2023 Game Fifty-Four: Blue Jays 3, Twins 0

 

he got this one! okay!

José Berrios was pretty much in La Makina-form Sunday (and has been much of the season, really), which probably mattered to him extra on account of pitching in Minnesota, which he used to do pretty much all the time (or at least half of it, I suppose): no runs on four hits (though five walks isn't none) in very nearly six innings will do it! Richards, Swanson and Romano took it the rest of the way, and all run-preventionism was helped on this day by some fine defense, much of which came from Daulton Varsho, who made an important leaping catch at the wall, and also threw a guy out at third with his really very good arm (he was a catcher!). Varsho also performed the rare feat of scoring from first on a single, though we must qualify this still-neat feat by noting that the batter-runner in this instance was Alejandro Kirk, who lofted a little Texas-leaguer with a four-percent hit probability into shallow-most centre, and for whom the hustle double does not exist (or perhaps for whom all doubles are hustle doubles?). In any event: scored from first on a single! Way to go! 

And now back home for Milwaukee, which means the great gift of the great Bob Uecker on the (pretty great) MLB Radio service you can get through computers / phones / computer phones. As a Blue Jays fan, you only get so many games called by Bob Uecker. Let us treasure them, and him.

KS 

2023 Game Fifty-Three: Twins 9, Blue Jays 7

 

oh no

The turning point in this one may well have been when a ball booped right off of the glove of Daulton Varsho and over the centre-field wall (Varsho slid over from left when Kiermaier left the game with a back thing). Or maybe it was the home run that came immediately after? Hard to say, really. After the game, Chris Bassitt would tell all who might listen that nothing was working for him even slightly: he had no life on anything, in his own account, and couldn't put anything where he wanted it to go. Makes for a tough day! Not for Bo Bichette, though, who homered again, and also tripled, and may well have singled too, I think (okay I'll check: yes, three-for-five, four RBI). I did a little bit of postgame FanGraphs perusal, and found that, barring a complete collapse the rest of the way, by the end of the summer Bo Bichette will probably have three of the five best seasons by Blue Jays shortstops by fWAR, the other two of course belonging to the great Tony Fernandez (number one in our programs, number one in our hearts). In terms of total value so far this year, he is far, far outstripping Vladdy, who is really struggling (for him), and is plainly taking it to heart. Vladdy is really at the emotional centre of whatever it is we've got here (and I maintain what we've got here is a team that can win ninety games! let's go!) and it is hard to see him saddened. He is usually such a merry guy. 

KS 

2023 Game Fifty-Two: Blue Jays 3, Twins 1

 

swing: and a drive

Despite the worst baserunning calamity we'll probably see all year—Springer exceedingly hung up between third and home on a groundball to the drawn-in Carlos Correa; Vladdy caught dangling off of first an instant later—another strong start from Kevin Gausman and homers from both Bo and Kevin Kiermaier (who made a pretty wild baserunning mistake at third, too) made this one a strangely untidy 3-1 win (a score that implies tidiness as much as any baseball score can). I'll take it though! Because of how bad we've been!

KS 

2023 Game Fifty-One: Rays 6, Blue Jays 3

 

this happened so many times

A couple of late runs once again made the final score look respectable (the Rays, despite their overall super excellence, will probably look for a couple more bullpen arms as they put the finishing touches on this championship-seeming roster), but this one was over early, because Alek Manoah is just not a good pitcher this year, and to just a brutal extent: if you just go with simple ERA, Manoah is the fifth-worst pitcher in baseball of those who have thrown any real number of innings, and if you look really any deeper into the numbers than that, he is quite plainly the worst. The very worst one! Many agreed that Manoah had outperformed his underlying numbers so far in his career, but nobody saw anything like this coming (regression to the mean, man; to the mean). I don't know if this is the most frustrating part to Manoah personally, but to the viewer, the most unwatchable aspect of all of this (or the least watchable, I suppose) is Manoah's inability to do anything at all about the running game, just letting the pitch clock tick down to two or one on every pitch. The runners just take off with these incredible jumps, and Alejandro Kirk, who is squarely average at throwing out baserunners (which is fine to be!), has no shot against jumps this nasty. And it takes Manoah so many pitches to do any of this. To me, and this is easy to say at a distance, and not dealing with actually real live people, it is to the point where he needs to skip a start or two, whether that means a phantom IL stint or really just whatever. Trevor Richards, who pitched three spotless innings of relief, and whose change-up is fooling just about everybody, is a much, much more viable pitcher than Alek Manoah right now, and a scheduled "bullpen day" with Richards as a designated three-inning guy would make a lot more sense to me than the next Manoah start, and honestly might be the more humane option for all involved. 

