2024 Games Ninety-Nine through One-Hundred-One: Blue Jays 6, Rangers 5; Blue Jays 7, Rangers 3; Blue Jays 7, Rangers 3

 

Yusei'd Kikuchi; we said pitch (with apologies to the great Maureen Konnyu)

What a strange weekend: a walk-off win Friday night, a Kevin Gausman complete game Saturday, and homers from Varsho and Vladdy (another one!) to complete the sweep. Good times! And yet these were also the days in which we began the trading of all our guys. Yimi Garcia will no doubt have a nice time in Seattle, but what sort of time am I to have in his absence? Has that been considered? Nate Pearson to the Cubs is not a move I feel deeply, but Danny Jansen to the Red Sox is a tough one. Jansen, a power-hitting catcher enjoyed by all, was drafted by the Blue Jays at seventeen, and had been our longest-serving Blue Jay, but I guess that's probably Vladdy now? The worst, of course, is yet to come, as there is no chance they don't trade Yusei Kikuchi, for sure one of the top starting pitchers available ahead of this year's deadline. Our time with Yusei Kikuchi began as a genuinely baffling ordeal, from which he emerged as a truly sympathetic character as he lived and died with every pitch, perhaps the most scrutable pitcher I can recall. And though he has not worn his banana yellow glove in quite some time, he will forever wear it in my heart, both hands on head as he waits to see if Kevin Kiermaier was able to run that one down in the gap . . . oh thank god he did, okay, big breath, what's next . . .    

KS  

2024 Games Ninety-Six through Ninety-Eight: Rays 5, Blue Jays 2; Blue Jays 6, Rays 3; Rays 13, Blue Jays 0

 

"work from dome"

Ah, a getaway-day afternoon game to wrap the three-game set after splitting the first two; how pleasant! Unless you give up thirteen runs (five in the seventh to go along with the four in the sixth) against just two hits. That's really all we got! Just the two!

KS

2024 Games Ninety-Three through Ninety-Five: Tigers 5, Blue Jays 4; Tigers 7, Blue Jays 3; Blue Jays 5, Tigers 4

 

tfw Vladdy gets one

It is somewhat dispiriting, certainly, that the Detroit Tigers had more grand slams this weekend (that would be two) than the Toronto Blue Jays had wins (just the one), but I would instead like to focus firstly on how Vladdy's seasons continues to chug along at a reasonable pace (as pictured above), and then (which is to say now) on how George Springer, who spent two months as literally the worst hitter in the major leagues, is all of a sudden catching up with the 95MPH+ fastballs against which he had previously seemed totally overmatched, and now stands as a slightly above average batter (103wRC+) with a real shot at a possibly-non-messed-up season (1.6 fWAR at the moment). So that's something!

KS

2024 Games Ninety through Ninety-Two: Diamondbacks 5, Blue Jays 4; Diamondback 12, Blue Jays 1; Blue Jays 8, Diamondbacks 7

you said it, Yusei Kikuchi; you said it, brother

I felt good for the recently waived (and, darker still, cleared) Kevin Kiermaier when he slammed grandly Sunday afternoon against the (underperforming? yet still much better than us?) Arizona Diamondbacks. Kiermaier, a legitimately all-time great defensive centre fielder (all of the available numbers confirm the eye-test in this case), continues to go like hell out there, but with dwindling results, and this could very much be it for him. What's worse, he's pretty clear-eyed about it: "If it’s the end," he told Hazel Mae, "I’m blessed and grateful." That's for sure the right mindset, but it makes it harder to watch than if he was leaving the game embittered and spiteful. Ah jeez, is all one can muster about the whole situation. The Blue Jays needed every one of those four Kiermaier RBI on Sunday as they barely hung on to eke out their only win in a fairly shabby series to wrap a miserable first half of deservedly last-place baseball. The only other really remarkable occurrences over the weekend were Daulton Varsho's triples in three straight games (how weird is that!) and John Schneider getting tossed on an egregious swinging strike call that went against, well, Daulton Varsho, actually (he's in the mix!). It was nice to see Lourdes Gurriel Jr. continue to bloom where he's planted, his hair now a deeply charismatic purple to match a D-backs accent colour. I miss that guy! Not like I miss Téo, though, who spent some quality time with Vladdy Monday night whilst winning the Home Run Derby. Vladdy wore an old Hernandez 37 Blue Jays jersey for the final round, which moved me more than I would have expected, even? "It’s like we were born to have this friendship," Téo said about Vladdy one time, which is really quite a thing to say about your pal.

