2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty-One: Guardians 10, Blue Jays 7 (F/11)

 

this photo suggests Jansen was even more out than I perceived in real time
(and honestly he seemed pretty out even then [not his fault])

A legitimately crushing loss! This is true of pretty much all extra-inning ones, I suppose, but this one really did feel especially bad. After Yusei Kikuchi battled through a tough start to keep the Blue Jays within striking distance, as Buck Martinez noted, they struck: Davis Schneider homered again, but after the enigmatic Genesis Cabrera and Jordon Hicks held the line through the seventh, Tim Mazya could not in the eighth, yielding a pair of runs. No worry! Schneider will double in the bottom half, Varsho will drive in the run, and after Jordan Romano gets five huge outs, we'll win it in the bottom of the ninth after Danny Jansen hits a ringing lead-off double to get things started! Ah, but no: Biggio's bunt will bounce towards first, rather than third, and Jansen, who had not been pinch-run for (had they used the whole bench already, maybe? with Bichette and Chapman both leaving the game, maybe so . . .), will be tagged out on a nice play from Calhoun to the great José Ramirez. And the tenth won't be a whole lot of fun either, despite Yimi Garcia coming through huge again: Belt, Vladdy, and Springer will each, in their turn, leave Santiago Espinal very much stranded on second base, where he began. In the end, Jay Jackson will give up four in the eleventh, but it was the bats that lost this one, first (and most egregiously) in the ninth, and then (less egregiously but it was still pretty bad) in the tenth. Dreadful, awful stuff.

So where does this leave us? As I noted in a textual message to my pal Jordan, two-and-a-half games back is not an insurmountable situation with thirty-one games to play, especially not with Houston still not looking like the team they were last year, and with the Rangers having recently dropped eight straight (of the Mariners, winners of ten of their last eleven, we shall not speak). The Blue Jays' next twelve games are against teams well under .500, and then they play the Rangers, a scuffling team that they're chasing, for four at home (including a Loonie Dogs night). When you look at it somewhat dispassionately, this all remains entirely possible, and not much has to even go all that exceptionally well in order to put us very much where we would like to be (I will not say "need" to be, as this is a very clear besoins vs désires situation). But just in terms of vibes—on the level of vibes alone—this one felt like we're through. My sincere hope, of course, is that I am just totally mistaken with regard to the vibes, but even the most optimistic among us (which could very well be me!) must have been given pause be the true debacle of these supper-hour Sunday innings. 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirty: Blue Jays 8, Guardians 3

 

our guy, svelte and dealin'

Here we go! Davis Schneider, back in the lineup (why had he been out?), three-for-three with a homer, a double, a single and a walk, and Hyun-Jin Ryu getting it done, and getting bailed out of just a brutal defensive inning (I am sorry to say that I am beginning to believe what the numbers have been telling us about Matt Chapman for a while now) by Yimi Garcia, who once again proved to be (you guessed it) utterly nails. More romps please! Romps just like this!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Nine: Guardian 5, Blue Jays 2

 

hey look it is future Hall-of-Famer José Ramirez, rightly beloved by all

I will sure take home runs from Springer (a rough year for him, aside from the seventeen stolen bases [honestly he must be so proud of them]) and Vladdy (his first in three weeks [which is not great!]), but not only were we outscored 5-2 two by the Cleveland Guardians, what is perhaps even more alarming is that we were out-homered by the Cleveland Guardians, a team that is largely unsluggered. It's just not the type of guy they have! And yet here we are. And yet here. We are. 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Eight: Orioles 5, Blue Jays 3

fair play to him

All five of these runs belonged to José Berrios, but he is still cool and strong and my friend. Old man Kyle Gibson (note that he is nearly ten years younger than me and yet this is still the epithet that best suits him), for his part, went eight full innings before giving way to the flame-throwing Felix Bautista, who is just a truly enormous human, and an excellent closer. And that's a wrap on the season series with Baltimore, I think! I'm not sure how many we lost, but it was sure most of them! I am not even going to take another look at the schedule to be sure that we don't actually have any further games against the Orioles this season, because if it turns out I am mistaken and there are more to play, I'm gonna lose it!

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Seven: Orioles 7, Blue Jays 0

 

even in a down year, that Cedric Mullins is a hell of a player

Do I mind that Trevor Richards got cooked for five runs in the eighth, and thus made a fine hash of Kevin Gausman's strong start? Nope, not one bit! And I'll tell you why! It's because how how we scored no runs on five hits! So who cares! Might has well have allowed five more in the eighth, Trevor Richards! Wouldn't have mattered a bit! I am trying to stay positive (how am I doing?).  

