Eighteen: Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 3

 

 I like that contrasting stitching a lot.

Bullpen day! In the absence of an able-bodied and rested starting pitcher, and with an off-day coming up, the Blue Jays went Thornton, Milone, Phelps, Borucki, Dolis, Mayza, and even Castro . . . and it totally worked! A mere three runs on ten hits! Great job everybody! I mean that's kind of a lot of hits! But three runs! Vladdy went two for three with a couple of walks, Bo, Grichuk and Marcus Semien each had two hits, and Alejandro Kirk drove in a big run with a pinch hit single in the ninth. What's not to like!

KS

2021 Game Seventeen: Red Sox 4, Blue Jays 2

 

Please be careful, Bo.

It is a pretty neat story that the home run Bo Bichette hit not just over the wall in left but all the way into Lansdowne street, and indeed rolled right over by the Gold's Gym where his parents first met. Pretty neat, right? But that aside, this was not a super fun game! Grichuk added his fifth homer, too, but the Blue Jays had only two other hits all night, and they kicked it around a little in the field, in the broader sense of "kicking it around" that encompasses not even getting there in the first place in order to literally kick it. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has arguably the coolest hair in the majors right now, and we all want him to succeed, but I've to gotta say that I wonder about some of these routes sometimes. Hyun-Jin Ryu wasn't awful or anything but you never expect him to give up four runs in five innings -- Xander Bogaerts' three-run home run was really the issue here, wasn't it? But then Payamps and Castro were great out of the bullpen. Pitching has not been the problem, nor has the fielding, really, as awkward as it has looked at times: the Blue Jays so far have allowed the fewest runs per game of any American League team, which is extraordinarily strange. But look:

I told you it was freaky.

It's the bats! Eventually George Springer and Téo will be in the line-up but for now it's mostly just Bo and of course Vladdy -- who made a rare appearance at third late in the game! Cherish these glimpses of third-base Vladdy! For they are fleeting.

KS

 

2021 Game Sixteen: Royals 2, Blue Jays 0

 

Again.

A pitcher's duel, right? And yet a super weird one: for the Royals, Brady Singer allowed just two hits and three walks in six scoreless innings, and Zimmer, Staumont, and Holland held the Blue Jays hitless the the rest of the way. Robbie Ray, though, probably pitched the worst scoreless five innings you're likely to see: four hits and six walks! But he kept working his way out of trouble. Mayza, Zeuch, and Roark came out of the pen for the Blue Jays and were, if we take a broad view, totally fine, it's just that Salvador Perez hit his second game-winning home run in as many days -- in the seventh, once again, but off Zeuch this time.  A scheduled off-day tomorrow; perhaps a time for reflection?

KS

2021 Games Fourteen and Fifteen: Blue Jays 5, Royals 1 (F/7), Royals 3, Blue Jays 2 (F/7)

 

Let's play two.

I like these seven-inning doubleheaders! And I have decided that I will pay no heed to objectors to this new practice who had not previously been regularly watching all eighteen (or more) innings of doubleheaders previously. Fourteen innings is totally enough baseball for one day, and you can call it however games you want, as far as I'm concerned. In the afternoon game, Steven Matz took a no-hitter into the sixth, and Rafael Dolis made things way more ticklish in the ninth than they needed to be, but Santiago Espinal bailed him out, starting a pretty slick double play that could maybe have been a triple play with a slower runner heading to first? For a second there Marcus Semien kind of looked like he might chuck it over to see? But thought better of it? (Hey the Joey Votto triple play today was really something!) Vladdy went two-for-three with another home run, and though I am not surprised, I am nevertheless very pleased! In the evening game, Vladdy got super fleet, dashing first to third on Rowdy Tellez's fairly sharply hit single and then tagging up on a fly ball to shallow right -- he went hard, the throw was up the line, and everything was great! Maybe the thrill of small ball went to everybody's heads, though, as before you know it, there were needless outs on the basepaths, and Jonathan Davis (who had homered in the afternoon) kept trying to bunt with two strikes even though the play (which had been on) had been called off, and strike-three on a bunted foul ball is just so dispiriting to see. Anyway, the Blue Jays definitely had their chances in the evening game, and you couldn't even mind it that much when Salvador Perez hit the walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh, since everybody likes that guy. He seems nice! 