KS

2024 Games Eighty-Eight through Ninety: Mariners 2, Blue Jays 1; Blue Jays 5, Mariners 4; Blue Jays 5, Mariners 4 (F/10)

 

he caught this one, and then hit the wall *so* hard

Although it was a drag to drop a game in which Kevin Gausman struck out ten, that was really the only drag of any kind across this delightful weekend of baseball in front of huge Seattle crowds that consisted of, conservatively, fifteen-thousand-or-so Blue Jays fans each day. The atmosphere was fantastic! And strangely tense, for all that it was a pleasantly overperforming first-place team against a tremendously underperforming last-place one (guess which one's us!). As we enter the last few weeks before the trade deadline, and so the last few weeks with this particular group of Blue Jays of which I remain quite fond (despite all that has occurred), this unexpectedly cheering weekend felt like a bittersweet sendoff for some yet-to-be-determined guys. It was a useful reminder, too, that whether the Blue Jays are in first place and cruising, or woefully out of it to start July, the fundamentals of my experience of baseball remain the same: I will put the game on, and if it is close or otherwise interesting, I will enjoy some baseball, and if it is not, I will mutter, then pursue other interests. It's pretty good either way.   

KS 

2024 Games Eighty-Four through Eighty-Seven: Astros 3, Blue Jays 1; Blue Jays 7, Astros 6; Astros 9, Blue Jays 2; Astros 5, Blue Jays 3

 

there are roughly a squillion Blue Jays pictures
from this angle and I like every one of them

On Canada Day, Yariel Rodríguez took a perfect game into the fifth, but the Blue Jays lost 3-1; the next day, the Blue Jays jumped out to a 7-0 lead through four, and barely hung on for a 7-6 win. It actually felt kind of worse! This is the first season in what feels like a very long time that the Astros haven't been especially good, or even really all that good at all, so to lose three of four to them feels different (and pretty bad!) than it had in recent years (honestly who could mind it?). Anyway. On we go.   

KS  

2024 Games Eighty through Eighty-Three: Blue Jays 9, Yankees 2; Yankees 16, Blue Jays 5; Blue Jays 9, Yankees 3; Yankees 8, Blue Jays 1

 

hey, good for him

George Springer came into Friday night's game against the Yankees as literally the worst hitter in the league by OPS (a slightly mathematically-invalid measure that nevertheless correlates awfully strongly with runs scored, so here we are!), and, as you would therefore expect, launched two three-run home runs (even one would have been pleasingly novel!). It was lovely to see, honestly, as this season must just be misery for him (allowing, of course, for the fact that all of his material needs continue to be extremely met). It was a strange start to what ended up a strange series: you'd think a series-split against the until-recently-first-place Yankees would be a fairly welcome thing in a more or less straightforward sense, but the two games the Blue Jays lost were just lost so hard that it felt like we lost like eight games or so (in a single weekend). More cheeringly, though, Vladdy continues to rake to such an extent that he was named the AL Player of the Week and has taken the lead in All-Star voting for first base. Good for him! May Vladdy's exploits continue to sustain us through this lightly unsatisfying Blue Jays season. 

KS

2024 Games Seventy-Eight, Seventy-Nine, and Eighty (kind of): Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 6; Blue Jays 9, Red Sox 4; Plus a Rainout

get a roof

The Boston series consisted of an enormously dispiriting loss, a genuinely stirring triumph, and a game suspended in the second inning due to rain. The three true outcomes!

KS