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CBC election night coverage takes precedence over Blue Jays baseball in our house -- especially the portion of the evening in which Atlantic Canada is attended to as though it were going to in any way affect the shape of things to come once polls close in Québec and Ontario (that part is my fav!) -- and so the ballgame was relegated to second-screen, play-by-play data on my [computer]phone, which as you know I do not find a bad way to follow baseball at all (it makes it like a sim game! baseball simulators are baseball feelings simulators! these are of course issues we have addressed). Additionally, I had a little bit of the game on the radio[application upon my {computer}phone] as I jogged to the audiologists' where I had accidentally left my bicycle six hours prior, as one does. My thoughts on the game, experienced such as it was through these several media, aside from the disappointment and looming sense of dread that hangs over every late-season loss when one's team is on the cusp of a playoff spot, were mostly about what it is like to watch a pitcher having a Cy Young or Cy-Young-adjacent season, and how unlike the rest of one's experience of baseball that is. Weirdly, I was able to attend every home inning of Roy Halladay's 2003 Cy Young season, and despite their stylistic dissimilarities, watching Robbie Ray this year has felt very much the same way to the extent that when Robbie Ray gets in a jam, my legitimate expectation is that he will get out of it unscathed, and is surprising when he does not, whereas the experience of long-term baseball-watching is to expect none of your pitchers to get out of any jams ever, and to accept each new base runner as a plated run as soon as they touch first base, "mark XP," so to speak, and move on. And Robbie Ray did a fair bit of getting both into and out of jams last night, until he was finally tagged by Yandy Diaz for a three-run homer in the fifth, which put Tampa ahead 3-2 (Téo and Gurriel had solo home runs) and ahead for good. That the Blue Jays kept coming in a ninth inning they came into down 6-2 is laudable, and that Semien knocked hit his forty-first (!!!) to bring the Blue Jays to within two is very pleasing, but what a drag for Breyvic Valera to have struck out with the bases loaded, bat very much on his shoulder (perhaps even on the shoulder of his heart?) to end it. I have seen both subjective and objective accounts (like, pitch data) of some pretty funny looking strikes last night in the top of the ninth, and while that may indeed be the case (it seems to have been), what can you do. It is a tough feeling to lose a Robbie Ray start at this point in the season, but we've got Alek Manoah going tonight; we're moving from strength to strength here.
So where do we stand, with a dozen games to go? Okay let's see: the Blue Jays trail the Red Sox by a game and a half for the first Wild Card spot (the home game one, let us say), and sit a half-game ahead of the Yankees, two ahead of the Athletics, and three ahead of the Mariners for the second one (let's call it the road one). The Yankees play the eminently beatable Rangers whilst the Red Sox play the always Metsy Mets this week as the Blue Jays toil away in "the Trop," which is a tough draw for us, but at least the A's and Mariners play each other, so one of them will be falling off the pace for sure. If the Blue Jays can leave Tampa still in a playoff spot, with ten games to play (four in Minnesota [lovely park!], three against the Yankees [who we have to beat], three against the Orioles [who we have to beat]), that would be things shaping up about as well as you could hope for. So let's hope for it!
KS
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