2021 Game One-Twenty-Four: White Sox 5, Blue Jays 2

 

Sans Sous-Cease

Before I even had the game on, I saw on my computerphone that it was already 4-0 White Sox an inning in, so I elected to go for a bike ride. Never the wrong choice (although I do regret seeing a rare Pete Walker-ejection in real time)! What I found upon my return was actually an enormously pleasant ballgame, about as enjoyable a 5-2 loss as you're going to find, honestly. Partly it was the outfield assists from all three Blue Jays outfielders (you don't see that very often! has there ever been a more baffling defensive outfielder with a better arm than Lourdes Gurriel Jr? an honest question!), but mostly I couldn't get enough of White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease, who was totally new to me: his slider looked to be breaking about as much as you would expect of a curveball, his curve broke like this was a cartoon, and his seemingly effortless fastball was 98MPH like an afterthought. Rightly or wrongly, I felt like Dylan Cease was illustrating just how much harder Major League pitching is to hit than it was even, say, twenty years ago (a long time, I grant you, but not a long time), even in the absence of the sticky stuff that had been making it even tougher than it needed to be. Aside from our hero Alejandro Kirk, who doubled, the only other Blue Jay with an extra-base hit was Corey Dickerson, who turned on an inside 98MPH fastball and parked it in the stands in right. The Blue Jays actually got it close-ish with runners on in the both the eighth and the ninth (should Grichuk have been up hitting for young Palacious? maybe, though he hasn't done much since June), but that actually didn't make the game any more enjoyable (possibly less, as it introduced a certain tension?). I just had an improbably lovely time lolling around with the game on.

Robbie Ray and Hyun-Jin Ryu are still to come this series, so who knows -- maybe take three out of four? We'll need to, it looks like, as the Blue Jays fell a game off the pace last night. Five-and-a-half back. The playoff odds grow ever longer with each passing day, but regardless of how things end up, it would be fun to keep it close until the last week, if we could.

KS