Despite the low-key horrors of this deeply improbable last two weeks, the way the pitching lines up in Minnesota this weekend, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the Blue Jays swept: perhaps I am merely a fool, but we're missing the top of the Twins' excellent rotation, and we've got Gausman, Bassitt, and Berios going. Even two-out-of-three would be fine! But I wonder if a series loss would put John Schneider on pretty thin ice, especially when you've got Don Mattingly sitting right there next to him. Until things fell all to HECK at the start of the Yankees series, the John Schnieder Blue Jays had the best record in baseball since the day he replaced Charlie, but things can happen pretty fast. I believe we're two "players-only" meetings into this slide so far. Three would seem like a lot?   

KS

2023 Game Fifty: Rays 7, Blue Jays 3

 

true; true

It was the one-hundredth start of Yusei Kikuchi's career, which is a nice little milestone for him, certainly, but otherwise a drag: five runs in five innings on eight hits and, let's be fair, just two walks, and he really has improved in that respect this season, even if his last several starts have not ripped to the extent that his earlier ones this season did. This is such a rough stretch! Of bad baseball! By the Blue Jays! And they're the team I like! 

KS

2023 Game Forty-Nine: Blue Jays 20, Rays 1

 

What, Me Vladdy?

This one was already over before the nine-run ninth, but I must admit that I enjoyed the nine-run ninth all the same. Of all the great fun to be had in this one—and we needed it!—the most fun was for sure Vladdy first striking out on one of first baseman Luke Raley's 52MPH soft tosses (you can hit that when you're twelve! often!), and later crushing one to left for a grand slam. I feel good for Vladdy; I feel good for Luke Raley; I feel good for everybody. 

KS

2023 Game Forty-Eight: Rays 6, Blue Jays 4

 

Bo: forlorn

Four unearned runs on Vladdy's first two errors of the season? At this point the Blue Jays are coming up with entirely novel ways to lose. It's pretty dark! A pair in the ninth gave this one a respectable final score, and it would be totally reasonable to be like, how bad can a two-run loss to the best team in baseball really be? The answer, it turns out, is really pretty bad!

KS

2023 Game Forty-Seven: Orioles 8, Blue Jays 3 (F/11)

 

well said imo

Plenty of blame to go around in this one, certainly, but I really think it was the five-run eleventh that did the Blue Jays in on Sunday. It's very hard to come back from those! And so ends a truly miserable week of Blue Jays baseball: a four-and-six homestand isn't objectively horrible; it is merely objectively bad; and yet this all felt horrible. The one-and-three series loss to the Yankees was a drag, but a drag that was lightened by the series sweep of an excellent Atlanta team that preceded it. But dropping all three to Baltimore is deflating, even if the Orioles now have the second-best record in all of baseball (I spent all of last season telling all who would listen that they they were not a bad team, but never would I ever have expected this). Ah well, on to Tampa Bay! That's where everybody goes to turn it around! 

KS

2023 Game Forty-Six: Orioles 6, Blue Jays 5

 

well that ain't good

When one is the closer, there are no good times to give up a three-run home run, I suppose, and to be fair to Jordan Romano, this was only the second home run he's allowed so far this season. But a 5-2 lead turning into a 6-5 loss with a single swing of the bat (with two strikes!) is a dire happening, man, just a dire happening.  

KS

2023 Game Forty-Five: Orioles 6, Blue Jays 2

 

the size of it, more or less

An "Apple TV Exclusive" spared me the video evidence of Yusei Kikuchi's lightly-troubled Friday night start, and of the extent to which Eric Swanson got cooked in the eighth, but word (spoken, printed) reached me all the same. I know they can't all be series sweeps of Atlanta, but golly, gee, guys, this is starting to feel like a problem! 

