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