2021 Game Sixty-Six: Yankees 3, Blue Jays 2

 

Sadimir

Guerrero

Jr.

A dark night, not in the usual sense of "the bullpen blew it and it was unfun," but instead in that, first, Ross Stripling lost his cool about (Gold Glove winner!) Joe Panik's second error of the night at third, and visibly berated him on-field, frustrated that Panik would rush the play and try to make a bare-handed pick-and-throw rather than take his time, as while Giancarlo Stanton is many things, "a hustler on ground balls" is neither at nor near that top of that fine list; and, second, Vladdy messed up as the tying run at third in the bottom of the ninth and, what's worse, got really sad about it: down 3-2, Vladdy led off with a single, got to third on Téo's double, hung out there for a sec whilst Grichuk went down swinging, and then dangled a little too far off third on Santiago Espinal's little dribbler back to the mound, which got picked off (sort of) on the fielder's choice (hey: it's the fielder's choice). Even if the replays revealed that Vladdy probably should have been called safe on his artful slide back into third, this was a big baserunning mistake from a guy (and indeed a team!) that used to make kind of a lot of those but who has (who have) genuinely improved in that regard. Vladdy blew it, and he knew he blew it. A weird, phantom foul ball call on what was really Gary Sanchez just straight-up missing a pitch ("Gary Sanchez," Buck Martinez noted, "is not a good catcher") cost the Blue Jays the tying run a little later, so just a weird, bad, sad inning all around. Téo, a good friend, could be seen comforting Vladdy after the game, and Ross Stripling, to his credit, says he is "mortified" at his behaviour, and acknowledges that what he did to Joe Panik is the worst thing you can to a teammate on the actual field of play -- he even retweeted video of the sorry episode and added, alongside his apology, "Young ballplayers, be better than this." That's probably about the best he could have done in the aftermath of his poor behaviour -- behaviour that I felt pretty hard, by the way, because there were times as a young pitcher I was not kind to my fielders, as though I was twelve-year-old Dave Stieb or some nonsense, and thirty years later I remain ashamed of every second I acted that way. But man oh man. A rough night, for all that it was actually a really good game. Finally: why doesn't anybody talk about how bad a guy Aroldis Chapman is? Is just fresher in my head because I was listening to so many of FanGraphs Audios? I ask because Aroldis Chapman did some awful stuff, but the consensus seems to be yyyyyeah but he's a lefty who throws super hard. Anyway, it is a drag when he's around.  

KS