KS

2023 Game Forty-Four: Yankees 4, Blue Jays 2

 

more of this, please

José Berrios pitched into the seventh and was charged with three earned runs, which probably should have been enough to win it, but the Blue Jays came up short with the bases loaded and nobody out in the bottom of the seventh, plating (plating) just the one run on Vladdy's pinch-hit sacrifice fly to go with Bo Bichette's first-inning home run. Aaron Judge homered again, and came within inches of doing it one more time (he was eventually determined to have doubled) before leaving town, and I believe they said that Aaron Judge has now hit more home runs against the Blue Jays than any other player ever, like in the almost fifty years of Blue Jays baseball that there have been. I think it has been enough times and he should stop.

KS

2023 Game Forty-Three: Blue Jays 3, Yankees 0 (F/10)

 

every four days or so Jano likes to walk 'em off (just for yucks)

A pitcher's duel that ends on a walk-off Danny Jansen three-run homer in the bottom of the tenth? Seven scoreless from a flu-weary (or something) Chris Bassitt? Yimi, Mayza, and Jordan Romano doing yeoman's work out of the pen? That sounds like an awful lot to like! And yet this game was agonizing right up until the instant it ended, with the Blue Jays hitting into double plays in the sixth, seventh, and eighth, and although I don't think they did in the ninth, I remember that inning getting me down, too. I take considerable comfort in this year's new, more balanced schedule that will rid us of Yankees games until the fall. Just one more to go before then. I can do this. I think. Maybe.

KS  

2023 Game Forty-Two: Yankees 6, Blue Jays 3

come on man

Kevin Gausman was really good, as we have come to expect, and Keirmaier, Bo, and Vladdy put together a nifty little three-run fifth, but neither Swanson and Bass could hold it together in the late innings, and this testy series between testy teams feeling testy is testing my patience for testy baseball! I have seen more than one person argue that this feels like playoff baseball, and wouldn't it be great to see these two teams do it again in the playoffs . . . nope! It's not for me! I am not even in much of a mood to cackle about how Domingo Germán was ejected for having super sticky hands, and will no doubt get another ten-game suspension. You'd think I might be! But no.

KS 

2023 Game Forty-One: Yankees 7, Blue Jays 4

 

two large men

I guess it's no longer accurate to say that I'm worried about Alex Manoah, as that would imply more uncertainty than exists: he has not pitched well this season (not even in the spring), and his underlying numbers suggest that things seem likelier to get worse than better going forward; functionally, he's our number five starter this year, and that's probably just how it's going to be? And it's not necessarily all that bad, in that Gausman, Bassitt, Berrios, and Kikuchi have been really good, and yet it necessarily is that bad, in that it remains just brutal to watch Manoah suffer out there. Whatever's going on, it's not for lack of caring! This one was a mess, and the Blue Jays' (legitimately delightful, do not mistake me!) four-run eighth makes the final score more flattering to the home side than was deserved. Brutal!

KS     

2023 Game Forty: Toronto 6, Atlanta 5

 

without this little looky-lean from Jano
I am not sure this ball gets through

After two days of unmatched crispness, this game was just full-on rumpled, with fielding errors, baserunning miscues, and just a whole different feel than anything that had preceded it in the series. And yet, after Yusei Kikuchi's shaky start (five runs, four of them earned, in four innings; seven strikeouts and no walks, but three home runs), the "low-leverage" elements of the bullpen (Bass, Jackson, Richards, and Pearson) held a strong team scoreless in the five innings that fell to them. With the bases loaded, winning run on second, two away in the bottom of the ninth, Danny Jansen is probably not be the Blue Jay you would most like to see at the dish given his slow start to the season, but he got the job done (good for him!), guiding a ball through the left side, not so slow a roller that it could be scooped up by the shortstop, but just slow enough a roller that the left-fielder didn't have much of a play as the speedier-than-you'd-think Matt Chapman came sliding home for the win. What a game! What a series! The Yankees are in next and I feel pretty good about it except for how Alek Manoah is starting the first game! What a miserable time he must be having so far this year. And yet Yusei Kikuchi remains undefeated? Baseball's funny.

