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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
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