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Six: Blue Jays 6, Orioles 3 (F/10)

 

he does throw pretty hard

Yusei Kikuchi wasn't thrilled to be pulled in the fifth inning (hey you know what? good for him), but John Schneider seemed to be managing the first game of this big series (big fun?) in Baltimore almost as though it were the playoffs themselves rather than the grim march towards them. No messing around! It was Yimi time! From there it went Richards, Hicks, Swanson, Mayza (the whole gang!), and ultimately Romano to close it out after Brandon Belt's two-run home run in the top of the tenth (plus Vladdy sliding home on a wild pitch in that same inning). But the play of the game, and maybe the play of the season thus far in terms of not just its æsthetic merits but of its import in the moment, was Bo Bichette's bottom-of-the-ninth sliding stab at a ball hit sharply to his right and a beautiful arcing throw that hit Vladdy right in the chest for a crucial out (it kept them from pitching to Mountcastle, which is as crucial as it gest). Just a true honey of a play from the Blue Jays' best player by kind of a lot. 

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Five: Blue Jays 10, Reds 3

 

in his 1.89 ERA era

Home runs from Kiermaier, Springer, Bo, and Brandon Belt (two!) turned this one into a much-needed laugher after a pair of tight, taut, and indeed fraught games that had the high-leverage bullpen arms busy. But the biggest laughs to be heard Sunday (not really, but I am trying a thing) were the mirthful ones enjoyed by enjoyers of Hyun-Jin Ryu's super enjoyable curveball, which floated in at speeds as low as 65MPH, and struck out dudes of no less distinction than the great Joey Votto (lefty on lefty, but even so!). After the game, Ryu was asked to grade his curveball on the day, and he said he would give it a ten out of ten. Me too! What an absolute delight.

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Four: Blue Jays 5, Reds 4

 

attaboy attaboy attaboy attaboy attaboy attaboy attaboy attaboy

Another one-run game, but one much more to my tastes! Excellent work from the bullpen (Richards, Mayza, Hicks, Romano) kept Davis Schneider's fifth-inning home the difference the rest of the way. Hey guys great job! 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Three: Reds 1, Blue Jays 0

 

checks out 

When you're playing on the road, you're losing until you're winning, if you see what I am saying (perhaps inelegantly): a tie game isn't really a tie game when you're not batting last, right? This one carried an air of inevitability about it as we entered the late innings, and yep, sure enough, Christian Encarnacion-Strand (great name!) belted a walk-off home run off of Jordan Hicks, and that was that, 1-0. Fine.  

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-Two: Phillies 9, Blue Jays 4

I believe Vladdy speaks for the group

Kevin Gausman is probably not not in the AL Cy Young conversation after getting walloped for seven runs in five-and-a-third against the Phillies, but it sure isn't going to help! Santiago Espinal's error at third base in the fifth felt like the turning point in this one, but maybe the real turning point was when Matt Chapman squished his finger with a dumbbell a few days ago, and so has had to sit a couple out? The Mariners, meanwhile, are lurking with renewed vigour, and sit just a half-game out as the Blue Jays head off to Cincinnati for three. Joey Votto! Always great to check in with him! Would also be good to pick up a couple wins, too! Things are getting pretty ticklish! 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty-One: Blue Jays 2, Phillies 1

George Springer is merry; I'll give him that, certainly

Yusei Kikuchi, the best pitcher in the American League since the All-Star Break, was great again against a still-tough Phillies lineup, and the bullpen behind him (Yimi, Hicks, and Romano) was spotless. All of that is delightful! And so too the first-pitch slider that skipped into Cavan Biggio's foot with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth to plate the winning run. This one definitely had a playoff feel throughout, and especially late, which is to say it was at times really quite miserable. But not right at the end! (So important.)

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twenty: Blue Jays 11, Cubs 4

 

there are a million baseball photos exactly like this
and I love every one of them

Nice work by Hyun-Jin Ryu (so happy to have you back, bro), and five RBI off the bat of Daulton Varsho (a career best!) helped stave off the series sweep but man, overall, this was a rough weekend at a time when it really would be cool to not have those, given the wild card realities at present, which, though not yet dire, are not trending in ways that I would necessarily prefer?

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Nineteen: Cubs 5, Blue Jays 4

 

Joey Bats et al

Guys, guys, guys: don't battle back from an early 4-1 deficit and tie it up only to lose it in the ninth when the Cubs push one across against Jordan Hicks; not in front of José Bautista, in town to be recognized on the Level of Excellence in a fine pre-game ceremony lessened only by how they always do those with the roof closed now to give them darkness for all the video stuff but which hurts the overall feel by surrounding everything in that weird light instead of the brilliant sunshine of, let's say, Tony Fernandez Day in the fall of 2001. Don't do that, guys; not today, of all days. 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Eighteen: Cubs 6, Blue Jays 2

ah hamburgers

In fairness, José Berrios has to be allowed to have a poor start every now and then, but selfishly, I would have much preferred it not been Friday night, against a Cubs team that I recognize has put together a nice little season so far, but of whom I remain somewhat suspicious. But all six runs in this one came against Berrios, and came pretty early. A drag!

