2021 Game One-Fifty-Three: Twins 7, Blue Jays 2

 

 the best thing to come out of Thursday's
game is this picture and it isn't close

Of the hundreds of innings of Blue Jays baseball we have seen this year, this fifth inning in Minnesota for sure ranks among the worst of them: Thomas Hatch, already in the game because Steven Matz struggled mightily early, walked Josh Donaldson before Mitch Garver doubled to left center, where Randall Grichuk picked up the ball and inadvertently stepped on and spiked the hand of the crouching Lourdes Gurriel Jr, who came out of the game with his hand wrapped in a towel, and has since been stitched up (just two, and x-rays suggest no breaks). Three batters later, Hatch left the game with a hamstring issue, only for Julian Merryweather, whose spin rate is down kind of a lot since they started checking guys for sticky stuff and whom, along with Nate Pearson, I would rather not see in anything resembling a high-leverage situation the rest of the way, gave up the three-run home that the Twins seemed to have been threatening since the first. What a mess! Any hopes that the Blue Jays might claw themselves back into it starting in the sixth were dashed when third-base coach Luis Rivera vigorously waved Cory Dickerson around third on a Danny Jansen single, right up until the point when he didn't, and so ended that inning, with Dickerson confused and out by a mile. There's really nothing good to say about this one, other than that it's over. Let's just shake this one off, guys!

And so we enter this crucial second-last weekend of the season (if you can believe it!) in a pretty agreeable situation, really, in that the Red Sox and Yankees will in some sense destroy each other in Fenway for three whilst the Blue Jays have every opportunity to gain ground playing the fairly woebegone Minnesota Twins, who have had an enormously disappointing season. Ideally, the Blue Jays would enter next week's series against the Yankees a game or two ahead of New York, but regardless of how exactly things plays out in Boston, the Blue Jays will be in good shape for their final homestand if they can win two of the next three in Minnesota, and potentially very good shape indeed should they take the remaining three. With Berrios, Manoah, and Ray on the hill, why wouldn't they?  

KS