"'So you live to die another day . . . '—James Bond"—The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays

 

hey great job, Shane Bieber (also Kirky) 

Nathan Lukes is an interesting case, a guy who didn't really get a chance as a more-or-less everyday player until he was thirty-one, but then immediately turned out to be an exactly league-average hitter who plays a solid right field. He's a useful guy! Weird that it took so long for anybody to fully notice! And yet here we are now, very much enjoying both his RBI-single in the first, and his two-run homer in the fifth, which, together, proved entirely adequate, given the strength of Shane Bieber's five innings, and the quality bullpennery that followed. Did things get a little ticklish in the ninth? Was Jeff Hoffman bailed out by some truly remarkably helpful calls from a seemingly confused home-plate umpire? Well sure. But perhaps we need to simply accept this as Jeff Hoffman's method: despite these many recent ticklishnesses, Hoffman has allowed but one run in this whole nearly-done month of September, and literally everybody would sign up for that from their closer, right? As alarming as his saves can be—which is very!—I do not agree with those calling for a last-second switch to the noble Seranthony Dominguez in his closer-stead: Dominguez rules, and we are so lucky to have picked him up, but he has a real problem with lefties, and is best deployed in his current deployment (late-innings righty-mowing). I'm sure we all wish Yimi Garcia's arm hadn't exploded—I have been, and shall remain, a true Yimi Ultra—but the sad truth is that it is has, and the bullpen is what it is in his absence . . . which is actually pretty good! Wasn't it wild how seemingly all the contending teams went into a collective bullpen spiral right after they all added totally good guys at the deadline? Wasn't that weird? I thought it was! But it's mostly all sorted out now, with the partial exception of the Dodgers, I guess, whose bullpen guys, as I understand the matter, are still at least lightly "going through it." Not ours, though, as we secured our ninety-second win of the season Friday night to keep pace with (and stay tiebreakingly ahead of) the New York Yankees, who looked awfully good against a strong Baltimore starter in the first game of their series. Perhaps the Yankees will falter against the oft-perplexing Tomoyuki Sugano, who gave us fits not long ago? A light falter, even? A Yankees loss (Saturday afternoon) and a Blue Jays win (slightly later Saturday) afternoon would seal the deal on the AL East, and wouldn't that be a lovely way for it all to go? It sure feels like it's all going to come down to Sunday, though, and why shouldn't it, I suppose.

KS

Another Day (in first place [technically]), Another Hard Dollar (in first place [technically])

 

with a spring in his step (jauntwæve)

A six-run sixth—Daulton Varsho's grand slam, followed in due course by George Springer's dinger—and six literally perfect innings from a Varland-to-Lauer-to-Rodriguez bullpen day (three imperfect but still very welcome innings from four worthy others followed thereafter) were all it took to forestall doom (an exceedingly limited kind of doom, and yet a doom) for another day. Let's go! Still in first place over the Yankees, by dint of a tiebreaker, with three games left to play! It is not great that those three games are all against the Tampa Bay Rays, among our peskiest foes for the better part of two decades now, but we've got Shane Bieber going tonight ("Buck," Dan Shulman rightly noted during a recent Bieber outing, "I think moustaches are coming back"), and young fireballer Trey Yesavage tomorrow. Sunday remains, at present, a bit of a poser: if everything is settled by then (Blue Jays locked into first, or locked into fourth, both entirely possible), one might well run out Max Scherzer for what could be his final MLB start, a kind of valedictory outing for a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and appealingly weird guy; if things remain unsettled, meaning there is still a chance for the AL East title and a perfectly delicious bye into the second round, you've pretty much got to go with Kevin Gausman, right? Even though burning him on Sunday would mean he'd be unable to pitch on regular rest in the Wild Card series that would begin Tuesday if things did not work out in that Sunday start? It's really not obvious! I have been burned in situations just like this in the secondary (arguably tertiary) worlds of subcreation engendered by baseball simulation! Reflecting on this, I wonder how far up the "org chart" the consultations would go on a decision like this? With whom would John Schneider either literally need to clear this decision, or just feel that he should clear this decision, given that it is, or at least could turn out to be, super duper fraught? Even assuming the Yankees end up sweeping the Orioles—no easy task, as the Orioles are a decent team, with two good pitchers starting this weekend—the Blue Jays would I guess only need to win either tonight's or tomorrow's game, singular, to keep Sunday in play for the division title, right? And since all the games on Sunday start at-or-very-near(ly-at) the same time (a tremendous innovation in recent seasons), you've pretty much got to make that decision about Sunday as soon as either the Blue Jays win another game (tonight would be great!) or the Yankees lose one (tonight would also be great!), n'est-ce pas? 

