2022 Game Thirty: Guardians 4, Blue Jays 3

 

Jose Ramirez (seen here tripling)
is at least as good as you know he is
and possibly better

Alek Manoah's enormously enthusiastic and quite compelling mother (and his comparatively low-key grandmother [lol she is still pretty into it though]) was (were) on hand to watch their large adult (grand)son pitch a fine game without his best stuff on this Mother's Day Sunday afternoon. A few pitches really, really got away from him (juuuuust a bit outside, haha, Ben Wagner was heard to remark), and he mentioned after the game that he was having a hard time getting a grip on the balls all day, wondering if they had been sufficiently rubbed up/down, and even speculating openly that they hadn't been! It is not my place to say. Manoah pitched well enough to win, though, and were it not for the two-run Cleveland eighth, everything would have been cool. Alas that it was not. And so ends a disappointing trip to Cleveland, though it was very pleasant to see Teoscar Hernandez back in the clean-up spot (knocked in two with a single in the first! sure would have been nice to get more out of a bases-loaded-nobody-out inning though!).

So too ends this bananas stretch of thirty games in thirty-one days, plainly the toughest part of the Blue Jays' whole schedule this year. FanGraphs noted as recently as "the last time I went" that the Blue Jays' first thirty games saw them play the toughest competition of any MLB team so far (and by kind of a lot), and although this week against New York and Tampa Bay, the two teams that are all of a sudden ahead of them now, probably won't be a whole lot better, I do think this thirty-game point is a worthwhile one at which to sort of low-key take stock. Heading into all of this, a sensible line that one encountered from the most sensible of sensible observers was that if the Blue Jays could come out of the first thirty games at or slightly above .500, that would be a pretty good spot. And so that they sit at a 17-13 record, good for a .567 that projects to a ninety-two-win season (and a playoff spot), despite having a run differential of minus ten based largely on how they have scored scarcely more runs than Baltimore, is actually really great, maybe? And you've got to think they're going to start hitting more, right? Bo Bichette is turning it around, isn't he? Vladdy is due to go on a tear, probably? And hey Téo is back! And Springer has been great! And Santiago Espinal is a top-twenty-five player by fWAR so far this year! Alejandro Kirk is getting on at a good clip! Man we've just gotta start hitting though. 

KS