2022 Game Ninety-Eight: Cardinals 6, Blue Jays 1

 

. . .and

that 

one's

gone.

Fair enough, I guess: much like Joey Votto's (probable) last game in Toronto culminated in a game-winning home run, this time it was Albert Pujols' (definite) last game in Toronto, and a three-run shot launched into the centre-field second deck, right where the restaurant used to be. Fine; it's fine. A fitting end, I suppose, to my own personal experience of Albert Pujols, as realistically it is pretty unlikely I will watch any other Cardinals games this season. I was actually a little surprised to hear that Pujols was forty-two, but it all adds up, as his first year in the majors was also my first year of attending the majors. And upon reflection, 2001 was an unusually good year for Rookies of the Year, wasn't it: AL Ichiro, NL Pujols (things fell off a little in 2002: AL Eric Hinske, NL Jason Jennings). You may recall that a big topic of discussion in Albert Pujols' earliest seasons was whether or not he was actually as young as was claimed, a discussion that kept going for much longer than it was in any way relevant (if his age 21 through age 24 seasons were actually his age 23 through 26 seasons, who cares? they were still historically great). Anyway! Great job, Albert Pujols, everybody likes you and thinks you're great! We got the full Albert Pujols show Wednesday night, too, as we saw him get such an incredible jump at first base (Kevin Gausman was understandably paying absolutely no attention to him over there) that he would almost certainly have stolen second despite his quite literally minimal speed had the batter not swung and fouled it off; we also saw Pujols thrown out at home by Téo on an unforgivable send by third base coach Ron “Pop” Warner (not to be confused with first base coach and low-key Canadian baseball legend Richard Keith "Stubby" Clapp). Let us note also that Vladdy had his first stolen base of the year, getting the "send" on a 3-2 pitch to Alejandro Kirk that Kirk, in a super rare occurrence, struck out on. But that's about as much as the Blue Jays got going against forty-year-old Adam Wainwright, for whom a reasonable Hall of Fame case might tentatively be made? Sort of? A little? If he pitches one more season (and why wouldn't he) he'll get to two hundred wins -- a deeply flawed measure, for the many reasons we all know, but one that will sort of "call the question."

And so ends the Blue Jays seven-game winning streak, their second streak of that length this season, if I am remembering this correctly, as I believe I saw somewhere that the 2022 Blue Jays are now the only team to have had two seven-game winning streaks in the same season under two different managers. You certainly cannot argue with the last few weeks of results, but I still feel bad about Charlie! And I'm not going to stop! Even after this loss, the Blue Jays sit atop the AL Wild Card standings with the fairly lowly Detroit Tigers coming in for four (of which you'd like to think we would win three?). We've got Yusei Kikuchi going tonight for the first time in a few weeks, and I would like to remind everyone that what Yusei Kikuchi needs more than anything right now is our support. Thank you. 

KS    

2022 Game Ninety-Seven: Blue Jays 10, Cardinals 3

 

in our home we call these Springer MegaDingers

My duties to the exquisite art of 講道館柔道 (Kōdōkan Jūdō) prevented me from enjoying Vladdy's first-inning homerun or indeed any of "the things" that brought us to a 3-3 score after three in real time; but I was very much ensconced in the game by the time Tim Mayza bailed José Berríos out of a sticky spot in the top of the sixth, and George Springer launched a truly sprung and dung Springer Dinger to blow the game open in the bottom half of that selfsame inning. Every Blue Jays starter had a hit (this seems to be happening kind of a lot!), every Blue Jays pitcher did at least fine, and there you go, seven straight wins, nine of their last ten, hottest team in baseball by kind of a lot. Could this have been prevented, or at least attenuated, had the Cardinals sent their full squad, including their two best players, who have opted out because of their reasons? It is hard to say; and also, I suppose, who cares. A lovely ovation for the great Albert Pujols, I would like to note -- the Cardinals announcers said it was the nicest such ovation for Pujols anywhere they'd been this year. Maybe this is because we see the Cardinals so rarely? Whatever the reason, it was a very nice moment, as was the long and sustained ovation from everybody (players out of the dugout, event) for the return of Buck Martinez to the broadcast booth. Great vibes all around!  

KS

2022 Game Ninety-Six: Blue Jays 8, Red Sox 4

 

may I clear?

As much as we all enjoyed Raimel Tapia's inside-the-park grand slam Friday night (exceedingly, yes, thank you), how about his bases-loaded triple Sunday afternoon? I mean, come on! Given Ross Stripling's fine outing despite the swelter, and the able relief that followed, the Blue Jays didn't need much more than that, but got four hits from Vladdy, a couple doubles from Matt Chapman, and the great gift of three Red Sox errors -- and honestly it seems strange to look at the box score and see that it was only three, as I do not recall a major league team playing worse defense, probably not in a single game, but certainly not over the course of a three-game series (at home, too [yikes]). Heading into this series, it occurred to me that a Blue Jays sweep might more or less finish off the Red Sox, if such a thing is possible with sixty-five-or-so games to go, but it actually kind of can, if it shows the Boston front office that this is not the year to trade prospects for pieces to help them try to sneak in. The Red Sox are only three games behind Seattle for the final spot, but they're two-and-eight in their last ten and are just getting creamed (they did not fare much better than this against the Yankees right before the break). And where do the Blue Jays sit after (or indeed amidst) this pretty choice six game winning streak? Very much atop the wild card ranks, a tidy game-and-a-half ahead of the Rays, and four-and-a-half-games clear of the teams "on the outside looking in" (Boston, Cleveland, and, half a game behind both, the Baltimore Orioles). You get to a point (and we are there now I think) where it's like, it would be weird if we didn't trade for Juan Soto and arguably also Luis Castillo and a lights-out reliever in exchange for nobody on our major-league roster. If not now: when. 

KS

2022 Game Ninety-Five: Blue Jays 4, Red Sox 1

further evidence to supper my youngest's contention
that he is called George "Springer" because he has springs . . .
in his feet

Alek Manoah, whom you would probably never describe as unfired down, was as about as fired up as you will find him Saturday afternoon, manifesting full-on Ricky-from-Trailer-Park-Boys energy en route to a lovely six innings of one-run baseball. Yimi Garcia, Adam Cimber, and Jordan Romano took it the rest of the way scorelessly, as the Red Sox continued to be unable to do anything at all right. The newly all-hustle Blue Jays scored as beautifully as you could ever hope to see in the second, with Chapman coming all the way around from first on Santiago Espinal's hit-and-run single to right field. All of these things I saw, and loved, and yet how could I see them as truly, or love them as fully, as Pat Tabler on colour commentary, for whom all of this seemed to have been made. He was in clover, good old Tabby. 

KS 

2022 Game Ninety-Four: Blue Jays 28, Red Sox 5

 

imagine that!