KS

2021 Game Thirteen: Royals 7, Blue Jays 5

 

Many people are saying the ball has yet to land;
many people are saying this.

I think I played this one perfectly, honestly: I had the game on in the background as I marked some final papers (where did the semester go!), and so caught the part of the game wherein Anthony Kay, starting on short notice (times are tough), got dinged for five runs (four earned) but definitely deserved better, as the Blue Jays kicked the ball around pretty good, especially poor Cavan Biggio, who made two errors at third before leaving the game with some kind of hand problem. With the Blue Jays down 7-0 through five innings in a game with an hour-late start-time, that's a natural point at which to just bail and go on with your evening, right? However I kind of fell ill at that exact moment, and incapable of doing anything even marginally productive or even really especially diverting, I just laid down on the couch with the game on not with any sort of hope for its outcome, but only for a low-key distraction from my condition (I felt much better in the morning, by the way, but thank you for your concern), and Dan Shulman and Pat Tabler (who I seem to have finally made peace with?) performed this service admirably, for which I am grateful. But then! The Blue Jays came roaring back! A four-run sixth! Great job Joe Panik, and also Rowdy! And then Vladimir Guerrero's 456-foot home run in the seventh, as seen here! And then I totally fell asleep, and missed Bo popping up (the infield fly rule was in effect, or so I have read) and Vladdy striking out with the tying runs aboard in the ninth (an utterly indefensible strike two call from that at-bat has been well documented already, but hey). So I got all of the excitement of the Blue Jays drawing near, and none of the disappointment of the comeback falling just short, and as mentioned previously/parenthetically, I'm really much better today, so I feel like that all turned out about as well as could have for me personally, if not for the Blue Jays themselves. Also Vladdy is now "slashing" .413/.526/.674 and his fWAR is already at 1.0 in thirteen games. Let me check on Bo real quick, too: .302/.345/.604, good for 0.7 fWAR. That's good stuff! Plus I just like how those guys are friends.

Rained out tonight, but a double-header tomorrow! 

KS

2021 Game Twelve: Blue Jays 5, Yankees 4

 

The most æsthetic right-handed
swing in Blue Jays history, maybe? 

Bo Bichette's walk-off home run against the Yankees was actually a whole lot like his first home run of the day, in that they were both high fly balls to the opposite field that did not immediately look like they were going to be trouble, but with the wind blowing out to right they were totally trouble, and then everybody was super happy. I am so pleased that the story of the game ended up being Bo Bichette, because for the longest time it looked the it was going to be "runners left stranded," and that is always a drag. The Blue Jays have only ever beaten the Yankees with walk-off home runs four times: twice by Vernon Wells, which totally makes sense, as Vernon is top-five in both games played and home runs in team history, and now twice by Bo Bichette, which does not make much sense at all, as he has yet to play the equivalent of a single full season. And yet! Here's another good one, this time from the Blue Jays' Twitter: "Bo Bichette has tied Joe DiMaggio for the MOST multi-extra-base hit games (14) through his first 87 MLB games." We are all rightly nuts about how well Vladdy Jr. is hitting the ball right now (two more base hits today, both grounders that he just ripped through the infield), but Bo Bichette's 1.012 OPS as a decent shortstop compares pretty nicely to Vladdy's 1.105 as an unusually eager 1B/DH, right? I am not saying these numbers are necessarily projectible, but they do describe with tremendous accuracy and precision that which has already occurred! 

