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| hey thanks all the same man |
Although Hyun-Jin Ryu's (possible? probable?) last start as a Toronto Blue Jay did not go disastrously—two runs through three innings is not the end of the world, right?—John Schneider was not messing around, especially given the quality of contact (it was relatively high!), and went to Trevor Richards early. Richards, who has been a huge part of the bullpen this season, made a decent pitch to Harold Ramirez that somehow ended up just over the left-field wall for a two-run shot that evened the score at four (ah phooey) after Varsho had homered in the third and the Blue Jays had cobbled together a three-run fourth (Kirk single, Keirmaier walk, Chapman out on a nice play by Josh Lowe, a booted ball on a Merrifield dribbler, RBI singles from Varsho and Springer, the rare Biggio called strike three, and then Vladdy called out on strikes with two runners on to end the inning—could have used those extra runs!). The Rays, whose playoff position is unchanged and unchangeable, came into this one planning to give all of their high-leverage guys an inning or so, and then to rest them both Sunday and (of course) Monday ahead of Tuesday's first Wild Card game in Tampa (or I suppose St. Petersburg), so it was tough sledding from there. I liked literally every one of John Schneider's moves in this game, especially his decision to use Romano for the eighth and Hicks for the ninth (as speculated upon recently within these very electronic pages! the ones of this weblog!), but the Rays are a really good team who played a really good game and got the best of us. It would have been great if Biggio could have cashed in that Springer double in the bottom of the ninth, though! A walk-off clincher! But no.
There was no way around it, at least not that I could see, but it is something of a shame that we burned the back-end of our bullpen trying to nail this one down, and so now head into tomorrow's perhaps season-defining game with Kevin Gausman (who we would rather save for Tuesday! should we be playing Tuesday!) backed by just whoever didn't totally overdo it today (Chad Green did not appear, I suppose, and Yimi, as nails as ever you could hope, got through his inning on like five pitches—so that's the eighth and ninth covered, maybe!). Of course, should the Mariners lose to Texas tonight, the only thing in question tomorrow will be the Blue Jays' potential ninetieth win, and while that is an enormous deal to me personally, I could accept making it a Bowden Francis/Jay Jackson sort of affair instead of running our ace out there in pursuit of my own very particular enjoyment. Actually, let's look in live (at this, the moment of composition) to see how things are going in Seattle: oh okay it is 4-0 Rangers through three! That's fairly good! It is probably worth noting, though, that the Rangers bullpen is legitimately appalling, both morally (in that it has Aroldis Chapman), but also in terms of getting outs, so this one is a long way from over. Will I be staying up too late to attend to it? Not as late as you might think! Because of this game's much more reasonable start-time than you might expect! The walk-off this afternoon would have really been something to see, and a fitting end to today's tense and honestly fantastic game, but at this point I will gladly settle for some Saturday night anticlimax (what a sport!).
KS
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