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| 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
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