Let us hear it also for the much-loved Alejandro Kirk, whose first home run of the season came today, and for Rowdy Tellez, who is coming around. Poor Cavan Biggio, though: our guy hits a little shot into right that Aaron Judge misreads and it rolls more or less through him (though not an error, it sure wasn't great) and then all the way to the wall for what should have been an easy triple -- and indeed it was! Except third base coach Luis Rivera had been waving Biggio in hard until he was really pretty close to the bag, so Biggio's turn around third was enormous, and when he tried to scurry back upon seeing just how (quite literally) ill-advised that turn had been, Luis Rivera was kind of in the way, and they got tangled up, though only one of the two got tagged out (Rivera was safe by a mile). A disaster! Judge, to his credit, made a really strong throw to get the ball back in, but just a complete mess. As the inning ended, you could see Biggio and Rivera having quite a talk about it, and nobody looked overly animated about it or anything, but Cavan had this energy about it like "Goll-ee, man." Plus he was pretty out of breath.

T. J. Zeuch (a fun name! try it out! it's like zoinks!) pitched ably on short notice when it turned out Ross Stripling couldn't go. Four runs in four innings with a couple home runs (both to Aaron Judge, who remains so tall) probably isn't what anybody hoped for, least of all Zeuch, but it kept the Blue Jays around, and the bullpen went Thornton and Castro for two each, then Rafael Dolis, who I seem to have a lot invested in (maybe something to explore; I don't know).

And so the Blue Jays are back to .500 now at 6-6, with fully half of those games having been against the Yankees, and trail the first-place Red Sox, who I refuse to believe are real, by two and a half games. Up next: the Royals, who are off to a pretty good start, and with whom I would prefer to have no problem at all though the facts of 1985 and 2015 weigh heavy; they are weighty, and I feel their weight.

KS

2021 Game Eleven: Blue Jays 7, Yankees 3

 

A steady guy.

Resplendent in the powder blue that is his stated preference, Hyun-Jin Ryu gave up an infield single to D. J. LeMahieu to open last night's game against the Yankees, erased that baserunner on Giancarlo Stanton's double-play grounder to Marcus Semien in the next at bat, and then did not allow another baserunner until the fifth, when Aaron Hicks singled, only to be wiped out on another 4-6-3 double play. It ruled. In the end, Ryu allowed a run on four hits and a walk, leaving the game with two outs in the seventh, and made the Yankees hitters look not just bad (they are not bad) but like a bunch of super grumpy complainers (I do not know them well enough to judge this fairly) in that they were all over the umps, as though they (the umps) were the reason they (the Yankees) couldn't get the ball out of the infield all night. Ryu was carving them up! Through craft! And Vladdy is still hitting everything, like turning tough pitches down and away into the alley for doubles, and is becoming, if not yet quite an excellent first baseman, an unusually enthusiastic first baseman; like he is into it. Young Josh Palacios, who will be seeing lots of playing time in the next little while with Téoscar Hernández out with COVID (rest up, big Téo), continues to impress, and Rowdy Tellez, who we all like but who cannot be going one-for-twenty-five, hit his first home run of the season a day after asking Vladito to bless his bats (he did not refuse him). Bo Bichette (two more hits!) made a really lovely play at short to end the game, but I was so thrilled about Vladdy doing the splits at the other end of it that I really didn't attend properly to Bichette's slide and throw until it ended up the top play on Trevor Plouffe's "Sequence" daily best-of, tweeted out here. The night's only true drags were that Julian Merryweather is going to be out for a bit with "left hip irritation," and David Phelps got drilled in the back with a line drive, and has been understandably contused. 

But no time to dwell! The getaway game has already begun! Blue Jays down 1-0 in the first on an Aaron Judge homer, but Bichette has singled and stolen second with Vladdy at the dish! But it has been challenged for video review! The call is upheld and he is safe! But I am nevertheless not enjoying this replay system!

KS 

2021 Game Ten: Yankees 3, Blue Jays 1

 

Hey. He's a toughie. 

I'm not even going to especially mind the game-ending third-strike called against the struggling Rowdy Tellez on a pitch so egregiously low that it has attracted broad and non-partisan attention, because really, the deal with this one is that Gerrit Cole held the Blue Jays to just the one run (I did get pretty fired up over Vladdy's tidy little opposite-field RBI single though!), and Kyle Higashioka hit two home runs, and that was that. It was for sure a bad call, but balls and strikes aren't subject to instant replay, so what can you do? Because of a particularly poor use of instant replay on that play at the plate late in the Braves/Phillies Sunday night game, there is a lot of talk right now about how to reform instant replay to make it work better really just in terms of policies and protocols and suchlike, but for me, I would take it out of the game entirely until they can get it down the kind of precision they seem to have in tennis, and then let the robots reign. But until that time, let's just keep it moving -- like last night! Good pace out there, fellas! 

