2021 Game One-Sixty-Two: Blue Jays 12, Orioles 4

 

everybody up

Just before first pitch Sunday, the television broadcast showed Bo Bichette and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. holding one another in as tender and loving an embrace as you are ever likely to see: it was deep, and low, and real. We should all be so lucky as to be held like that by someone in our lives, someone with whom we share real intimacy, or a deep familial bond. For Gurriel and Bichette, it is that they play baseball together, and are friends. The camera stayed with it an awfully long time, and Dan Shulman seemed legitimately moved; I know I was. It was clear to me long before game time that whatever happened Sunday afternoon, this has been, for me, the most wonderful Toronto Blue Jays season and team I have known, the one that has meant the most to me, in no small measure because I have been able to share it with my family in ways I would not at all have anticipated (the U11 fireballer, charging hard towards U13, and the U5 tee-baller with left-handed power to all fields, alongside the seasoned veterans of the squad [we've been hit by a few pitches, but we're alright]). The long moment between Bichette and Gurriel didn't create this feeling -- it was far from the first of its kind we've seen throughout this lovely summer -- but it brought us into it again.          

When things did finally get underway, and Hyun-Jin Ryu, despite his recent troubles, got a groundout to Bichette at short on the first pitch of the game, and struck out both Mountcastle and Hays to retire the side in order, it felt like, okay: this might actually go pretty well today. Little did I expect that we would be doing tiny home run dances the rest of the afternoon (and into the evening) at what seemed like five-minute intervals: Springer's twentieth in the first, Vladdy's forty-eighth on a rocket to right field in the second, Springer's grand slam in the third, Semien's record-setting forty-fifth in the fifth  . . . in the last few days it had been the bottom of the order that had really kept things going, but in game one-sixty-two it was the biggest Blue Jays bats that were the biggest Blue Jays bats. The Orioles starter, Bruce Zimmerman, was chased in the first. Meanwhile, Hyun-Jin Ryu did exactly what you'd hope he might, with five good innings before handing it off to (I do not mean to be uncharitable when I say) "the secondary relievers," exactly like you would expect if you were setting up for a Game 163, should things break our way, where Mayza and Romano would be fresh-as-could-be, ready to relieve José Berríos when the time came (if the time came). 

But the Yankees walked off the Rays 1-0 in Yankee Stadium on an Aaron Judge infield single, and the Red Sox came from behind in Washington for the second day in a row (our old friend Raven has apologized on behalf of the Nationals bullpen, and I have accepted). I held out some slim hope that the great Juan Soto would run into one for the Nationals in the bottom of the ninth, but instead he made the season's last out. I honestly can't even say I was too disappointed by any of it: by all means, my preference would be for the Blue Jays to have not only made the playoffs, but to have won the whole thing, but it is not my preference by as much as you might think, or as much as would even be sensible. Though I am of course fundamentally and unalterably romantic (an earnest questioner: "Professor Frye, would you agree that your conception of literature as you present it here is somewhat Romantic?" Professor Frye: "Oh, it's entirely Romantic"), I do not mean to be romantic but instead eminently pragmatic when I say in all sincerity that I am very much A Regular Season Guy; that's where the real pleasure of the game lies for me, in the dailyness of it for no fewer than six months out of the year. The Blue Jays were in the playoffs with misleading regularity when I was a kid, and won the World Series twice before I was old enough to work anything other than a paper route; years ago, decades ago, I have already had the maximum possible experience of playoff baseball -- and it's very much it's own thing, and quite a thing, but it's not the promise of it, or even the potential of it, that keeps me here. I'm much more content with the way this season ended, surely, than of the players involved, who seemed, to a man, proud of what they'd done this summer, but awfully sad that this is where it ends for them. "We became the best team in baseball," Marcus Semien told us when it was over. "But it was a tick too late."