There is, as you can see, much to consider—all of it pretty good, and also maybe a little tense.  

KS   

Hey: hey.

 

hey.

Hey. Hey. It's the final Thursday of the 2025 regular season—the very last one! for real! no more Thursdays!—and the Blue Jays are still in first place not just in the AL East, but in the whole great big American League itself (and it really is a lot of teams when you check). That the season, alas, stubbornly—some might say foolishly—runs through Sunday is, I grant you, a bit of a drag, given that this looks likely to the be last day of the Blue Jays' truly remarkable and super enjoyable run atop the division that began, you may well recall, with a four-game sweep at home over the Yankees that occurred both on and around Canada Day, and really a good chunk of that whole first week of July. Remember all that? George Springer's Canada Day grand slam? Wasn't that the greatest? Things have of course gone less great this last little bit, with just one win in our last seven (we won six in a row right before, so who knows man), and yet that one win, I'm sure you will also recall, was the Blue Jays ninetieth of the season (such a crucial number [in terms of my enjoyment, if nothing else]), the playoff-clinching 8-5 Sunday afternoon win in Kansas City, and so there is a very real limit to just how badly we can crash out of this thing over these final four games. Imagine being the Tigers, whose fifteen-and-a-half-game-lead over the Guardians has somehow proven insufficient (haha I can tell you "how"), and who may very well miss the playoffs entirely; or the Astros, recently overtaken by the AL West-clinching Mariners (first division title since the incredible 2001 team, Ichiro's first year), who currently sit a game behind those same sad Tigers heading into play today. It's looking very much like all three teams that led their AL divisions to start September are going to have to settle for wild card spots or worse (and the "worse" is of course much worse). It's been pretty brutal! Given that brutality, we're actually getting off fairly light(ly) here, I think, as the prospect of a slide from holding the best record in the league and the top playoff spot to having the second-best record in the league and the fourth playoff spot looms large(ly) over these final four games. It remains very much the case that if the Blue Jays "win out," they cannot be caught or surpassed or exceeded in any way, as we have winning records against both the Yankees and Red Sox, and so hold those tiebreakers, but that prospect seems . . . let's say unlikely? Things sure would feel a whole lot different had the Yankees, down to their last strike against the White Sox the other night, not tied the game on a wild pitch and walked the Sox off moments later; even just that one more game in the standings would be massive for us with so few remaining. It might make today's bullpen game—featuring Louis Varland as the opener!—seem a little less grim? But enough! I banish all such thoughts! And instead I will say simply: let's get through the weekend without anybody getting hurt; let's forget about running Kevin Gausman out there on the final day of the season trying to clinch anything; and let's just give him the ball on Tuesday and see if we can't win a Wild Card series. I continue to feel that it is totally possible that we can, and also that things are actually, on the whole, good?  "It feels like the sky is falling right now," John Schneider said after the game, "and it’s fucking not. We’ve got ninety wins, we’re in the playoffs, and if the season ended today, we’re winning the AL East." I like it when John Schneider and I are on the same page. I feel that we are stronger as an organization when that it is the case.   

KS 

A Six-Game Winning Streak to Maintain The 2025 AL East Lead, And, More Importantly, To Further Solidify Profound Long-Term Mediocrity

 

