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| 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
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