Oh hey also, Robbie Ray looked so good for his first start of the year -- Ryu goes tonight! 

KS

  

2021 Game Ten: Rain in Dunedin

A year out of date but still a very informative and relevant graphic

Another day of rain, but this time no two-hour-and-forty-five-minute delay, just a straight-up "it is too rainy." And so Tanner Roark misses his start, and actually probably a bunch of them, in that he has been relegated to the bullpen as "the long guy." With Robbie Ray back from his fall on the stairs whilst carrying a kid (this is really what happened, and I get it), Roark to the pen is for sure the thing to do, but the ghouls on twitter were being extra ghoulish about it all yesterday, and honestly I did not care for it.

It was super neat to see the Angels for a bit! What a fun team! They were always my wife's favourite road team when they would visit in the early Mike Scoscia era (also known as the Chone Figgins era). I didn't realize until this series just now that former Blue Jays coach Brian Butterfield is with the Angels now. Remember when Alfredo Griffin was their first base coach? And that whenever the Angels were in town, Griffin would get a nice little cheer when the base coaches were announced in the second inning? I'd like to think something similar would happen for Brian Butterfield, who, along with just seeming like a pretty likable guy, once collaborated with Moses Sierra on "SierraStopSign.gif," an all-time great piece of electronic art:

You know what? I *am* loving it.

Next up: the Yankees again! Everybody in the AL East is 4-5 to start the season except for the 6-3 Red Sox, so with 153 to go, the division remains very much "in play."

KS

2021 Game Nine: Blue Jays 15, Angels 1

 

I think he's gonna make it

Well this is much more like it! What a pleasing result, though the two-hour-and-forty-five-minute rain delay meant that I did not catch much of this one at all: I missed Ohtani's triple (you never want to miss a triple), Vladamir Guerrero Jr.'s steal of third base (WHAT!), and the two errors charged to Jose Iglesias on the same play (poor guy), but tuned in just in time to see Vladdy work a bases-loaded walk right after, I was told, Bo Bichette had walked in identical circumstances. Randall Grichuk's bases-clearing double was pretty much it for me, although not for the Blue Jays, who ran it all the way up to fifteen runs with nary a dinger amongst their fourteen hits. Bo Bichette knocked in five, young Josh Palacious went four-for-four with a walk, and Steve Matz has only allowed two earned runs in the twelve-and-a-third innings he's pitched so far. If each of these trends continued, I mean, imagine it. 

Did you maybe already see the nice part where Vladito called Santiago Espinal over to meet Albert Pujols? If you haven't, it is here, and quite lovely. Such a strange dynamic, in that Espinal is four years older than Vladdy, and yet it all totally makes sense when you think about it. Neat! 

KS 

2021 Game Eight: Angels 7, Blue Jays 1

 

Doctor; Lawyer; Really Good Kisser?

Well this one honestly wasn't nearly as much fun! Téoscar out of the lineup because of a COVID-19 exposure, Lourdes Guriel Jr. (and Bourecki, too?) out with vaccine side-effects, and George Springer out with the injury he got while he was injured did not bode well for an especially jaunty outing against the Angels, but even given those lowered expectations, this Blue Jays performance lacked jaunt. Bo Bichette's little double-clutch error that missed the inning-ending force at second, only for Shohei Ohtani to rip a three-run double off the wall (and it was very close to clearing that weird, extra-tall wall altogether) in the next at-bat was kind of the whole game, except for Ohtani's <<coup de circuit>> in the fifth (that guy! wow!). We can take some comfort, I guess, in how rad Vladito continues to be, with another hit and a couple of walks on the night, but the Blue Jays on the whole are perilously close to answering to the name of lucky right now. And yet! Steven Matz on the mound! Maybe he'll strike out another nine batters! Some of whom could very well be Shohei Ohtani! Or Mike Trout! Let's find out!

