Game One-Hundred-Fifty-Three: Yankees 5, Blue Jays 3

 

I mean, what can you even say

Despite the fairly convincing Steiner Math of my previous post, the Blue Jays did not in fact beat Gerrit Cole, who took a perfect game into the sixth, didn't walk a soul all night, and struck out nine in his two-hit, eight-inning, AL Cy Young-clinching performance (seriously, he could get shelled in his final start and it wouldn't matter a lick). So it goes, I suppose, as Gerrit Cole is a genetic freak, and not normal. Far worse than the loss itself (which didn't even sting, honestly; this one was a true "can't win 'em all"), I made the mistake of leaving the radio on in the driveway for a minute or two after the actual game ended, which meant Blair and Barker and Blue Jays Talk, and even before any calls came in it was beyond absurd: the Blue Jays will be in real trouble in the playoffs, Barker declared with an almost slobbering bluster, because of their inability to hit pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole; and in the playoffs, that's what you're going to see, pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole! Dude, how? How are you going to see pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole in the playoffs if there are literally no other pitchers as good as Gerrit Cole (this is essentially the whole point of Gerrit Cole), and he himself, actual Gerrit Cole, is absolutely not going to be in the playoffs? I am as free of sports-talk drivel as anyone who likes baseball as much as I do can ever hope to be, honestly, like I am almost never around it, and yet I still regret every single second of it I encounter. It defies parody (probably; I haven't tried). I will not speak of it again.

Thus ends the Blue Jays fairly delicious five-game winning streak. What a time it has been! And here's where it leaves us, with just nine games to play: the good news is that we're still in WC2 by half a game over both Seattle and Texas, and we have the exact same 85-68 record as Houston, over whom we hold the tiebreaker. The bad news is that we're off to the Trop for three against the Rays (oh no). But the good news beyond all of that is that starting today, one of the three teams against whom the Blue Jays are competing for a WC spot—Houston, Seattle, Texas—absolutely and certainly and without question will lose every day for the rest of the season. They cannot help but do; it is inescapable; it is schedule-inescapable. And so every day that the Blue Jays win, they will gain a full game in the standings relative to one of those three; every day that they lose, they will not lose ground against at least one of those three. This sets up about as well as it could, given that the Blue Jays have six games remaining against Tampa, and that they will almost certainly see Gerrit Cole again in the final Yankees series. Given those fairly awful things, we're looking good!

KS