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| call Vladdy both Strunk and White because he is demonstrating elements of style |
The one-hundred-loss Royals have exactly two (2 [II{ii}]) players that are concerning at all: A) ultra-fleet shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who looks like he will end up with thirty home runs and forty-five stolen bases, give or take, in this, his second full major-league season (he drove in one of the two Royals runs Sunday with a ringing double [he scored the other one]), and 2) hard-throwing lefty Cole Ragans, who hadn't allowed a run since the middle of August, and who was totally cruising through five-and-two-thirds innings Sunday. But then Ragans, in a way that I at once welcomed and yet felt was no fun at all, came completely unglued after a stumbling wild pitch, and just lost himself out there: two more wild pitches followed consecutively, and before you knew it the Blue Jays had tied the game at two. Out of basic human empathy I hope Ragans is okay (emotionally, I mean [physically he seemed fine]); that was simply brutal in a way I have never quite seen before. The Blue Jays did not look back from there, as they say, and added a Keirmaier's home run and a couple more "insurance runs" which I welcomed hard once Jordan Romano's ninth got a little ticklish (it ended up fine!).
And so the Blue Jays come out of this fifteen-game stretch against sub-.500 teams with a totally creditable record of 10-5, and, given the mixed returns from both the Texas Rangers and, as luck would have it, the Seattle Mariners, the Blue Jays return home for their big four-game series against Rangers not just in Wild Card 3, but having actually snuck into Wild Card 2. Who'd have thunk it! A split against the Rangers over these next four would probably be just fine, and anything more than that would put the Ranger is a really tough spot the rest of the way. This, I think, is probably what we should aim for? To do that? To them?
KS
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