KS  

2021 Game Seven: Angels 7, Blue Jays 5 (F/11)

 

Having recently tatered out the stadier

You know what, I think that's about as much as I'll ever enjoy a 7-5, extra-innings loss. What a lot of fun! A first-inning homer and a two-out, sixth-inning RBI single for Vladito; a home run in that same sixth inning from Cavan Biggio; and oh yeah a great leaping catch by Vladdy at first on a rocket from Shohei Ohtani -- I loved that stuff! And on the other side of things, Ross Stripling, of all people, had Ohtani way off balance, and struck him out twice, only for Mike Trout to hit Stripling's next pitch after that second strikeout a mile, like a mile. That was all super fun too! And I remain surprisingly fond of the runner-on-second-in-extras rule, even when it does not work out for the Blue Jays, which last night it extremely did not. Really, it shouldn't have gotten that far, but for pinch-runner Jonathan Davis getting picked off in the bottom of the ninth (is this the second time he's been picked off already this year?). I wasn't upset about it; I just felt bad for Jonathan Davis (imagine being him). My stream went a little funny just as Rafael Dolis gave up the go-ahead runs in the top of the eleventh and the effect of this, I think, is that those runs are not especially real to me, which is just as well.

Worse than the loss (and how bad is a loss, really? it's baseball) is the news that Shohei Ohtani is having a tough time with a blister on his pitching hand and so will skip his scheduled start this weekend. He will have to content himself with merely raking. Let us spare a thought for him about that.

KS

2021 Game Six: Rangers 2, Blue Jays 1

This guy right here, though.

Well, we had our chances! And every such chance was predicated on the fact that it was Ryu-day: our hefty ace, resplendent in the powder blues that make a broad and glorious king all the broader, all the more glorious, gave up but two runs in seven full innings pitched, a well-struck shot by Culberson (he might be said to have "culbed it") for the first, a bunch of soft-contact/broken-bat stuff for the second. We were in it right up to the last strike, Rowdy Tellez's full-count foul-tip with the speedy Jonathan Davis (running for Joe Panik) stuck at first with what I am sure he would have very much liked to have been the tying run. In the eighth, Vladito flied out to left on a 3-0 pitch to strand Bo Bichette after Marcus Semien had led off the inning with a solo home-run to finally but the Blue Jays on the board (Jerry Howarth would have described them as "in flight," and we must treasure this knowledge and hold it dear). The one that really got me, though, was all the way back in the fifth, when Biggio grounded into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded on a first-pitch curveball. Jeeze Louise is certainly how I felt in the moment, and I may have even sworn this minced oath aloud. Biggio's whole deal is that he never swings the bad, but he's always on base! Semien had just walked on five pitches! What a mess. Ah, but that's baseball. You are certainly familiar with it. 

So what have we seen in these first six games, what have we learned? That the pitching has been pretty great, and will probably fall back a little; that the bats haven't really been boppin' quite as we might have hoped, but will probably pick up. Will means be regressed to? Maybe! 

I would like to note that I started the game a little weirded today, in that the Baseball Mogul save I had open at the very moment "IRL" Ryu took the mound this afternoon also had Ryu on the mound, also against the Rangers, though this time at the Skydome, thus revealing the artifice of it all. The sim-Blue Jays are 48-46 just after the All-Star break, thank you for asking, and barely cling to relevance with a pitching staff made up of every league-average arm I could find floating around -- it has been fun but pretty tough!

Finally, it was pleasing to learn that both General Manager Ross Atkins and President Mark Shapiro have now agreed to five-year extensions of their contracts in those rôles, as I am in general very pleased with the ways in which they have thus far fulfilled them. All that remains now is to well and truly lock-up the services of Carson Cistulli, with whom I credit all canny Blue Jays acquisitions, and blame for none of the uncanny ones. You know what, I think I'll post that great picture of him again.