KS

2023 Game Thirty-Nine: Toronto 5, Atlanta 2

 

we do no leap headlong into second base
because we have to; we do it because we must

Vladdy leaping into second on a hustling double; George Springer diving to make a nifty, run-saving catch in right field; a double steal; three stolen bases for Whit Merrifield; the small-ball manufacture of runs generally . . . this game was just crisp, somehow crisper still than the 3-0 honey of a game the night before. José Berrios seemed disappointed to have been taken out of the game with two outs in the sixth, but he did a very fine job against an excellent lineup, their only runs coming on a two-run Marcel Ozuna home run a strike away from the inning's end. Yimi, Swanson, and Romano allowed just a walk and a hit (altogether!) taking it the rest of the way. Just a first-rate performance from a team that is looking a whole lot better than the louts that dropped two in Philadelphia! I am of course kidding; I never thought the guys were louts. I like the guys a lot.

KS  

2023 Game Thirty-Eight: Toronto 3, Atlanta 0

 

it's all fun and games until somebody feels too cold

I was pretty sure it had been a while since a Blue Jays starting pitcher had thrown a complete game, but I would not have guessed that it hadn't been since Marcus Stroman in 2017, nor yet that the last complete game shutout was Mark Buerhle's in 2015. Just two hits! And two walks! Chris Bassitt did such a great job! And he pretty much had to, as the well-thighed, mustachioed Spencer Strider was really good, too, with just the two runs (only one earned). Daulton Varsho's late solo home run probably helped John Schneider makes his decision to send Bassitt back out there, but even so, it's not what I expected him to do. Happy to have been mistaken!

KS

2023 Game Thirty-Seven: Phillies 2, Blue Jays 1

 

I hear you, Vladdy

One assumes much would have been made (I deliberately have not checked) of Bo Bichette's game-ending error on what should have been a tenth-inning-ending double play after Tim Mayza's nifty snag (way to snag it out there, Tim), but let us not overlook that the Blue Jays' only run came on a solo home run from Brandon Belt, and we are not going to win games where the only run is on the board because of Brandon Belt. Nor too (neither too?) should we overlook Jordan Romano's high-wire act in the ninth—a minor miracle that he only allowed the one run to tie the game, I suppose, given his struggles in that ill-fated frame. I choose instead, because it is a long season, to focus on Vladdy's fairly remarkable play after Bo's throw went wide to corral the ball and fire a strike to Danny Jansen to even make it close at the play. Great job, Vladdy! And good try, everybody! Let's win a bunch of games against Atlanta this weekend even though they're pretty good! 

KS 

2023 Game Thirty-Six: Phillies 8, Blue Jays 4

 

and yet no

A nice game for Bo Bichette—a home run, a double, looking really cool—but another rough outing for Alek Manoah, who has totally flipped places with Yusei Kikuchi this year, hasn't he? It's been since pretty much day one, too: his velocity was down in spring training, and despite the occasional promising inning, it hasn't really come back. Hard to feel good about it! The Blue Jays kept it close until the bottom of the eighth, when Trevor Richards was perhaps asked to do too much. Also, I must note, that despite not being one to really second-guess managerial decisions (I don't really find it fun to do), I was not wild about pinch-hitting the still-visibly-ill George Springer for Daulton Varsho because the Phillies brought in a lefty. It might have been a neat time for one of those Varsho drag bunts! But no. 

KS

2023 Game Thirty-Five: Blue Jays 10, Pirates 1

 

flourishing

Guess who pitched a four-hit, two-walk shutout into the seventh, and is now one of only a handful of pitchers in either league with six wins so far this season (pitcher wins are a bogus stat but not today they're not)? That's right, your favourite guy Yusei Kikuchi! Yimi made things awfully ticklish for a minute there in the eighth, but Jordan Romano bailed him out of it just as niftily as you like, and then the bats went as bananas as Yusei Kikuchi's glove was last season (you may recall that it looked like bananas): Varsho hit one into the Allegheny, Kevin Keirmaier hit one nearly that far, and Brandon Belt—who is the Blue Jays hottest hitter now, somehow—ripped one off the wall that may have been the hardest hit ball of the inning but ended up a slightly absurd single (it happens). It's hard to believe Whit Merrifield's three-run shot in the third was his first home run of the year, isn't it? It feels like he's been doing great! Which he has, but just not in this particular way (until now [let's go]). A much-needed sweep after the long disaster of Fenway Park! I am so pleased this one was delayed by rain until I was finished at judo! 

