2022 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Nine: Cubs 7, Blue Jays 5

 

that ball's in

"It looked like the Blue Jays might get out of this third inning without the leadoff triple coming in to score, but that turned out not to be the case at all," were words spoken by Buck Martinez as things in the early going went from bad to worse. Not a great start from Mitch White, and though the bullpen picked him up admirably, the Cubs early lead proved non-surmountable despite home runs from Cavan Biggio (a two-run shot to the second deck!) and Alejandro Kirk (a great big three-run dinger to left). The Blue Jays brought George Springer to the plate as the tying run in the bottom of the ninth, which was a pretty exciting thing to do, but he popped unthrillingly to third to end the game, and did not seem wild about it. And so we must content ourselves with the series win, rather than the series sweep, which, combined with the various action(s) on the out-of-town scoreboard, leaves the Blue Jays precisely two games out of the top wild card spot, and no less precisely two games ahead of Baltimore, who continue to play disturbingly well in the first non-playoff position. Actually, after the Thursday off-day, that might have changed a little, I'm going to go ahead and check that real quick . . . ah yes well Baltimore won again, and so the Blue Jays now sit a scant game-and-a-half ahead of the Orioles with thirty-three games to play, with something like twenty-eight of them against Baltimore directly (this is emotionally if not literally true). And that's fine, really: if you can't win, or at least split, a bunch of September games against the Orioles, then I guess you probably shouldn't get to go to the playoffs ahead of the Orioles in October! It all seems reasonable, and yet worrying. I saw a post the other day that noted that this is only the eighth time in their forty-six seasons that the Blue Jays have entered September in a playoff position, and I think the intent of that message was "so enjoy it everybody!" but mostly it just made me kind of tense? In any case, on to Pittsburgh, where we will all enjoy an uncommonly beautiful ballpark and some pleasantly early start-times.

KS