That's the one!

KS  

2021 Game Five: Rangers 7, Blue Jays 4

 

More of this again soon, please.

Six home runs last night! Alas that but two of them were Blue Jays ones. And yet I am buoyed: as much of a drag as it was to see Tanner Roark give up a home run in each of the first three innings (and honestly, it wasn't even that much of a drag, as we can only ask so much of him), it was very cheering to see Bo Bichette hit his first two of the year. Has there been a more æsthetic swing from the right side of the plate in Blue Jays history? I am not at all sure that there has! Part of it is that floppy hair imparts an increased sense of motion, certainly, but I don't think it's only that. Aside from Bo, I guess it was really only Randall Grichuk who had a particularly good night at the plate. I am not convinced Grichuk's .500 batting average is going to be sustainable but I guess I am also not entirely unconvinced? Time will tell. Hyun-Jin Ryu on the hill for getaway-day! Then homewards, sort of, in the Dunedin sense of homewards, to host the Angels. It's a four-game series coming up in Dunedin, too, so I'd have to think we'll see an Ohtani start, right? Hey wasn't that Sunday night Ohtani game just the wildest thing? A hundred on the gun and a 450-foot home run in the same inning like it wasn't even especially hard to do either, let alone both? I bet it secretly was, though. I bet he had to really try.  

KS  

2021 Game Four: Blue Jays 6, Rangers 2

 

9Ks!

Easter Monday responsibilities kept me from attending to the earliest innings of this afternoon's contest, but those responsibilities having been merrily discharged, I was just so pleased to learn that the boys, in my absence, had been boppin': a Vladito single cashed in a Cavan Biggio walk in the first, before Marcus Semien and Biggio hit home runs on consecutive pitches in the second, and all was as well as could be as I joined Dan and Buck for the middle innings (. . . and beyond). Biggio had a great day: he hit a home run, worked two walks, was hit by a pitch (he seems not to mind -- the pitch that hit Guerrero on the hands got minded pretty hard though, at least by me), and scored three of the Blue Jays six runs. It is important to remember that every success enjoyed by Cavan Biggio, certainly pleasant enough in and of itself, is rendered almost sublime by the extent to which it strikes a blow not only against Keith Law (a J. P. Ricciardi-front-office alumn! what an era!) but indeed against everything Keith Law chooses to be. I am going to try not to go on about this all season (I will almost certainly fail), but it is obviously no big deal to miss on a prospect, in either direction: you think there's something there, and it turns out there maybe isn't; or you don't really see what all the fuss is about, and the kid turns out to be totally fussworthy. Live and learn! And prospects are inherently weird! And so it is no great bother that Keith Law thought so little of Cavan Biggio's prospects initially, though I do take issue with the smugness with which he expressed this position (hey, tone matters). But to continue to maintain, once Biggio has put up 3.6 fWAR in his first 162 games, that Biggio is "not worth the roster spot," is such mean-spirited arrogance that it really grinds my gears. Oh man, I just checked Baseball Reference, and they've got Biggio at 5.0 wins! bWAR likes him even more than the FanGraphs version! I am so worked up right now!

Let us also get worked up with regard to reclamation-lefty Steven Matz, who gave up only two hits (and a walk and an HBP, to be fair) through six-and-a-third, and struck out nine, including his last four. I will note that he is the only Blue Jays pitcher my current, fairly disastrous save of Baseball Mogul seems to have any faith in, and I have come to share that faith. Matz's fine outing combined with the aforementioned boppin' (I credit the boys) meant no high-leverage relievers today: Chatwood and Mayza were fine, while Dolis is kind of all over the place. He'd have gotten out of the ninth fairly cleanly had Grichuk held onto the ball he caught as he flew into the wall, but hey, what was it doing at the wall to begin with, right? 

Finally, please enjoy these moments of tender fellowship between Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, which seem almost to intimate to be broadcast, and yet here they are. Ours is a voyeuristic age, I suppose.

KS

2021 Game Three: Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1

 

I will not be silenced, Vladito.