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Seventeen: Guardians 4, Blue Jays 3

 

plus he got kicked out

The Blue Jays brought two across in the seventh, and for sure needed a couple more, but left the bases loaded (again). Our RISP woes continue! I believe it is this very specific kind of woe that's making things feel a whole lot worse than they actually are right now. This was a five-and-two road trip, which you would take every time, and the Blue Jays are actually like sixteen-and-five in their last twenty-one on the road, which is obviously fantastic, but the overall emotional situation (which aligns with the material situation) is one of colleagues stranding colleagues. It's been brutal! It doesn't help that the Mariners have won seven straight, and continue to lurk hardly. And so we sit, a game-and-a-half ahead of the Mariners, a game-and-a-half behind the Astros. At least the Mariners have to deal with Baltimore this weekend! That's something!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Sixteen: Blue Jays 1, Guardians 0

 

a splitter, mere moments before it split

Here we go! Back-to-back 1-0 games is a rarity for sure, and how pleasing to have won this one. We turned the game on a few minutes late, and the first image that greeted us at that time was George Springer in the late stages of his first-inning home-run trot. All there really was to watch the rest of the way was Kevin Gausman carving up the light-hitting Cleveland lineup. They've sure got young pitching, these Guardians, but aside from the great José Ramirez, it's otherwise a little thin over there.  

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fifteen: Guardians 1, Blue Jays 0

 

and yet . . .

Losing 1-0 is perhaps the most frustrating of all ways (really? no runs? on nine hits?), and yet I found myself feeling weirdly good for Yusei Kikuchi, who is finally pitching well enough that he is in a position to lose this kind of game, and be disappointed in this very specific way. He was probably heartbroken! And yet he spent all of last year, and much of the season before, heartbroken for any number of other reasons, all of them worse. I think I saw that Kikuchi has the lowest ERA in either league since the All-Star break, a 1.34 or 1.54 or something similarly ludicrous. Good for him! And, indeed, for us. 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Fourteen: Blue Jays 3, Guardians 1

Keith Law in shambles

As if his two-run home run in the top of the eighth inning had been insufficiently rad—it was not! its radness was totally sufficient!—Cavan Biggio soon thereafter completed an unassisted double play of an exceedingly rare sort for a second baseman in which he himself stepped on first to end the bottom half of that same eighth. I believe it was the first such one in five years or something! Honestly, I couldn't get it out of my head. It made for a cheerful end to a game that had been less cheerful a mere handful of innings before, when Hyun-Jin Ryu's no-hitter ended not with a base hit so much as with a liner ripped right off the inside of his knee. Maybe he'll be fine? He sure pitched great!

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Thirteen: Blue Jays 13, Red Sox 1

 

what like that's hard

The legend of Davis Schneider grows! Playing an able second base with a battered Mizuno glove he snagged from the lost-and-found where he coaches in the off-season—a glove mysteriously marked with the initials VUK (Whit Merrifield, who brought all of this to Hazel Mae's attention, assures us that is 100% what they are calling him now)—Davis Schneider pretty much had the best début series of any major league baseball player ever, collecting nine hits (joining fellow Buffalo Bison [seventy-five years previous] Coaker Triplett in so doing), two home runs among them (no one else, it seems, has ever done this) in his first three games. Even without any of that, this one would have been a merry romp. I took particular pleasure in the solo radio broadcast of Ben Wagner as I did what I think was an especially good job trimming the hedge on what can only be described as a classic August afternoon. So where do we stand after this three-game sweep of a divisional rival? Well, still seven-and-a-half back of the Orioles, so that's more or less that for the the AL East, probably, and four-and-a-half behind the Rays for the first Wild Card spot, which is also kind of a lot. However! The Astros are only game ahead of us for the second Wild Card! That's good! It is pleasing to the see both the Red Sox (now five games behind us) and Yankees (now four-and-a-half) fading, but I am lightly distressed to see the Mariners, winners of five straight, straight-up lurking (just two-and-a-half back). I would like to say four games in Cleveland against the sub-five-hundred Guardians should be just the ticket, but looking at the pitching probables, I am unthrilled with how the pitching lines up for the first three. But that's probably a question of disposition and temperament more than anything.   