Kevin Gausman struck out ten, but it actually took him a whole lot of pitches to do that, so he was done for the night after allowing three runs in just five innings. How fortuitous, then, that the Blue Jays scored an all-time team-best (and very-nearly-all-time-baseball-best) twenty-eight runs on twenty-nine hits, some of them truly remarkable: I am thinking here of Raimel Tapia's inside-the-park grand slam on a ball Jarren Duran lost in the weird sky and then just froze on, certainly, but also of Matt Chapman's pop-up not-quite-to-the-mound that dropped in and sort of led to ten runs; consider too, if you would, slugging catcher Danny Jansen's pair of truly walloped dingers, and Matt Chapman's neatly walloped one also. From the third inning on, this game was filled with an unreal collection of the damnedest things, but the damnedest damnedest thing of all was the Blue Jays' eleven-run fifth, and the damnedest thing about that damnedest thing is that not only did all eleven runs come in with two outs, but the inning actually started with two outs. We'll never see anything else like it: a Vladdy strikeout; a Kirk groundout (despite his uncanny propensity for infield hits [look it up; it is insane]); and then: Bo single; Téo single; Gurriel single (six hits on the night!); Chapman "single" (somebody, anybody call it [third basemen's ball all the way though honestly]); Espinal walk; Jansen single; Tapia double; Vladdy single; pitching change; Kirk walk; Bo bloop single; Téo single; Gurriel double; then Chapman out on strikes (caught looking!) to end the inning. Jeremy Beasley came out of the pen with a pretty good cushion, and was credited with his first statistical "hold" of the season for his three innings of work (I absolutely love this detail), and after Danny Jansen left runners on the corners to end the top of ninth (come on, Jano, bear down [3 for 6, 2HR, 4R, 6RBI]), Anthony Banda came in to work a clean and stress-free bottom of the ninth. A total blast from start to finish, obviously, and one I can't imagine we will ever forget. I am pretty sure the Blue Jays scored eleven runs in the eleven minutes after my daughter went to bed, turning what had been a 14-3 laugher into something even more profound. A laugher de profundis? I have very little Latin. 

KS

2022 Blue Jays at The Break: It's Really Not that Bad! It's Arguably Pretty Good!

 

our beautiful boys

With the All-Star Game (always a delight, but rarely more so than throughout Alek Manoah's mic'd up inning) now behind us, let us reflect broadly, for a bit, if we could, on the Blue Jays season that has thus far been, if you will so indulge me. I think we can all agree that the 2022 Blue Jays' fifty wins and forty-three losses through "the first half" (I know that ninety-three isn't half of one-hundred-sixty-two; I'm not a fool) has them winning at a rate of .538, which, all things being equal (which I know that they are not), would give us to an eighty-seven win season in the fullness of time, and quite possibly one of the three American League Wild Card spots, maybe even the one they currently hold (arguably the best one [see on that subject: all of my other posts]). An eighty-seven-win season would probably feel like a disappointment after last year's ninety-one-win "campaign" (a word I like in this context because it likens a baseball season to a series of tabletop roleplaying adventures [tell me one way that it's different]), even if it would have the Blue Jays well within the margin of error of their eighty-eight-win ZiPS projection (ZiPS is, of course, inherently conservative). Nobody would care, surely, if the Blue Jays only won, say, eighty-five games, but, after squeaking into the playoffs (not that I have any confidence that eighty-five wins would do it, but nevertheless . . .) went on a bit of a run, maybe to the ALCS -- would that be enough? Would people not be so sour and down about it all then? Because man, I have found people sour and down about it all over these last few weeks, and particularly throughout the "rough patch" the culminated in the surprising (to me) and sad (to me) dismissal of Charlie Montoyo. Fundamentally this is a "shame on me" situation for reading what sour people who are down about it all have to say about the Blue Jays when all anyone could ever need is right here on baseballfeelings.blogspot.com but I do like to go to the reddit, sometimes; I am weak in this regard. And such is the (fairly minor) price of the Blue Jays being good, I suppose: the full sporting attention of the country turns in their direction, especially after the Leafs get bounced (the first few weeks of The Blue Jays Internet after the Leafs are out [how do you know it's spring haha] are just brutal every year, to be fair; not just this year). I've got to say, I'm fairly optimistic, even if the AL "playoff picture" has been complicated by the Mariners winning fourteen in a row (my old pal Nick, a loyal M's fan, is concerned that the team has peaked too soon, an absurd thing to worry about unless they were your team in which case it is the only thing you would be able to think about) and the AL East itself has been complicated by the Orioles' twelve-game streak that got them up to the .500 mark. In another sense, the AL East of course remains enormously simple, in that it is clear that that Yankees will win no fewer than a hundred games, and quite possibly a whole bunch more than that, and so three fairly worthy teams (Boston, Tampa Bay, Us Guys) who, at the start of the season, seemed themselves reasonable contenders for the AL East title, will be left scrambling to avoid being getting musical-chaired right out of it (if it wasn't for the Mariners this would be so easy! [I hear that they may have peaked too soon, though]). In short, I guess you could say, the addition of one more Wild Card spot is totally having the desired effect (and indeed affect), in that it is keeping every team at-or-near the .500 mark very much in the thick of things, or at least feeling that way, which is honestly pretty fun! It has leant an awful lot more excitement to the huge Mariners and Orioles winning streaks than there might otherwise have been, and I assume whatever is going on in the National League is . . . very good also (I honestly haven't checked). Something that could conceivably separate the Blue Jays from the second-half pack, a little, would be to trade for Juan Soto whilst not even really giving up that much, which is a path I would be pleased to see them pursue; but at the same time, I find I am possibly as concerned about maintaining "the vibe" as much I am about winning ninety-plus games? Is that reasonable? Not really? And yet.

If you will indulge me further (and it is totally fine if you would rather not), I thought it might be neat to check in with the Blue Jays first-half fWAR leaders, and note what their performance thus far would scale to over a whole season, and see how closely this all lines up with our impression of how things have gone. Often it can be a little different! Brad Pitt (and arguably Billy Beane) famously did not want to watch the games, as they can themselves be misleading (how curious that is!). A reminder that 0 fWAR (the "f" is simply for FanGraphs; I have no quarrel with bWAR, in which the "b" is for "Baseball Reference"; and in a sense these are all footnotes to VORP, I suppose) indicates the value of a "replacement level" player, a shifting theoretical construct of a guy, a freely-available minor leaguer or bench player of a sort that any team can pretty much just grab at minimal cost; a league-average player contributes about two wins above replacement; four wins is more or less an All-Star (hey, topical); and six wins or above would be varying levels of MVP (Babe Ruth had fifteen once; maximum-enhancement Barry Bonds was at or above twelve a few times). So that's the scale, really: 0 is replacement level; 2 is average (there is a lot of value in "average"! if everybody on your roster was a two-win player you'd win like ninety-five games! [a "replacement-level team" would win like 43, that is more or less the baseline from which most of these models operate]); 4 is really good; and 6 or higher is legit MVP stuff (Vladdy last year was 6.3; Ohtani was 5.1 batting/fielding but another 3.0 from pitching [no big deal]). So let's have a look at that leaderboard! (Please note I am just multiplying by 1.74 to scale each player's fWAR-to-date to a full season amount, cuz of how much of the season is left, and then putting that in parentheses after; it is pretty sophisticated.)