KS

2021 Game One-Sixty-One: Blue Jays 10, Orioles 1

 

Vladdy: got another one

No sooner had I settled into the bleachers near the tennis court that would serve on this fine October afternoon as the site of a roller skating lesson for a leading member of the U11 set (roller skating is high-level cross-training for baseball; I invite all you U11 coaches to look into it for your young charges), and opened my phone to the MLB application through which I enjoy not just play-by-play data (which is free!) but also radio broadcasts (a gift beyond price, almost free), than I realized I had already missed it: Vladimir Guerrero's forty-seventh home run of the year, a towering shot that made it nearly to Tony Fernandez, both to where his name is written on the Level of Excellence just above the second deck, and also to heaven, itself a Level of Excellence ("R.I.P. Tony Fernandez, My Dad and I loved you," as it said once on Joey Votto's hat). Happily, there was much more: Téo hit his thirty-second home run later that same inning; George Springer, who it seems has barely even been in the lineup this year, somehow hit his twentieth in the second; Bo Bichette got his twenty-ninth a little later (I mean, why not); and Danny Jansen got another one, a two-run shot in the fifth. Ten runs on fourteen hits, when it was all said and done, and unsurprisingly another great start from young Alek Manoah, who struck out ten and allowed only a hit and a walk for just one run through seven. Such was the depth and profundity of the trouncing (poor Baltimore; poor Cedric Mullins, especially [he seems neat, and should not be made to suffer]) that the only reliever the Blue Jays sent out there at all was Ross Stripling, who took it the rest of the way. This means all-hands on deck for the season finale, and we might well need them, as Hyun-Jin Ryu, love him though we do, has had command issues of late, and it is not at all hard to imagine a scenario where we need to get him out both quickly and in a hurry and also at once. Would I be a little freaked out to see Jordan Romano pitching, say, the fourth? Certainly, and yet it might be very much the thing to do. One hopes, of course, for an easy win like yesterday, but it is seems like too much to ask.   

With the Yankees thumped by the Rays and booed tremendously in Yankee Stadium yesterday, and both Boston and Seattle winning squeakers late last night, we need a Blue Jays win and a loss from either the Yankees or Red Sox for this afternoon's game to be anything other than the last of the Blue Jays season. The weirdnesses set to unfold should there be a three-or-even-four-way tie are pretty great, but one that is particularly notable, I think, is that in a four-way tie, the Yankees would be given the choice (indeed they have already been given it) as to whether they would prefer to play the Red Sox in Fenway of the Blue Jays in the SkyDome, and they have chosen Boston; which is interesting; which is interesting. 

But for anything at all like that to happen, these Blue Jays need one last win, their ninety-first of this strange and wonderful season, a season I have loved as much as any other. I sure hope they get it! 

KS 

2021 Game One-Sixty: Blue Jays 6, Orioles 4

 

the way the crowd started to stand? as they realized Biggio was
going to try to make it? all the way from first? I mean, forget about it

While I definitely could have done without the Orioles' four-run, bat-around eighth out of nowhere (it escalated quickly!), otherwise, what a night: a three-run home run for the weirdly-productive-of-late Danny Jansen, two hits apiece for Santiago Espinal (missed you, Santiago; missed you, bro) and Corey Dickerson, and a huge three-for-four from the returning Cavan Biggio, who darted around the bases all the way from first to score on a George Springer infield single to second. This was an Alfredo Griffinesque feat of baserunning, which is always the most welcome kind (to me [and to Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Abtract]). Steven Matz's two runs on six hits an a walk in seven complete is such a great final line for a remarkable season for him (they let him wear the home run jacket!). Obviously pitcher wins are not a statistic that we place a whole lot of value in anymore, and rightly so, but "Steven Matz, fourteen-game winner" is nevertheless pretty wild, right? Cimber had as much trouble in relief as I think we've seen from him all year, or rather since we picked him up (he has been so good), but Jordan Romano threw thirty-two pitches in just under two innings of work to close it out not unticklishly but most welcomely. Let us hope, then, that Manoah goes sufficiently deep into this afternoon's game, and the bats bop to such a degree, that we don't need to use the better pieces of the Blue Jays bullpen to handle today's work, and can have everybody ready for multiple innings should Ryu run into trouble early on Sunday (I love watching Hyun-Jin Ryu pitch but one never knows, does one; one never truly knows). Checking in with the (Home Hardware) out-of-town scoreboard (my phone), we see that the Yankees lost, the Mariners lost, and the Red Sox won, so for all of the scenario-strangenesses that abound, the fundamentals (a crutch for the talentless?) of the Blue Jays' situation remain unchanged: win today, and we're still in it tomorrow. It looks like I'll be taking in much of today's game chilling in the shade whilst a roller-skating lesson unfolds, and I would encourage you to seek out listening conditions at least that pleasant, if you are in any kind of position to do so, though I acknowledge that very few are so blessed. 