KS 

2023 Game Thirty-Four: Blue Jays 8, Pirates 2

 

this is a little unusual but thanks everybody

There were enough Blue Jays fans—indeed there seemed to be several thousands of them—at the ballpark in Pittsburgh that José Berrios had no real option other than to low-key tip his cap and acknowledge the crowd beyond the first-base dugout as he walked off with the lead with one away in the seventh. It was weird, but worth seeing! Bass (who is on thin ice), Mayza (who has been quietly excellent thus far), and the Blue-Jays-débuting Jay Jackson took it the rest of the way hitlessly, but this one was never really in doubt after the four-run first and three-run third. Brandon Belt, of all people, had two doubles and two walks, which is the kind of thing I like! Add in some doubles from people you tend to expect them of (Bo, Chapman, Kirk) and you've really got something. Vladdy, alas, was on the bench with that same old "left wrist discomfort," and with an off day Monday, Dan Shulman speculated that they'd probably just give him the Sunday afternoon off, too, and see how he feels Tuesday (sounds good to me). If everybody else keeps hitting like this, let him take the week. Whatever he needs!

KS

2023 Game Thirty-Three: Blue Jays 4, Pirates 0

 

excuse me pardon me excuse me sorry

All of a sudden the Pittsburgh Pirates are a fun, exciting young team that runs like the wind. And yet at times they are also heedless! Consider Friday night, when they ran into three outs through the first four innings. Chris Bassitt, who looked perhaps very modestly shaky in the first, but who was on the whole fantastic afterwards, gladly accepted these proffered outs as a kindness. Beyond that, Vladdy singled in a Bo double, Varsho knocked in a Merrifield double (Merrifield had three stolen bases!), and George Springer hit a very badly needed (for him personally) two-run home run. I welcome and approve of Chris Bassitt's decision to allow just four hits (and four walks, in fairness) over seven shutout innings. The next time he so chooses, he will also have my full support. A great night, and everything always looks better on that gem of a ballpark in Pittsburgh, maybe the nicest on in either league? At least on television and in MLB: The Show (which can be quite revealing!).  

KS

2023 Game Thirty-Two: Red Sox 11, Blue Jays 5

Raimel Tapia speed

The earlier judo start times for the summer months (the university summer months [half of which are spring]) should have kept me tucked safely away from the worst of this one, but the earlier-than-you'd-figure first pitch meant that this one still found me. The call kept coming from the other room as I did the dishes: "Two-nothing Boston. No, three. No wait: it's four-nothing Boston. Five now." It didn't really get much better than that. Throughout this total drag of a five-game losing streak, the bats have done their part (for the good, I mean!), but the starting pitching, which had just wrapped up possibly the best ten games or so that Blue Jays starters, as a group, had ever managed (like going all the way back! to 1977!), has been dreadful, and the all-of-a-sudden-overtaxed bullpen hasn't been great. The net result is that we have been knocked down to fourth place in the AL East, spared the indignity of the basement only by dint of the injury-plagued Yankees (that's a kind of dint). I am not panicking, or even actually worried: this recent horrible stretch still has us on pace for ninety-one wins over the long season, and the Blue Jays are neither as good as they looked when they won six in a row, nor are they as bad as they have looked losing five similarly (in a row). My concerns are not long term, or even medium term, but rather immediate term, in that I would like the Blue Jays to win several of the games immediately before them (which happen to be in Pittsburgh this weekend—beautiful ballpark! surprising team!) for no other reason than it marginally improves my already really very good days when the Blue Jays win their baseball game upon them, these already very good days. Let's make them even better, guys!  

KS

2023 Game Thirty-One: Red Sox 8, Blue Jays 3

there was, at least, this

As much I enjoyed Vladdy's four-hundred-fifty-foot home run that cleared not only the Green Monster, but indeed Fenway Park itself, and landed well onto the street, I have no further desire to be placed in the position of enjoying Vladdy moon-shots in losing efforts! It actually feels pretty bad! The Blue Jays came into this game, I believe, second in all of baseball in the worthy defensive measure of "defensive runs saved," but by either modern or traditional defensive metrics, they kicked it around pretty brutally Wednesday night. We are all of us well aware, I am sure, of the extent to which errors can be a misleading statistic, but there's no getting around four errors yeah four of them in a single game. What a weird stretch of bad baseball! Pitching and defense have vanished! I am sure they will return. But it is a drag until they do!  