1. Kevin Gausman: 3.7 fWAR (6.4 scaled to a full season)

That's more than I'd have thought! Gausman started the year nearly unhittable, walking no one and allowing no home runs for what felt like ages, and the FanGraphs version of WAR measures the fielding-independent "three true outcomes" of homeruns, strikeouts (and pop ups on the infield, which are converted to outs at a nearly identical rate as strikeouts [think about it]), and walks above all other matters (whereas the Baseball Reference version is more like, here are the runs that were scored, now let's work backwards and figure out who is to blame [I respect this also]). Gausman was particularly amazing by those three measures, and then he seemed to be tipping his pitches for a bit and got utterly shelled, and now he seems to have settled in? On the whole, a remarkable first half, but with remarkable variance, too.

2. Alejandro Kirk: 2.9 fWAR (5.0 scaled to a full season) 

Though "All-Star-starting-catcher Alejandro Kirk" now seems entirely obvious and I dare I say almost natural, you will perhaps recall that it was not even a sure thing that he would stay up with the team in the early going, as the Blue Jays are catcher-rich and Kirk didn't have the hottest camp, or start. But at this point I honestly would not be surprised if he outperforms his first half in the second, as he's been hitting everything the last little bit, and the Blue Jays will not face the same calibre of pitching in the second half (way less velocity, for one thing, not that Kirk has show any real problem with velocity [even now before I have finished this sentence he has singled once more to right field {not really}]).

3. Alek Manoah: 2.3 fWAR (4.0 scaled to a full season)   

It is striking how much more fWAR likes Gausman than Manoah, but there is no doubt, I don't think, as to who is (I think rightly) understood to be the Blue Jays ace (as opposed to their "Ace" [Ace]) these days. If the Blue Jays are comfortable enough in their playoff position in the final week of the season (if I/they/we are spared), and are able to truly "set" their rotation for their first-round series, it would be a surprise at this point if the first game fell to anybody but Manoah, right? Hard to imagine!

4. George Springer: 2.2 fWAR (3.8 scaled to a full season)

It is strange to say about your leadoff-hitting All-Star CF who is getting paid $25 million a year (or thereabouts) and had his own jersey-giveaway on Canada Day, but I feel like George Springer is nevertheless a little under-the-radar? Does that make sense even slightly? I find him a lovely guy, also. 

5. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 2.0 fWAR (3.5 scaled to a full season) 

Not a repeat of last year's MVP-were-it-not-for-the-inescapable-fact-of-Shohei-Ohtani season, but if "big year" Vladdy is 2021, and "down year" Vladdy is batting cleanup at the All-Star Game, this is going to be a lot of fun for as long as it lasts (some are saying "forever").  

6. Santiago Espinal: 1.7 fWAR (3.0 scaled to a full season)

I think everybody who watched the Blue Jays closely last year felt that Santiago Espinal was a likeable fellow (Dan Shulman says he is as well-liked as anyone in the Blue Jays clubhouse [imagine it]) and probably a useful piece off the bench on even the best version of the 2022 Blue Jays you could imagine, but I don't think even the staunchest Espinal partisan (my grown-up friend David's wife Brenda) would have envisioned an All-Star appearance (he made a few nice plays in the ASG itself, too!) and a three-win-or-so season. A tenth-round pick, if I'm remembering right? Awesome. We love it. Go Santi. Go Espi. 

7. Bo Bichette: 1.6 fWAR (2.7 scaled to a full season)

A five-win season when you're twenty-three-years old is maybe the gift and the curse? Bo seems to be largely fine now (that low and away stuff though, man . . .) but struggled so badly early on that he sits at exactly a league-average hitter by wRC+ right now (literally 100). I am both hopeful that he'll be better but not all that worried about how it has gone, honestly. Much like Bo Bichette, I have enormous confidence in Bo Bichette going forward. It's interesting to note that his baserunning, which was amazing last year both to the eye and by the other measures afforded us, has fallen off hard this year. No idea what that means! I am, for real, shocked and appalled to see people throwing Bo's name around in their speculations about a Juan Soto deal. They have not considered the effects this would have on the nation's daughters. 

8. Matt Chapman: 1.6 fWAR (2.7 scaled to a full season)

Like Bo Bichette, Matt Chapman is a league-average hitter so far this year pretty much exactly (102 wRC+). Curiously, by the numbers, his defense is nowhere near what it has been over the years in Oakland, and I am not calling those measure into question when I say that what it has felt like is that Matt Chapman has been awesome over there, and a treat to watch, and I am feel like third base is just a totally solved problem for us these next few seasons.

9. Ross Stripling: 1.6 fWAR (2.7 scaled to a full season) 

Ross Stripling! Hoss Stripling! There are times when it feels like Stripling is exactly what is missing from the Blue Jays bullpen, but he has been so good as Hyun-Jin Ryu's replacement in the starting rotation that one can scarcely mind (do get on the horn for more guys though, Ross Atkins [Hoss Atkins?]. 

10. Teoscar Hernandez: 1.5 fWAR (2.6 scaled to a full season)

Teoscar Hernandez, whose smile is the sun, has started to worry me, not because I am concerned about what he brings to the team (I think he is so neat, and brings so much), but because he is entering the part of his career where he has earned fair compensation at precisely the same time it is being revealed, probably, that he is not (in an ongoing sense) the four-win player he was last year. Even barring a Juan Soto-level event, I wonder if right field is where the big left-handed bat everybody thinks the Blue Jays need will end up? Sometimes, I worry; sometimes: I worry.

11. Lourdes Gurriel Jr.: 1.1 fWAR (1.9 scaled to a full season)   

Famously streaky, Lourdes is streaking famously this last little bit, and things are looking just fine. It's easy, as a fan, to assume that the bad performance you've seen is the aberration, and the hot streak is the real thing, which is why I have chosen to do precisely that in this instance. Gurriel will probably set career highs in batting average and OBP, though the lack of power (just five home runs so far) has been pretty weird. His haircut has gotten even cooler this year, and I'm not sure that has received the attention it deserves.

12. Cavan Biggio: 1.0 fWAR (1.7 scaled to a full season)

Cavan Biggio, who has scarcely played due to injury, has nevertheless posted a .350 OBP whilst playing five positions (four, if you consider DH less a position and more a designation [aren't they all though?]). Together, I am convinced, we can -- and indeed must -- defeat Keith Law.

13. Danny Jansen: 0.8 fWAR (1.4 scaled to a full season)

A broken teensy little hand-bone is the latest thing that has kept Danny Jansen out of the lineup, but in his twenty-three games this season he has hit seven home runs and has a 139 wRC+; it has been bananas. Jansen and Kirk could easily combine for six wins out of the catcher position, and even if they don't, it's still my favourite season of Blue Jays catching ever, surpassing even the Greg Myers-heavy 2003.