KS

2021 Game One-Fifty-Nine: Yankees 6, Blue Jays 2

 

things got exactly this bad

I don't know if I have said as much previously in these electronic pages, but a longstanding principle of mine as regards baseball (its watching; its playing; its simulation[s]) is that we don't worry about solo home runs. We just don't! I was pleased to read, earlier this season, that this is also very much the approach of Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker (a member of my closely-held 2003 Toronto Blue Jays and as such deserving of all entitlements membership in that august company affords him [to me]). So when, in last night's first inning, Aaron Judge hit a home run that I personally estimated at 450 feet but which StatCast soon thereafter had at 455 (who was first, though; who was first), I felt i) unworried and, ii) unhurried. Realistically, though, there does come a point where solo home runs do indeed become a problem, like for instance in the Yankees sixth, which went: homer (Rizzo), homer (Judge again), walk (Stanton), homer (Torres). And yet even then, those solo home runs had only put the Yankees ahead 3-2; was it not the walk and subsequent third (and non-solo!) home run that really took the wind out of everybody's sails? Man, what a weird one: the Yankees had six hits, and five of them were home runs, the sixth a little infield single in the ninth, shortly after another solo home run. Even the parts that went well for the Blue Jays were weird, like Vladdy ripping a double off the top of the wall, like the tippy-top of the wall, that somehow bounced back into play in a way that I have literally never seen before, and how many home runs have I seen at the SkyDome? Imagine the number! It was enough to score Bo Bichette, though, who has been doing way more than his share this week. What a player, this Bo Bichette: just a wild horse out there, as a recently dismissed member of the Fan 590 once said.

Poor Robbie Ray, you've got to say. I am pretty sure Dan Shulman said that this was only the second time in his career that Ray has allowed four home runs, and the first time was I think in 2016, when Ray had not yet attained his final form, and certainly wasn't in a huge game in a playoff push against Yankees, and in his final start of the season, trying to seal the deal on a Cy Young Award. On that note: I think he'll still probably get it, as the top two pitchers in the league this year both pitched in this series, and both, bafflingly, gave up five runs. That's baseball! Also baseball: the Red Sox somehow losing again at Camden Yards, which keeps things just close enough headed into the final weekend of the season. Am I right to say that, in the now twenty-eight years since Toronto last won the World Series, this is only the third time the Blue Jays have been in it going into the final weekend of the season? That it was a regular feature of the Blue Jays seasons of my youth, and that I totally took it for granted are facts too obvious to even bear mentioning, and yet here we are ("in my mentions"). Even if the Blue Jays take all three against the Orioles this weekend -- and I really hope they do, even if it proves playoff-fruitless, because a ninety-one-win season is awesome -- they're going to need a little help, both from the former Expos (the Nationals, who play Boston), I have seen it said, and the future Expos (the Rays, who play the Yankees). Nicely observed! But just as big a factor at this point are the Seattle Mariners, who play the Angels, who you cannot count on for anything whatsoever, other than for making Shohei Ohtani doubt his choices. It certainly seems as though the Yankees are going to take one of these Wild Card spots, and I will say that if the second does not fall to the Blue Jays, my sincere hope is that it goes to their 1977 expansion cousins, the Seattle Mariners, with whom we have long held kinship.

KS