As the sages totally foretold, T. J. Zeuch got a lot of soft contact, which, accompanied by home runs from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Randall Grichuk (about whom the notoriously smarty-pantsed Keith Law is so mean sometimes), and more lovely work from the bullpen -- Julian Merryweather! can you even believe this guy! -- gave the Blue Jays a 3-1 win and indeed a 2-1 series win against, let us be real, the best team in the American League, probably. 

Something I wanted to share with you from the broadcast today: in the second inning, Dan Shulman remarked that T. J. Zeuch's style, which is based very much around getting bad contact off of a two-seam fastball low in the zone, is not at all fashionable these days; it's all four-seam fastballs up and curveballs now -- which is totally working for everybody, obviously, this was not a diss of how pitchers currently pitch. But given how unusual sinker/slider types have become in recent years, Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker (of the 2003 Blue Jays! I loved them!) really feels that Zeuch's "old fashioned" mix can play, Shulman explained, if for no other reason that it's a little different (a sort of change-up, if you will). This led Buck Martinez to recall that when he entered the league in 1969 (holy cow!), everybody was throwing fastballs high in the zone and hard curveballs, but then the sinker/slider types came into vogue, and now we're back to high four-seamers and curveballs, and everything that's old is new again. Buck didn't say this with world-weariness, or with an air that he'd seen it all before so no big deal, but with a genuine enthusiasm for how neat it all was, and for how it made you think. Buck also mentioned, later in the game, that he played six seasons of winter ball after he made his major league début, since he was never really an everyday player and needed the at-bats. Dan and Buck! Buck and Dan! A great day both of baseball and of talking about baseball.

And now on to Texas, before a worryingly large crowd in these troubled times. Maybe it will all be fine?  

KS

2021 Game Two: Yankees 5, Blue Jays 2

 

My friend David's insistence that this year is
make-or-break for Gary Sanchez has lit a fire
that will consume us all

The principle virtue of following a baseball game not on television, nor even mostly on radio, but primarily through play-by-play updates on the Gameday application is that it transforms an actual unfolding Major League game (occurring, we are assured, in the primary world of our experience) into a text-based simulation. Text-based baseball simulations are of course enormously compelling in and of themselves, and one comes to appreciate, in time, that they are scarcely more artificial than the locus of artifice that constitute "actual" baseball of the kind that's on TV and that we agree to discuss (we do not, as a rule, discuss our text-based baseball simulations except with a special few). Could we not say of the text-based simulation of baseball what Ken Snyder once said of the text-based simulation of the social world that constitutes the novel? That is, that its (their) function is "not so much to reflect 'reality' as to 'pierce' it (Lukacs); or to break the reification that is called 'reality' (Butor). We live within narrations, 'stories' of life within which and from which we derive 'a conduct of life.' When these stories lose their imaginative strength, their inspiring force, they collapse to cliche, to stereotype; they become 'reified,' that is we are tempted to take 'reality' as being real and final, when 'reality' is simply an imaginary/symbolic construct with tremendous ideological force. In a sense what is called reality is no less 'fictive' than what we call fiction. The difference is that the fictive of 'reality' is realized by force, is actual in the sense of its many contingent, felt acts, whereas the fictive of fiction is imaginative, allegorical, felt as an aesthetic response not a contingent force. But it is potentially 'critical,' can be the source of change." If that last part, which seems entirely decorous to the aims of the novel, seems to overstate the case for text-based baseball simulation, consider that the still-nascent "opener" trend by which an ace reliever starts a game rather than finishes it, as outlined in a fine piece by Zach Kram, was totally a thing that that same author experimented with in Out of the Park Baseball years before and could not believe had been made "real"; and consider too that I first found my way to that article through this also fine piece on the current state of the LOOGY in an article that credits Baseball Mogul-creator Clay Dreslough for his research in this crucial field of study (Steve Treder, too, who has been around since at least the earliest Baseball Primer Days). 

Think about it. Think about it. 