14. Adam Cimber: 0.6 fWAR (1.0 scaled to a full season)

At this point it is probably worth noting that Wins Above Replacement does not handle relief pitching particularly well at first glace, in that a totally useful and helpful season out of the bullpen can often end up right around the seemingly marginal figure of "one win," which does not seem all that useful or helpful. But it is! Hall-of-Fame closer Mariano Rivera, for example, with whom no one's problem could ever truly be, averaged 2.1 fWAR per season over the course of his unassailable career. So when we see that Adam Cimber, with his improbable 8W-3L record out of the pen ("twenty-game-winner Adam Cimber" will be a hotly-pursued Baseball Mogul goal of mine going forward), is headed for about one win this season, we might do well to contextualize that by saying that he is about to put up about half of the value of an average Mariano Rivera season. And that's awesome, man, great job.  

15. Yimi Garcia: 0.6 fWAR (1.0 scaled to a full season)

To its great credit, the "Literally Us, the Toronto Blue Jays" reddit recently featured a post correctly titled "Yimi Garcia's Baseball Savant page is high key insane." I have been doggedly ride-or-die on the subject of Yimi Garcia since the day he arrived and am not so much glad that others have seen the truth of him as I am relieved for them. 

16. David Phelps: 0.6 fWAR (1.0 scaled to a full season) 

A steady veteran presence putting together one of his strongest seasons at age thirty-five? I am all for it! Was weird to see him without much of a beard the last few times out though (I look forward to him turning that around in the second half). 

17. Jordan Romano: 0.5 fWAR (0.9 scaled to a full season)

Absolutely nothing but love for our lanky closer from Markham, and twenty-three saves (against three blown [it feels like more, but they are always unduly heavy]) is an awful lot for the first half, but man oh man has be been making me nervous lately! I felt very pleased to see him named to the All-Star team on the final Sunday before the break, though I did not mind at all that he did not pitch the ninth, as I found myself actually pretty invested in the AL win, and had a dark vibe.

18. José Berríos: 0.4 fWAR (0.7 scaled to a full season)

Never would have expected this one. Although he's at seven wins and four losses, for those of you still into the ancient measures (a dwindling cohort), there's no way to look at this as anything other than the worst season of José Berríos' career, which is a total drag, as he is a perfectly classy guy, an earnest cap-tipper of another time. A couple of strong starts just before the break were promising, and it would be unshocking to see him put it together and salvage something out the second half, as he has proven eminently coachable, but this has on the whole been tough to watch. Pete Walker please help if you are able. 

19. Gabriel Moreno: 0.2 fWAR (0.3 scaled to a full season)

Not even twenty games in (MLB) The Show (22) for Moreno so far but he looked good enough in them that one would almost expect him to be the centrepiece prospect of any truly big deal the Blue Jays are able to pull off before the deadline (not like bullpen help, but like big-left-handed-everyday-bat, or last-year's-Berríos-deal type stuff). Kirk and Jansen are so good and young enough that you might as well stick with those young-yet-proven players and get the most out of Moreno's trade value now -- it's probably not going to get any higher, right? 

20. Tim Mayza: 0.2 fWAR (0.3 scaled to a full season)

Our best lefty out of the pen, and one whose recent struggles honestly came totally out of the blue for me. It is as though the Charlie Brown energy he has so long projected has become real on the level of performance? Has he manifested it?

21. Julian Merryweather: 0.2 fWAR (0.3 scaled to a full season)

He's on the sixty-day injured list now, so it is not like it is even going to come up again anytime soon, but I find myself incapable of any kind of emotional or even physical comfort when Julian Merryweather is pitching; it is a vibes nightmare for me. I can't explain it; it is not rational. Obviously, people who are infinitely wiser than I am in such matters have every expectation that he will put it all together and really be something special, and when that happens I hope that my vibes are able to catch up with that new reality, but they've got a long way to go (the vibes do).

22. Zack Collins: 0.1 fWAR (0.2 scaled to a full season)

Zack Collins has been a pleasant number-three catcher when he's been up (sometimes) who bats from the left side (always) and posts "W" on Twitter after every Blue Jays wins (reliably). Absolutely no complaints. 

23. Gosuke Katoh: 0.1 fWAR (0.2 scaled to a full season)

DFA'd but not forgotten! A super likable guy, and everyone was very pleased he was able to make the team and have his moment. He's in Syracuse (it will always be a Blue Jays affiliate in my heart!) for the Mets these days.

24. Hyun-Jin Ryu: 0.1 fWAR (0.2 scaled to a full season)

As I have mentioned more than once, I have enjoyed watching Hyun-Jin Ryu pitch more than I have enjoyed watching any Blue Jays pitcher ever, and I truly hope he is able to return to form after his season-ending elbow surgery and put together at least a few good months next summer, leading into a worthy final act of his career, whether that's in Toronto the rest of the way, or somewhere else after 2023. He'll be thirty-six by the time his contract ends, so who knows, but it has been so much fun to have him here, and his signing ahead of the 2020 season was such a great signal that those rough couple years were over, and that it was time to think about winning again. When his season ended, they had a graphic on the broadcast that showed that in Ryu's forty-nine career starts as a Blue Jay, the team had won thirty-two of them, which is even better than I would have guessed. 

25. Max(imo) Castillo: 0.0 fWAR

A 3.38 ERA in his seven games with the big squad? And he's twenty-three? Let's see what he can do! I'm excited.

26. Matt Gage: 0.0 fWAR

He's back down in Buffalo despite just the two runs in thirteen innings pitched, I think maybe just because he has a bunch of options left? But I feel like we could use him. We are a little lean on lefties out of the pen!

27. Vinny Capra: 0.0 fWAR

Also down in Buffalo now. I think he was up after Téo pulled a muscle on that swing in Yankee Stadium? That'll probably be the only time he's up this year, barring calamity (oh no).

28. Bowden Francis: 0.0 fWAR

I am forced to admit that I do not recall Bowden Francis or the two outs he recorded this season but I am sorry to see that he has been struggling in Triple A since heading back down. 

29. Anthony Kay: 0.0 fWAR

Anthony Kay's FanGraphs page is giving me nothing but Runtime Errors and if I were Anthony Kay I think I would get my agent on the horn about that immediately. 

30. Shaun Anderson: 0.0 fWAR

Shaun Anderson, too. We gotta get that straightened out, fellas.

31. Otto Lopez: 0.0 fWAR

Otto was up for a week and made one appearance in the outfield. Didn't even get an at-bat!

32. Jeremy Beasley: 0.0 fWAR

Beasley still has some options but is nevertheless still up with the club despite his ten fairly rocky innings so far. I am often perplexed by which guys more or less at the margins of the bullpen stay up, and which get sent down. This is a longstanding perplexion on my part, one spanning decades, actually, now that I reflect on it. 

33. Andrew Vasquez: -0.1 fWAR (-0.2 fWAR scaled to a full season)

With journeyman Andrew Vasquez (currently ankle-injured), we enter the grim portion of the roster whose contributions come in below replacement level, which makes us sad. It cannot help but remind us, however, of the eighteen-year, nearly two-thousand-game career of Blue Jays legend Alfredo Griffin (whose Baseball Reference page we used to sponsor, when they would still let you do that; we address it here), who was paid $6,582,742 to produce precisely one win below replacement over those many seasons. Which makes us happy.

