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The George Springer game! Even had he not hit a three-run inside-the-park home run in the top of the third inning, the outfield assist (threw a dude out at second by a mile) and diving catch in the bottom half would have made it a pretty solid day for our guy. What a huge difference the move to right field has been: rather than playing an okay centre field, and DHing kind of a lot to nurse the injuries picked up from flinging himself around out there (for better or worse, the man is a gamer), Springer plays a great (if headlong) right, and stays healthy enough to steal twenty bases or so. I will take that every time! Two homers from Vladdy (his first two-homer game of the year, a little sadly), including a back-to-back situation with Bo in the ninth (somehow the first time those two have ever done that) made for just a supremely merry day. And to think I nearly turned the game off when Kikuchi had a rough first and we went down two early! Fortunately my Sunday afternoon plans did not exceed puttering about with light chores, so keeping the game on came quite naturally despite a momentary misgiving. I can't remember feeling this good after three games at the Trop ever, though I'm sure we must have swept them there once in like 2003 or something. A four-and-two road trip through New York and Tampa Bay is always to be welcomed, and would have stood us in fairly good stead regardless of what else happened around the league this weekend, but the Rangers swept the Mariners (that's good) while the one-hundred-loss Royals swept the Astros (that's great!), which is not just a favourable but in fact a literally perfect outcome. A 87-69 record is a really good thing to have with six games left in the season, and while three more wins (wouldn't ninety be tidy? I am so into ninety-win seasons) would guarantee us a spot regardless of what else happens, two would probably do it, and honestly we might make it with just one more, given the way things are unfolding. The lessons of 1987 loom large these many years later, and I cannot in heart rule out an utter, calamitous collapse. So let's just get out there and make it ninety, boys, and wrap it up before the weekend, even, so we can rest Gausman (aka Gaus Gossage [nobody says this {yet}]) for game one-sixty-two, and run out just the absolute wildest eight-man bullpen day any of us have ever seen.
KS
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