KS

2023 Game Thirty: Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 6

 

and yet I am relatively carefree 

Spared, as I was, Yusei Kikuchi's early-inning troubles by my responsibilities to the noble art of 講道館柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō, and, later, spared too Colton Wong's eighth-inning home run (off of Eric Swanson) by our decision to revisit Paul Brickman's Risky Business (1983), I can't honestly complain about this one too much, really? All I caught was the Blue Jays' six-run fifth, which unfolded as I drove home from the gym. Great job, guys, as far as I perceived! 

KS

2023 Game Twenty-Nine: Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 5

 

these things: happen

I am less concerned with Alex Verdugo's walk-off home run than you might expect (maybe even than I'd expect?): Jordan Romano is a good pitcher, and Verdugo is a good hitter, and he got ahold of one. So it goes! (And indeed so it went.) Some argue against bringing your closer in on the road before you have the lead, but I don't feel that way, especially. The pitching move, or lack of one, that confused me last night was that, rather than accepting the miracle of José Berríos somehow only having allowed two runs through five innings (despite the Red Sox really squaring up any number of his pitches), John Schneider not only left him out there to start the sixth (understandable), but kept him in once he'd allowed first a solo home run to tie the game at three (okay maybe now?), then a walk to Casas (okay for sure now I bet!), before the go-ahead two-run home run to Emmanuel Valdez (guys guys guys: guys). It's more or less always the case that there are guys in the bullpen that you assume are unavailable but that turn out after the game to have been unavailable, so maybe it was that kind of situation?  Either way, the sixth was a drag! The Blue Jays left the bases loaded in the seventh, which was a shame (colleagues stranding colleagues), but the most notable part of this particular shame, to me, is that left-handed designated hitter Brandon Belt was lifted in favour of the pinch hitting Alejandro Kirk against the right-handed Chris Martin. Alejandro Kirk, with his OBP over .400, is the guy you want up there in that situation over pretty much anybody, no question, and yet would you not agree that if you are pinch hitting for your left-handed designated hitter against a righty in a "high leverage" moment, then in a sense you do not have a left-handed designated hitter, exactly? This would seem to me to be the case! This is pretty much the best start the Blue Jays have ever had in team history, and so this is all fairly trivial, at-the-margins stuff, but Brandon Belt has had a really, really poor month to start the season, and I am of the mind that there are better options just a couple guys over on the bench (prove me wrong though, Brandon, please; everybody thinks you are a swell guy still). The Red Sox kicked the ball around pretty marvelously in the eighth to let the Blue Jays back into this one: Kiké Hernandez made a great play at short (he can play pretty much wherever!) to open the inning, but made two throwing errors (like in the very same inning, poor little fella). We were back in it for the ninth, but not really as a manifestation of our virtue, so maybe that's why the walk-off didn't sting so bad? 

Anyway, a totally engaging game, all told. Bo Bichette's five-for-five night, his second of the season, was fairly absurd, his three-run shot over the monster particularly so. With George Springer a late scratch with what was described as "a viral illness," everybody just moved up a spot, and I like the idea of Bo Bichette: Leadoff Hitter very much indeed. When Springer comes back, which one hopes is as soon as today or tomorrow, maybe ease him back into the lineup in like the fifth spot? Again, the Blue Jays are playing so well, like as well as they ever have to start the season, that it is probably just silly to have these little concerns about lineup construction, which is a fairly trivial matter over the course of the long season, but I have several different baseball simulators on the very computer through which we are speaking this very moment and cannot really help who I am in this regard. Not anymore.

KS

2023 Game Twenty-Eight: Mariners 10, Blue Jays 8 (F/10)

 