34. Trent Thornton: -0.2 fWAR (-0.3 fWAR scaled to a full season)

I am honestly surprised to see Trent Thornton, who has seemingly been on the mound all season, in negative territory, but I was also surprised to see him option to Buffalo two weeks ago, so there is no reason to trust any of my perceptions as regards Trent Thornton.

35. Raimel Tapia: -0.2 fWAR (-0.3 fWAR scaled to a full season)

Here we see where the utility of Wins Above Replacement falls flat, in that it fails to capture how rad and arguably essential Raimel Tapia is, flying around out there, taking monster cuts, launching the few home runs he does hit improbably far, having awesome braids . . . the people demand him! He is our favourite fourth-outfielder ever! I see that he is actually only at 1.1 fWAR for his entire seven-year career thus far, so things could well be trending towards an Alfredo Griffin-level triumph of the spirit here.     

36. Bradley Zimmer: -0.2 fWAR (-0.3 fWAR scaled to a full season)

Zimmer's 32 wRC+ is about as poor as it gets, but a singular skill (he is absurdly fast) has made him a very useful player off the bench.

37. Thomas Hatch: -0.3 fWAR (-0.5 fWAR scaled to a full season)

I don't even remember Thomas Hatch pitching this season, so imagine my surprise to learn that it was earlier this very month! It is a fairly wild to accumulate (or I suppose decumulate) -0.3 fWAR in a single appearance, but looking at his line from that day it seems he allowed ten runs on twelve hits (three home runs!) in less than five innings of work against Tampa oh wait I remember this one: it was game two of the Vlad-and-Dad Bobblehead Day double header, an utterly grim spectacle. Poor Thomas Hatch. Everybody was hurt. That was brutal. 

38. Trevor Richards: -0.3 fWAR (-0.5 fWAR scaled to a full season)  

Before he got hurt (though I hear he is now better!) Trevor Richards was like a b-team workhorse out of the bullpen, like, things aren't going well; we'll get 'em tomorrow; here comes Trevor Richards. That's a valid rôle. You need a guy like that.

39. Casey Lawrence: -0.4 fWAR (-0.7 fWAR scaled to a full season)

Ah, the other half of that brutal Vlad-and-Dad doubleheader: much was asked of Casey Lawrence when he relieved Kevin Gausman after that liner to the shin in the early going, and things went pretty well before they went badly? Lawrence has been used as an innings eater when there have been no other options, and that could happen in the second half as well I suppose, but his ERA of 8.04 is gonna make that tough. 

40. Taylor Saucedo: -0.4 fWAR (-0.7 fWAR scaled to a full season)

Shelled in four appearances (13.50 ERA) and then onto the sixty-day injured list with a bad hip is a rough first half for "The Sauce Boss" (trying to make that one happen).

41. Yusei Kikuchi: -0.6 fWAR (-1.0 fWAR scaled to a full season)

"Yusei Kikuchi breaks your heart," anti-union Yale president who refused to divest from apartheid South Africa/short-lived (R.I.P.) Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote. "He is designed to break your heart. He begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and he blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, he stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on Yusei Kikuchi, rely on him to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, Yusei Kikuchi stops." Yusei Kikuchi is at once a man, and an almost unspeakable sadness. I hope he finds his slider.  

The second half of that list was sobering, but I think maybe important? Those players represent half of all Blue Jays to have worn the uniform this year, and it is worthwhile, I think, to remember that for every Bo Bichette or Vladdy that you do not have to worry about in any way (I do not mean as players right now so much as as people), there are all kinds of guys spending their twenties bouncing around between leagues and not necessarily setting themselves up for an easy time in their thirties? I don't want to dwell on that but I do want to consider it, if only for a moment.  

But a second half that I hope is not at all sobering, though, is the second half of this 2022 Blue Jays baseball season! And there is a chance that it might not be! Were I a gambling man (which I am not, despite the many entreaties of Cabbie from TV) I am honestly not sure I would place much of a wager on the Blue Jays season ending in the way I am hoping it ends (ninety plus wins and a nice little playoff run!), but I would "bet the house" on my enjoying at least a very good portion of it, and I hope this is true of you also. Okay off to Boston! Unless those games are in Toronto! No I just checked! They're in Boston! Let's go! 

KS 

2022 Game Ninety-Three: Blue Jays 4, Royals 2

 

bring it: on in

I have always found the last series before the All-Star break to be the most emotionally fraught of the whole season, for whatever happens within its bounds, you cannot help but carry with you beyond those bounds and indeed pretty much into the whole week, or at least until the season resumes the Friday after -- an unnatural length of time to have to sit with, say, a series split against a Kansas City squad that had left nearly half of their roster at home because they were scared of needles, or whatever (plus Sal Perez was legitimately hurt [love you, Sal; get better, man]). But thanks to Alejandro Kirk's two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth (I am checking to confirm that it was Vladdy who was aboard and . . . yes, it was Vladdy who was aboard) we were spared that pretty dark fate, and can be reasonably content taking three of four to head into the break not only in sole possession of a playoff spot, but arguably in sole possession of the finest first-found playoff spot of them all: the one where you get to play Minnesota (I am still of the view that sixth is better than fourth or fifth! change my mind!). Earlier in the day, Jordan Romano was named to the AL All-Star team, joining Santiago Espinal, Alek Manoah, George Springer (declined), and starters Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Alejandro Kirk. That probably felt pretty good the morning after he gave up the tenth-inning homer that made him visibly sad! For me, this game was a radio-only affair, and I was in a bit of a rough way for it, but Ben Wagner's call helped me through. The days of Jerry Howarth have come and gone, but Ben Wagner makes me feel that loss less acutely than I otherwise would. He does a good job, and we're lucky to have him. 

KS

2022 Game Ninety-Two: Blue Jays 6, Royals 5 (F/10)

 

Raimel's slide was both i) unnecessary and ii) so necessary 

Just when I thought I had completely lost what little capacity I ever had to enjoy extra-innings Blue Jays baseball, here come four straight hits in the bottom of the tenth (Vladdy [to whom they pitched!]) off the wall to score Springer; Raimel up the middle; Bo through the left side; Téo through the left side to win it) to bail out Jordan Romano, who had allowed a two-run homer in the top of the inning and made himself really sad (you could see it). A thrilling win, celebrated with great vigor in our kitchen as we stood gathered around my computer phone (the tiny kitchen TV of our era, I suppose), a little weary from our own baseball exploits earlier in the day, but nevertheless. Spare a thought for poor Royals reliever Joel Payamps, who was ours last year, but theirs this year, and who was just left out there on a lonely island while all this happened: no mound visit, nothing. ("Good luck with it out there, Payamps; let us know how it turns out," is one approach to coaching.) A wonderful finish on a lovely afternoon in front of forty-thousand fans; probably as good a day as you'd ever think to have at a ballpark.