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Twelve: Blue Jays 5, Red Sox 4

 

La Makina

Although we are all of us grateful for Reese McGuire's game-ending TOOTBLAN (dude it's really not a homer, you should go back), I am sure Santiago Espinal appreciated it a little extra, as it took the heat off of his own regrettable TOOTBLAN from the inning previous (dude Kirk isn't tagging up at all, you should go back). What a weird game! Although the Blue Jays went up by three early enough, the whole thing felt fraught as, and it took strong work from the enigmatic Génesis Cabrera, the steadfast Yimi Garcia, the redoubtable Tim Mayza, and also Erik Swanson, who didn't exactly have it, but whomst got through it. Hey guess who went four for four? George Springer! And guess who went three for three? Davis Schneider, in his second game ever! As Brandon Belt noted after the game, at once joshingly and totally for real, it's all going to be downhill for Davis Schneider from here (in the negative sense [people say it both ways]).   

KS  

2023 Game One-Hundred-Eleven: Blue Jays 7, Red Sox 3

 

oh it's quite a thrill

Twenty-eighth-round draft pick Davis Schneider's home run over the green monster in his first major-league at-bat, though objectively a super neat occurrence, wasn't even my favourite Blue Jays home run on the night! I honestly preferred both Whit Merrifield's, on the first pitch of the ballgame, and Vladdy's, on the fourth. I would place Schneider's homer ahead of both Varsho's and Chapman's, though, in my Friday Night Blue Jays Home Run Power Rankings. Let not these dingers distract us from another encouraging Alek Manoah performance: three runs on six hits over six-and-two-thirds is perfectly fine! He didn't leave much for Mayza and Hicks, but they seemed content.

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Ten: Orioles 6, Blue Jays 1

 

idk it was pretty close

Kevin Gausman didn't have his best stuff, which meant the Orioles kept fouling off two-strike pitches instead of whiffing right through them (in the case of the splitter that would be "over" them), and so the pitch count became untenable fairly quickly, and the overall outcome was not, in the end, as Gausmanesque as we have come to expect, but of course who cares, because the bats managed but one run on five hits. So that's that! A split against the division-leading Orioles would have felt a whole lot better than dropping three out of four, but it is hard to say that any of this is unexpected. Off to Boston for three! And we're just two games ahead of them for the third and final wild card spot, a wild card spot that will still be ours should we manage to win even one of these three games in Fenway. I don't see why we wouldn't! 

KS   

2023 Game One-Hundred-Nine: Blue Jays 4, Orioles 1

 

readying himself to kikuch to the fullest

One might characterize this win as a gift (the only Blue Jays runs came on a George Springer bloop single [his first in forever] and a total sixth-inning Shintaro Fujinami meltdown), but the greatest gift of all, surely, was another truly solid outing from Yusei Kikuchi, who is now 9-3 with a 3.67 ERA, good for 1.1fWAR thus far. He's well on his way to his best major league season! I do miss his great big yellow glove that looked like a clutch of strong bananas, but in every other respect, 2023 has been a bold step in the right direction. 

KS 

2023 Game One-Hundred-Eight: Orioles 13, Blue Jays 3

 

still nice to have him back

The returning Hyun-Jin Ryu (I have missed him! he is my favourite to watch! at pitching!) got lightly toasted for four runs in five innings, but I hope to see much more of him the rest of the way; Nate Pearson, utterly cooked for four runs in but a single inning (walk, walk, walk, grand slam, like a dang cartoon), I would hope we have seen for the last time in 2023. I remain optimistic that Pearson, who throws super hard, will turn out to be a useful major league pitcher in the fullness of time, but maybe we should try to figure out where he fits in next spring? And until then let him hang out in Buffalo? 

KS

2023 Game One-Hundred-Seven: Orioles 4, Blue Jays 2

 

oh no

Bo Bichette's spot in the order came up with two on, two out, down by two in the bottom of the ninth, but, alas, he was no longer therein (it), having taken himself out of the game after rounding first on his second single of the game in the third (the Blue Jays' only two hits to that point were both Bo's). This looks bad! I understand the team will offer an update midday today but you'd have to think the best-case scenario is a knee sprain, worst-case scenario (aka worst-case Ontario) an ACL issue? Clearly I know nothing, but he reacted in a way that felt familiar to me from seeing meniscus issues arise in the context of the exquisite art of 講道館柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō, which would split the difference between a sprain and a horrible tear but still be more than enough to tank Bo's excellent season, and quite possibly the Blue Jays' as well. Would we stick with Santiago Espinal as our shortstop? Attempt a deadline deal for Tim Anderson, who has had an utterly miserable season, but who has been hot since the All-Star break? Call up Addison Barger or Orelvis Martinez? This is just no good. One assumes that we were going to try to add another bat before the deadline anyway (Tommy Pham? Téo?), but now it seems completely essential if we're going to stick around. What a drag! I wish the only thing there was to be sad about was Austin Hays' career-best diving catch on Merrifield's sinking liner that could have tied it in the ninth had it gotten past him, but no; no, things are much worse than that.

KS