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| One side, Gary. |
Got the split! And so unconventionally: in the top of the tenth (extras again! I still don't like them!), vaxxed king Whit Merrifield tagged up on Santiago Espinal's not-that-deep fly ball to Byron Buxton, who has a really good arm, but who had entered the game not long before, and was possibly not fully limbered up? Like just not fully limbered? The throw was very much "on the money" even so, and it took a replay to confirm that Whitt Merrifield was indeed microscopically safe. Emboldened by his previous success tagging up on a ball upon which he maybe shouldn't have (tagged [up {on}]), Merrifield tried it again a batter later as Tim Beckham settled under a Lourdes Gurriel fly ball to really very shallow left indeed. The throw beat him to the plate not by a tonne (Merrifield is as fleet as he is adventurous), but by enough. How fortuitous, then, that Gary Sanchez had totally (and in a sense needlessly) blocked the plate, preventing Merrifield from even having a chance to slide in safely, which is of course against the rules now that baseball has quite rightly decided that it's dangerous and silly to have collisions at the plate (there are those who maintain that baseball should, in this once circumstance, be not just a contact sport but a collision sport, and this is often, in my experience, a take you get from guys who under no circumstance could make it through the warmup at a low-key recreational judo club, for instance, to choose an example of a sport where you go and pretend to fight if you think that sports should be about pretending to fight [my take: some should be; others should not be; guess which kind I think baseball is]). John Schneider mimed the "headphones headphones" motion with extreme prejudice; Rocco Baldelli flipped out when the call was overturned; it was all a great time, honestly. After the game, Merrifield mentioned that he had noticed that this is the way Sanchez always sets up at the plate (illegally), and he decided to force the issue by sliding right into the obstruction, to sort of force the matter as regards the new rules (they are actually not that new I guess, but I am old, and they are newer than me). As one wag noted on the "Literally Us, the Toronto Blue Jays" reddit, Whitt Merrifield does his own research (haha we can laugh about it now but it wasn't super funny before!).
So all of that worked out, in the sense that Jordon Romano nailed down the bottom of the tenth, after having failed to quite nail down the bottom of the ninth, which is really good for Lourdes Gurriel in particular, as he got hung up rounding third and was tagged out in a rundown to brutally end a top of the tenth that could easily have been a bunch of runs instead of just the one. But no matter! Kevin Gausman was once again awesome, and pitched another scoreless six innings (it's been a while now since he has given up a run at all, like two starts plus a bit). Anthony Bass gave us a scoreless seventh, but Yimi and Romano both got dinged for a run each, which is how we got to that tenth inning I mentioned briefly a moment ago. Blue Jays runs were few and far between, but Bo doubled in Téo in the second, Lourdes singled home Biggio in the third, and then Merrifield pretty much stole the game in the tenth. Great fun! And because we won the first and final games of this strangely tense, playoff-seeming set against the Twins, it kind of felt like we won the series? Which I know that we did not? And yet nevertheless.
Off to Baltimore, then, as the Blue Jays tour of my favourite American League ballparks rolls on, for the first of fifteen remaining games against the Orioles. It is something of a pity that the Orioles have been the best team in the AL East since the All-Star break, in that the Blue Jays still have to play them a bunch, but aside from that detail it is a pretty great story. When I looked at the schedule early in the season, these fifteen games against the Orioles late looked super enticing, because not only should the Orioles have been bad, but they should have been so bad that they would have traded all of their remaining good players away at the deadline. They kind of did, actually, even though they are pretty good (that must have been dispiriting -- and it is weird how sparse the crowds at Camden Yards look in the highlights, even on weekend games), and they continue to prosper. Well, I guess we'll just see!
Fifty-four games remain for these 2022 Blue Jays, which seems like an unnotable figure, but it's fully (and completely) a third of the season, and so very much The Home Stretch. Where do we stand? Pretty much where you would hope and expect, I think: with the third-best record in the American League (only the third AL team to reach sixty wins), nine-and-a-half behind the extremely good (and yet fading! since the Gallo trade! think about it!) New York Yankees but in sole possession of the top Wild Card spot, two games ahead of both the Mariners and the Rays in this regard (lurking just two games behind those two: the Guardians and the Orioles). How about the pitching? Well the bullpen looks really good (the loss of Mayza is a drag); Manoah and Gausman look great; Berrios is up and down but has been much better as the season has worn on; some combination of Stripling (who has been great but is now a little hurt), White, and Kikuchi make for a decent back end of the rotation. The pitching should get us there! And the bats? Vladdy is on the longest hit-streak in either league; Gurriel has an even longer streak of reaching safely; Bo is coming around; Kirk just broke a baffling oh-for-twenty or something (he didn't seem to be too concerned about it as he is a steady guy); Chapman has cooled slightly from his homer-every-other-day stretch but that's okay; Springer is going to be nursing that elbow all season but Merrifield is a pretty nifty option when Springer needs rest . . . I just feel really good about the whole situation! If the Blue Jays get even sort of hot again, they could end up winning ninety-plus and coast into the top Wild Card spot; if they play indifferently, they are set up well enough so far that they'll probably still squeak in? Something they may wish to consider, though, is to take dead aim at the New York Yankees and win the whole dang American League East just for funsies.
KS
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