KS 

2022 Game Ninety-One: Blue Jays 8, Royals 1

 

tell 'em, Devo

This was much more along the lines of what one might hope for: against the super-depleted Kansas City Royals, Alek Manoah totally cruised whilst Teoscar Hernandez and Matt Chapman each hit three-run home runs. Okay; good; okay. My favourite moment in this game that consisted pretty much entirely of pleasant ones came in the bottom of the third, when twenty-three-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr. singled off thirty-eight-year-old Zack Greinke, and then chatted about it for a sec with fifty-nine-year-old Devon White, who has been coaching at first base in Mark Budzinski's absence. I liked it because it brought together the three fairly distinct eras of my most intense baseball enjoyment: the World Champion Blue Jays of the early nineties, for whom Devo was a fielder of unusual elegance (and jumping); the 2002-2006 period of my almost fanatical SkyDome attendance, when Zack Greinke was a promising young starter who would worry me; and obviously Vladdy, who is of now. I just thought it was neat!

KS

2022 Game Ninety: Royals 3, Blue Jays 1

oh no

This is rock bottom, right? A 3-1 loss against a Kansas City Royals team so depleted by anti-vaccine foolishness (ten players, three coaches couldn't get across/return from the border) that they are effectively the Omaha Storm Chasers? (No diss, go Chasers.) Kevin Gausman was totally fine, but the bats did embarrassingly little, and by the time Anthony Banda, of all people, took the mound in the ninth inning of a one-run game (soon to be a two-run game!) it felt like John Schneider was maybe low-key conceding that it just wasn't happening. Which it sure wasn't! 

As bad as it gets. I felt sad about it.

KS

2022 Game Eighty-Nine: Blue Jays 8, Phillies 2

 

Teoscar Hernandez, whose smile is the sun

It had to have been an odd day for everyone all around, but on the field and in the dugout Wednesday night, the Blue Jays seemed as merry a band as it might please you to see. And why wouldn't they be, I suppose, as they scored six off the very fine Zack Wheeler on the strength of home runs from Vladdy and Téo (who added another one late, too), while Ross Stripling cruised through seven innings in which the only trouble came on two unearned runs in that final frame (of his). Two hits, no walks? Yes please. Tim Mayza pitched a clean eighth inning for the second night in a row, but the 8-2 margin meant that, rather than Jordan Romano, the ninth fell to Trevor Richards, who struck out the side to wrap up the two-game sweep of the Phillies. And what could be gleaned of new manager John Schneider's approach? Well, he put the hit-and-run on twice, and it worked out both times; Raimel Tapia and Bo Bichette each stole a bag, too. Maybe we are hard-hustling speedsters now! Vladdy will be so happy!  

KS

2022 Game Eighty-Eight: Blue Jays 4, Phillies 3

 

more like "Go"-sé Berríos

I would much prefer to just be like, hey José Berríos struck out thirteen through six (no Blue Jay had done so previously [really, not even Clemens? {no not even him}]), and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. went four-for-four to the extreme delight of the guy behind home plate in the full pineapple costume, and the Blue Jays won a close game it felt like they really needed after that miserable road trip; but, instead, the day after this fine night of Blue Jays baseball was utterly marred (that's right utterly marred) by the announcement that the kind and humane Charlie Montoyo had been relieved of his duties (I didn't feel relieved at all! I felt upset!). I had certainly seen people calling for this move, but I had determined them to be mean, and considered it a settled question. Andrew Stoeten, formerly/forever of the Drunk Jays Fans blog, ran a big piece a day or two before that he introduced thusly: "Should the Blue Jays fire Charlie Montoyo? No. Ah, but WILL the Blue Jays fire Charlie Montoyo? Also no. OK, now that that’s settled, let’s talk about it!". This was how I felt about it, too, thinking that it would be out of character for this front office to make this move at this time, both in the sense of the recent real-life tragedy that the team was dealing with, but also, to return to the realm of the trivial (this is to say "of baseball"), it is an uncommon thing to fire one's manager in the second half of the season (even if the All-Star Game does not arrive until next week, this is where we are) when one's baseball team is in a playoff position. But they did, and honestly it was all handled as well as these things can be, with a perfectly fine press conference in which Ross Atkins offered more thoughtful answers than you might expect to questions that were, at times, more thoughtful than you might expect, too; and then, a little later, there was John Schneider, for whom everybody is rightly glad, but it was weird (for him too, obviously). The national-level baseball writers had some initial "Montoyo is a lovey man who had lost the room a little" takes, after which a number of my least-favourite Toronto writers were like "yeah we definitely knew all about that for sure, even though none of us reported it." In an article you can read here, the ever-ready Kaitlyn McGrath goes through everything with characteristic equanimity, and it all makes sense, and I recognize (and appreciate) that the deservèd promotion of John Schneider will not mark a major shift in terms of team culture/vibe/hugging, but I don't know, man, I'm just not thrilled about any of it. Ross Atkins offered less guidance on how to talk about all of this with your young daughters than I would have liked, honestly. 

And so we say goodnight to the Charlie Montoyo era. 

KS

2022 Game Eighty-Seven: Mariners 6, Blue Jays 5

 

flippin' it

George Springer hit the first pitch of the ballgame into the seats in left (hey!), and grounded the final pitch of the ballgame softly back to the mound (oh no). In between, there was much to enjoy (further home runs from Bo Bichette and, if you can believe it, Raimel Tapia), but also some stuff that was just a real pain, man, like for example when what should have been a picture-perfect 1-2-3 DP to end the fifth ended up with a ball going right through the webbing of Vladdy's glove (something I have never seen happen in a baseball game ever before it happened earlier this season [also to Vladdy], and now I have seen it twice [it's been two different gloves!]) for a two-run error. The final blow came on another eighth-inning Carlos Santana two-run homer, just like the night before (he hit one earlier in the afternoon Sunday, too), and again it was just like, well, fine. So ends the series sweep, and the one-and-six west coast road trip. 

As the venerable Scott Carson, thirty-year third-man-in-the-booth on Blue Jays telecasts, noted on twitter: "1 win in their last 10 was something that no one saw coming, especially after taking the first 2 of the 5-gamer from the Rays to start the Canada Day weekend. They had the 3rd best record in the AL, the best in the Wild Card. That now seems like a month ago, not 10 days." All true! The only thing that has saved their bacon, to the extent to which their bacon is still redeemable (and I do believe that it is), is that both the Red Sox and Rays have played nearly as poorly over the last ten days, and the Blue Jays are only a game behind Tampa Bay for the second wild card spot, and only two-and-a-half behind Boston for the top one. What complicates things, though, is that the Mariners have now drawn even with the Blue Jays for that final playoff spot, with Cleveland and Baltimore only two games further behind. I correctly predicted (publicly, thank heavens) a four-game Orioles streak of the Angels, and Baltimore is now but one meagre game below .500, and, with eight straight wins, are as hot as any team in baseball (along with the Mariners, also winners of eight straight [ask me how I know]). Can you imagine and AL East with all five teams over .500? That would really be something! When MLB added the third wild card spot, it looked like any team in either league that was at or near .500 was going to be more or less in contention, and so far this season that has very much proven to be the case. Which is fun! And yet also not, in the particular circumstance we find ourselves presently. It is perhaps odd that, given my principled opposition to all playoffs (162 games is plenty), I nevertheless do spend a little while each day fretting about the wild card standings. This is likely to continue. 