But even if you won't (and hey, I get it): Marcus Semien hit a home run and stole two bases, Ross Stripling did not pitch terribly, and the bullpen was pretty good again, so I do not find myself in the business of especially minding today's 5-3 loss to the Yankees, the details of which arrived to me in a mode that probably pierced reality at least a little, and possibly a lot? T. J. Zeuch throws tomorrow, and you like to see a groundball-pitcher on the bump in Yankee Stadium.

KS 

2021 Game 1: Blue Jays 3, Yankees 2 (F/10)

 

This is the least merry that things got today.

If you had been wondering if I could have been any more delighted by the Blue Jays' Opening Day Extra-Innings Win over the New York Yankees, first of all thank you for your interest, and secondly, no I don't think! And I was delighted early: in the home half of the first, Hyun-Jin Ryu pitched with such crafty-leftiness/lefty-craftiness that he had no less of a guy than Aaron Judge days late like days late on a 91MPH 3-2 fastball, and then did very much the same thing to Aaron Hicks. This contrasted mightily with Yankees starter Gerrit Cole, who was throwing bullets (some of the bullets were sliders!). I noted early on that Cole was getting calls on his slider a good few inches off the outside corner (I am not complaining: work those corners, and the realms beyond, young buck [he is thirty]), but was getting squeezed on anything off-speed that was up in the zone even a little -- guess which of these strike-zone quirks he minded! 

He pitched well for sure, though, giving up runs only on three straight singles in the second (Teoscar Hernandez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. [a 114.1 MPH rocket, the hardest-hit ball measured against Cole since these things have been measured], and the luxuriously-coiffed Lourdes Gurriel Jr.) and on Téo's just enormous home run in the sixth. Vladi worked a walk in a long plate appearance right after the Hernandez <<dingeur>> and that was it for Cole, who hit the dugout wall with his glove a bunch (still breaking it in). The Yankees runs both came on a good-sized home run from Gary Sanchez, which is huge for him, as my work-friend David has declared this season to be "last chance for Sanchez," and thus stakes are high. 

I had to leave things with the Blue Jays' defeat all but certain in the bottom of the ninth (our tacos were ready); imagine my surprise as I rejoined the game (whilst dishwashing) to learn that not only had Cavan Biggio thrown out Tauchman at the plate with the infield in, and that Jordan Romano (he's from Markham! and born in 1993! an auspicious year in Blue Jays history!) struck out Judge to end the inning, but also that Randall Grichuk had doubled home the go-ahead run in the top of the tenth, sending kind of an iffy one over Judge's head in right (rough game for Judge, when you lay it all out like that I guess). What? How? Neat! Relief-ace Julian Merriweather is a new one to me, but if he's going to throw 99MPH with a change-up in the low-eighties, we might have something here! I would also like to note that Rafael Dolis, who I think is neat because he has pitched for both the Detroit Tigers and the Hanshin Tigers, pitched well, as did Tyler Chatwood -- in fact, the two hits against David Phelps were the only hits the bullpen allowed all day (let us not speak of walks just now). 

It was all great!

Finally, I would also like to comment on the broadcast. Dan Shulman was calling the game from a studio in Toronto, with Buck Martinez I believe working from his home in Florida, and their call went out over the radio as well as on television -- this is to say, there is no dedicated radio-only broadcast this season, a notion that seems to have riled many, including Geddy Lee, who at his present age honestly should not be caused to be riled; it isn't right. But the parts I watched on television (or rather on computers, and indeed on computer phones [and for surprisingly little cost]) were as good as Dan and Buck ever are (exceedingly), and when I had it on the radio, it was the best a Blue Jays radio broadcast has been since Jerry Howarth had Alan Ashby with him nine years ago. So, no complaints from me at all, nor do I anticipate any when the Blue Jays road games are handled in this same way, with Dan Shulman on play-by-play, and Buck on colour. My understanding is that the "home" games, such as they are this season, will have Buck on play-by-play (oh no), joined remotely by Pat Tabler (oh no), which will probably have me right there with Geddy, grumbling about the spirit of radio. "But it bears a gift beyond price, almost free," you'll hear us say, plaintively. 

Until then, let's play ball!

KS