he just really felt that last one caught the corner, is all

That this great big delightful (for a while!) mess should follow a day after the crispest of one-nothing, ten-inning affairs is so baseball; I love this for baseball. Chris Bassitt very nearly got out of the first inning with no trouble at all, but after getting fairly significantly squeezed on a 2-2 pitch with two away, his inning fell apart thusly: walk, walk, hit-by-pitch . . . oh no I think that's a grand slam okay yeah that's a grand slam (oh no). However! The Blue Jays came roaring back! RBI Matt Chapman double! Four-hundred-sixty-foot Bo Bichette three-run homer to straightaway centre (on a changeup ["I think Bo was sitting changeup right there, Dan" is how it would have played out had I been on colour commentary yesterday, but I was not so called). Before you knew it, the Blue Jays, who had been down 4-0 about as early as possible, were up 8-4, and this seemed like as merry a triumph as you're likely to see. But Trevor Richards, over the course of his two innings of relief, gave up a solo homer to the returning Téo (who was well received throughout the series, just as one would not just hope but expect, as he was a fun player and a seemingly good dude also), which is in and of itself no problem (we do not get upset about solo home runs), but Anthony Bass continued to pitch both poorly and, relatedly, briefly (he has definitely dropped to the lowest-rung of the bullpen arms, and not just because Trevor Richards has really done quite well so far), and, by the time it got to Cal Raleigh's two-run shot in the top of the tenth, it was just, like, well fine. It's hard to be bothered by a single loss in a six-game homestand, but when it's the last game of it, and one where you were up by four, and it's extra innings, and your last three batters after Espinal (who booted one earlier [cost us a run!]) struck out were Springer (single!), Bo (strikeout), and Vladdy (lazy fly ball to centre), it does rankle. It probably shouldn't! But I will admit to having been rankled.

On to Boston, and a Red Sox team that has not been great, but apparently has been scoring a lot of runs? As they play many of their games in Fenway, that might not mean all that much, I suppose. Let's find out! 

KS

2023 Game Twenty-Seven: Blue Jays 1, Mariners 0 (F/10)

I would not enjoy how it is cold

It was certainly the right call to walk Matt Chapman to pitch to Daulton Varsho after Vladdy had ripped a single so rippingly into centre field that Bo Bichette (who runs well enough!) was rightly held up at the third base. You're going to want the force out at the plate for sure, and you're going to bring the outfielders in so close that they'll have a shot at the runner (Bo!) tagging up from third on a fly ball . . . the Mariners are not fools! They did all these things correctly. But Varsho ripped one well into right field on the first pitch, and there you go, the Blue Jays third hit of the day was the one that ended it. Kevin Guasman's thirteen-strikeouts over seven scoreless innings sure helped out along the way, I think it's fair to say, and Pop, Romano, and Swanson struck out six more (no hits!). These last couple weeks have just been unreal for pitching: the starters have been going so deep into the games (by contemporary standards) the bullpen has not been called upon to do all that much (by contemporary standards) but have exceeded any reasonable expectations we could have had of them (even by contemporary standards [bullpens are so good now {the good ones, anyway}]). 

Six in a row! Give straight this homestand! Only one more to go! Chris Bassitt! The hound on the mound!  

KS 

2023 Game Twenty-Six: Blue Jays 3, Mariners 2

 

Does Alejandro Kirk have the second-most athletic
swing on the team? Behind Bo Bichette? I think so maybe?

We are hearing less about it this season, I suppose probably mostly because it lacks the thrill of novelty, but Alejandro Kirk has been going great, and actually has been a better hitter so far in 2023 than he was throughout his All-Star 2022 season (at least relative to his season-ending 2022 numbers, I guess we should say; he had a pretty hot first half!). This is entirely because of how, despite not hitting for much power, Kirk is getting on base more often (OBP .418 ) than, like, Vladdy (OBP .394 [also excellent]). Plainly, there is a difference between those two sluggers when it comes to actual slugging, but this is not to say that Alejandro Kirk is dinger-incapable, as evidenced Friday night, when ding he did! A rocket to left! Kind of like Vladdy hits! A lot of the time! To speak further as regards Vladdy, witness this image of just how psyched Vladdy was to score from first—or rather how psyched Vladdy was to have a chance to try to score from first—on a Matt Chapman double:

He was like that every instant of his trip around the bases. I felt great for him! And for George Springer, too, who knocked in the go-ahead run in the sixth on his very own replica jersey night (he could really stand to have a few more drop in, couldn't he). Alek Manoah had another one where, even without his best command, it all still worked out pretty well: two runs through five against a good team, you can't really complain, even if it took a tonne of pitches, and meant four innings out of the actually-amazing-so-far bullpen (Mayza, Yimi, Swanson, Romano: no hits, no walks, eight strikeouts).  

Lots to like! Five in a row!

KS