KS

2022 Game Eighty-Six: Mariners 2, Blue Jays 1

 

you can't even especially mind it

Do I like that timeless switch-hitting slugger Carlos Santana (no relation) ripped an eighth-inning, two-run homerun off yung ace Alek Manoah, besting George Springer's solo shot that opened the scoring just one inning previous in this Manoah/Ray pitcher's duel (more like a pitchers rule [both guys rule])? No, certainly not; but I respect it. A somewhat runaway afternoon nap following a (thoroughly successful but necessarily intense) morning of 13U/16U and 5U/7U girls' league baseball coaching meant I was well-positioned to listen to this west coast game all the way to the finish even if it hadn't been the brisk affair that it was. Earlier, uponst TV (or the stream of it), it was nice to see Robbie Ray again, his pants a little less tight than I'd remembered, his grunts slightly less guttural. He was sure fired up when he got out of bases-loaded, nobody-out jam early! I definitely felt the opposite way about it! But good for him. He's been a whole lot closer to a league-average pitcher than I am sure he would like to be this season with Seattle, but he did not appear league-average on this occasion. Tremendous vibes all night from a sellout crowd of 41 210 that seemed split pretty much right down the middle, almost like a big soccer game but without any truly menacing "ultras." The Blue Jays and Mariners are 1977 expansion cousins and I have long maintained that we should all be friendly friends together. 

KS

2022 Game Eighty-Five: Mariners 5, Blue Jays 2 (F/11)

 a broken bat doesn't have to be a metaphor
but it also doesn't have to not be a metaphor

"It’s easy, and it’s seductive," Toni Morrison once wrote, "to assume that data is really knowledge. Or that information is, indeed, wisdom. Or that knowledge can exist without data. And how easy, and how effortlessly, one can parade and disguise itself as another.” Surprising no one, Toni Morrison has perfectly articulated the reasons why Apple TV+'s baseball broadcast stinks, and is bad. Luckily, the little "real-time probabilities" they constantly post in the corner of the screen are such a ridiculous parody of actual analytics that they are funny to me (haha) and I am not at all upset about them (haha) or bothered to distraction (haha). Heroic FanGraphs lifer Ben Clemens has gone into the specifics here with admirable thoroughness and specificity, and I invite you to peruse his findings at your leisure (he doesn't even get into the problem that, earlier in the evening, plagued Milwaukee Brewers viewers specifically: the Apple TV+ score overlay blocks out beloved Brewers superfan Front Row Amy completely [imagine a Blue Jays broadcast that obscured Home Plate Lady, or Geddy Lee]). So, even before Lourdes Gurriel kind of booped a ball over the fence with his glove for a Mariners homerun (like *boop*), or Sergio Romo gave up the eleventh-inning three-run home run that ended it, this one wasn't a whole lot of fun to watch. Another nice start for Ross Stripling, though!

KS

2022 Game Eight-Four: Mariners 8, Blue Jays 3

 

we needed more like this

Though I welcome all instances of "the opener," as it manifests strategies previously known only to the cloistered realms of simulation baseball (Baseball Mogul, Out of the Park, etc) into the primary world of our experience, it would be hard to characterize Thursday night's pairing of the recently-waivered Anthony Banda (the opener) and the recently-recalled Casey Lawrence (the bulk guy) as anything other than a low-key seven-run disaster ("low-key" in the sense that it is a baseball game, which mitigates the risk of true disaster significantly). The worst part, aside from all the runs, is that Banda and Lawrence combined for only three innings, leaving five for Romo, Richards, and above all young Max Castillo, who has actually looked pretty promising, if you set aside how the first two batters he faced in the Major Leagues both hit home runs (it was the Yankees; it was a dark time). Roughly a zillion Blue Jays fans in the stands at the lovely Seattle ballpark, which I still think of as "the new one," but which even the most cursory internet searching reveals to have opened in 1999. They were pretty stoked! Despite it all! 

KS 

2022 Game Eighty-Three: Blue Jays 2, Athletics 1

 

it honestly didn't even get out by all that much

La Makina! This is how I felt, and something I may well have low-key exclaimed, watching José Berríos' ridiculous hard curveballs "miss bats" in this 2-1 Blue Jays win to end what was, I think for all of us, a disturbing five-game losing streak. I have not gone back to check if this is exactly the case, but my impression of José Berríos' starts this season is that they have followed a pretty strict bimodal distribution, if I am using that term correctly, in that individual José Berríos starts only rarely approach his mean performance, but instead, he is either amazing, on the one hand, or, on the other, he has just a brutal, brutal time out there? It is all thesis and antithesis; when will that moment of synthesis arrive? Maybe he could just like give up three runs in six-and-a-third for a bunch of starts in a row and we'll see how that works out? For everybody? It wouldn't have been enough in this one though, I suppose, as all the Blue Jays managed were the solo home runs for Matt Chapman (who played very well in his return to Oakland [he did not seem especially nostalgic when asked about it; he was certainly polite, but really no more than that]) and Bo Bichette (who swaggered out of the box on a squeaker). I see now that those were the thirteenth home runs of both Chapman's and Bo's seasons, and I bet they would both like to pick up the pace just slightly in the second half (thirty home runs is not all that much better than twenty-six home runs and yet thirty home runs is is also enormously better than twenty-six home runs). Adam Cimber got six enormous outs in the seventh and eighth, and Jordan Romano, who we have not seen much of lately, struck out a pair in a clean bottom of the ninth. I have just now seen that Berríos' six innings of one-run, four-hit, one-walk baseball brings him to exactly 0.0 fWAR on the season (which is better than his -0.4 bWAR). That's good! That's okay! We're out here building!

KS 

2022 Game Eighty-Two: Athletics 5, Blue Jays 3

 

oh no

I went to bed with the Blue Jays down a pair, but with two on and nobody out in the sixth, Vladdy due up next. How, you might well wonder, could anyone go to bed in that circumstance? Well, there was a pitching change, and it was already a million o'clock, and I decided (extra innings style, actually) that if it turned out that Vladdy, say, hit a rocket into left-centre and I missed it, I would be happier that it happened than I would be sad that I missed it, and if he did not, say, hit a rocket into left-centre, but I stayed up for it, I would feel a fool. It is also possible that I was already worn down not just by the unreasonably late hour, but by the intolerable sadness of Yusei Kikuchi, who walked, I believe, four of the first eight batters he faced, and whose night ended in the third, having allowed four runs on just two hits but five walks and two hit batters. He had no idea where it was going, except right into our sad feelings. It's hard to believe they are going to be able to keep on running him out there every five days. It would be simpler if he was battling some low-key injuries ("left arm tightness" can indeed mean a lot of things), but he is by all accounts totally well. Despite his previous start, in which we were all so happy for him, Yusei Kikuchi does not look like a major league pitcher right now, and it is probably time to find out if young Maximo Castillo or even journeyman Casey Lawrence can give you better innings until Yusei Kikuchi can be helped.   

