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