KS

2022 Game Eighty-One: Athletics 5, Blue Jays 1

 

that feeling when you realize your "fake" tag-up play at third
has actually worked (first time ever)

If gives me no pleasure to see the once mighty Oakland Athletics (their late-1980s excellence was a major feature of my baseball youth [let's bash]; their Moneyball-era exploits were also fun [who could forget Moneyball Day at the SkyDome? {we were the only ones that called it that and the Blue Jays were crushed}]) brought as low as they have been by ownership and management that is not just frugal, but now, finally, openly hostile towards their few remaining fans and customers, who, it would seem, now number about two thousand or so, if you count how many people are actually showing up to their awful coliseum (the Raiders ruined it before departing for Las Vegas, I guess). (Trading away all the best players while at the same time drastically increasing season-ticket prices? It's never been tried before; let's see how where this takes us.) I have friends to whom Oakland Athletics baseball matters dearly, I want them to be happy. That said, as sympathetic as I may be to their present and seemingly irrevocably lowly position, I have no interest in seeing the Oakland Athletics beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-1 -- always, but especially today, as we begin the always perilous west-coast swing. The late start time coupled with the necessity of finishing the Stranger Things 4 finale meant that I only really caught (baseball term) the first inning, but it was more than enough: Alek Manoah's first went groundout (hey great); walk (it happens); single (can't be mad about singles); hit by pitch (uh oh); and then a run scored on a popup to shallow centre field, no problem at all for George Springer except that his throw missed Alejandro Kirk like ten feet over and ten feet up in response to a totally standard bluffed tag-up from Ramon Laureano at third (Laureano could not believe it worked; you could tell he could not believe it). A batter later, when Elvis Andrus (hey I remember that guy!) doubled home a pair, the Blue Jays had figured out a way to allow three runs in the first inning against a team that is averaging 2.4 runs per home game this season (AL lows in OBP, SLG, and, if you can believe it, also OPS). Dark, dark stuff for a fourth straight loss.

AND YET where do we stand, where do we really stand with precisely (exactly) half of the season behind us? At a perfectly good 44-37, a game ahead of last year's halfway mark (which ended, you will recall, in the Blue Jays seventh-ever 90+ win season [91]), good for a winning percentage (per-mille) of .542, which, carried over a whole season, would amount to 88 wins, although of course one must allow for the fact that the Blue Jays played the AL's (and indeed all of baseball's) toughest first-half schedule, and plays the AL East's (though not the AL's, full-stop) easiest schedule the rest of the way, and could reasonably be expected to pick up a few more wins in the second half than in the first. So, for all the ups (transcendent) and downs (genuinely crushing), more or less the first half you would expect of a team you would hope/expect (hopespect) to win right around ninety, right? In my efforts to maintain perspective, I revisited Dan Szymborski's preseason ZiPS projections at FanGraphs to find that yes, I was remembering it right: ZiPS projected the Blue Jays at 88 wins for the season (just like the Rays, Red Sox, and Yankees, in fact), and a 58.9% chance of making these strange (not a diss) new playoffs. The midseason ZiPS projections, just posted, have the Blue Jays once more at 88 wins, with playoff odds now at 74.5%, the certainty rising as the most dire scenarios (the Blue Jays losing their first 81 to open the season, for example) fall by the wayside. I accept that, in the face of a pretty dark little four game losing streak, there is an aspect of the "im not owned!  im not owned!!" Dril tweet to all of the above ("i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob," that august tweet continues), but this is honestly how I feel about it. Are the 2022 Toronto Blue Jays the team that won four out of five against the Red Sox and Rays? Or are they the team that lost four straight to the Rays and Athletics? I would argue that they are exactly both, and that this is neither remarkable nor unusual in any way, because they are, crucially, a baseball team, and this is what baseball seasons are like (like cats, I suppose, all baseball seasons are weird, but weird in different ways, and ways that you can never quite foresee). I am not owned (yet).  

KS    

2022 Game Eighty: Rays 7, Blue Jays 3

 

me too, Vladito; me too, man

Okay: okay: really, what we had here really was a four-and-four homestand against Boston and Tampa Bay, both of whom we recognize to be good teams, and likely playoff teams; indeed(s), the kind of teams against whom you only ever really hope to go more or less .500. By any reasonable standard that is not a bad homestand! And yet it cannot help but feel like one when you drop the last three games of it, including both halves of a doubleheader in truly walloped fashion (we have addressed this previously and so I will not belabour the point). Things seemed to be ticking along just fine on Sunday until Ross Stripling's tough fifth inning turned into Trent Thornton's brutal fifth inning, and the next thing you know it's six runs. The Blue Jays managed just three, in the end, on their eleven hits (they had like four walks, too; everybody got on; that wasn't the issue). Yikes, certainly, and yet: the Blue Jays ended this day, as I believe they have ended every single day thus far in this the 2022 baseball season of baseball, in a playoff position; and if you are like "but there are more playoff spots than ever now" I would counter only "yeah so pretty cool right?" (even though in my innermost heart I feel that 162 games is more than enough to determine who was good; abolish all playoffs). Of course we have needs -- bullpen needs -- but who doesn't? The rumored "Danny Jansen to Detroit for a couple of good relievers" deal would fix that in an instant, and if that one doesn't materialize, something suitably like it surely will (Jansen is a good player of whom I am certainly fond, but Kirk and Moreno seem untouchable, and you only get to have so many catchers on the field at any one time [for now]). Where I choose to focus my attention presently is on how the Blue Jays schedule from here to the All-Star Game is actually super soft (at least in terms of the teams they play; less so in how much traveling they have to do without any breaks) in that they have fourteen games altogether against Oakland, Seattle, Kansas City, and Philadelphia, only the last of which is a pretty good time, but one that has also recently lost Bryce Harper to I believe a broken thumb on a Blake Snell HBP. What if we went ten and four over them! Or even just like eight and six? Okay, actually, eight and six. 

KS 

2022 Games Seventy-Eight and Seventy-Nine (Saturday Doubleheader!): Rays 6, Blue Jays 2 (Game One); Rays 11, Blue Jays 5 (Game Two)

 

Vladimir Guerrero attempts to embody the the joy we all feel
whenever we remember what it was like to watch
Vladimir Guerrero play baseball,
but comes up just short

Oh, that Vlad & Dad Bobblehead Day should come to this: an effectively endless doubleheader thrashing at the hands of the Rays, in which the finest Blue Jays performance of either game came, probably, from journeyman Casey Lawrence, whose five-and-two-thirds innings of six-run relief after Kevin Gausman went down on an exquisitely painful comebacker to the shin in the second salvaged the day slightly for a bullpen that has struggled of late and which is probably not super thrilled about eighteen games in seventeen days. It was noted that this was only the fifth doubleheader played in Toronto since the SkyDome opened in 1989 (in a sense, it is kind of surprising there have actually been that many?), and it was pleasant to have that much Blue Jays baseball unfolding in the background of a lovely in-and-out summer Saturday, but on the whole I think I could have done without the whole thing, maybe? That makes it sound like I minded this much more than I did, but just objectively, this was not super! And yet the deep strangeness of a five-game series (I honestly don't remember one ever before [but have not checked]) means that all was by no means lost on Saturday, except for "all of the games the Blue Jays played on Saturday," which were of course extremely lost.

KS