oh hey by the way, great job the other night
in your MLB début, Trey Yesavage 

Six wins in a row, and seven-of-eight (against Houston and Tampa Bay, with the Orioles snuggled right in between), would be welcomed by any team at any time, surely, but it seems especially nifty halfway through a September in which one is attempting to seal the deal on both the American League East title and, radder yet, the best record in the American League, full stop. The Blue Jays, up five games (effectively six, given tiebreaking realities) over the fairly contemptible New York Yankees in the East, and four (effectively five, for the same reason) over the noble Detroit Tigers in the American League broadly conceived, are in about as good a September position as they have ever been in their history. And believe me, I'd know! I've been around for almost all of it! Which brings me to my point, one that is at once both broader and narrower than this season's standings, and also a little silly, and it is this: after Tuesday night's 6-5 squeaker over the Rays, the Blue Jays' all-time regular-season record throughout their forty-nine summers now stands at a perfectly balanced—I am inclined to say exquisitely balanced—3850 wins and 3850 losses. This is the first time the Blue Jays have been perfectly .500 (to as many sig figs as you've got) since May 20, 1995, at which point their record stood at 1416 and 1416. It's been a minute, as they say! (It's also pretty wild that the Blue Jays had been above .500 cumulatively at all by that point, so early in their history, even allowing for the amazing ten seasons running 1984 through 1993 in which they had been the best team in baseball.) The Blue Jays now join the Houston Astros as the only expansion teams to be at (or above) .500 over their entire history, and you will recall that it has taken the Astros this last decade of true excellence after deeply strategic deep-tanking of a rebuild for them to get there. It is in this respect, though, that the Blue Jays and Astros (who are also alike in that they have both won two World Series titles [no expansion team has one three]), extremely part company to the max in recent years: while the Astros have been all about peaks (yay!) and valleys (oh no), the Blue Jays have chosen a different path, that of deep and abiding mediocrity, a mediocrity unsurpassed in the recent history of the game. And this is not only a subjective expression of what Werner Herzog might call an ecstatic truth, or, after Worsdsworth, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; no, we've also got charts about it! Math charts!  

In a recent r/baseball post titled "The most consistently mediocre MLB teams from the last 25 years," user "No-Comfortable-9418" shared remarkably compelling evidence to this effect—the text at the bottom is pretty small, so I will note here that it reads "1999-2024, Formula: Percentage of Mediocre Seasons (0.45—0.55 winning %) x (1-Distance from 0.500 overall record.)" And look: 

We haven't just been mediocre; we have been mediocre with such intensity—with such ferocity, really—that we are outliers at being mediocre. "Makes sense," another redditor notes in that same post; "I remember the 2000's. Every year I was pretty confident we were going to go 83-79." Oh ho, not so fast, user "BillNeedleMailbag"! In my own personal favourite season of the 2000s—the ineffable 2003 season in which Roy Halladay won the Cy Young, and Carlos Delgado lost out on the AL MVP to the otherwise-deserving but admittedly enhanced Alex Rodriguez (I attended every home game on an $81 Toronto Star Season Pass, and have both the scorekeeping book and Vernon-Wells-autographed baseball to prove it)—the Blue Jays managed a stirring 86-76! (The Yankees won 101 that year, the Red Sox 95 to take the lone Wild Card.) Oh hey, let's note, too, that our now perfectly .500 baseball team, the one that has been far and away the most mediocre team of the last twenty-five years, has also, with its back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, won a perfectly average number of championships over its forty-nine seasons. Two titles is exactly what you'd expect of the average team in a league of this size over that much time! Isn't this wild? In a moderate sense?

In sum, I think this is just great. I would also like to say in closing that I am so, so, so stoked about the possibility of wrapping up both the AL East title and the AL itself should the next week-or-so go at all well—playing even just a little better than we did throughout the 1987 collapse would pretty much do it at this point. On the subject of injured shortstops (Tony Fernandez getting slid into was the instigating incident in 1987, you may recall), it is regrettable, certainly, that Bo Bichette's sprained knee is going to keep him out the remainder of the regular season, but Gimenez and Clement up the middle really is a real treat to watch, isn't it? If Bo could DH in the playoffs, that would put Springer in a corner outfield spot, but maybe offer a stronger overall team defense? Especially when you've got Myles Straw to plug into the outfield in the late innings? There is much to consider going forward. But as I am well and truly a guy of the regular season, the next eleven games honestly feel like a bigger deal to me personally than whatever happens in the wacky tournament that happens afterwards. I would also definitely like us to win that wacky tournament! Do not mistake me! And I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that mine is in any sense the enlightened view. But to play 162 games, and come out of it with the best record in the American League—with an outside shot, still, at the best overall record in either league, a feat we did not manage even in the never-to-be-repeated 1984-1993 run—is honestly enough for me, and far more than I expect from or even hope for in any season.

KS  

We'll Still Be In First Place Through Sunday

 

Kevin Gausman, seen here dealin' 

After Monday's tremendous late-inning comeback (Vladdy's throw to third in the tenth: best Vladdy throw ever?), Tuesday's late-inning-comeback-later-thwarted (alas, Jeff Hoffman), and Wednesday afternoon's two-hit, one-walk, Kevin Gausman complete-game shutout (oh boy!), the Houston Astros, probable AL West winners, are behind us. Good! They're pesky! The Yankees' middling performance at home against the Detroit Tigers this week (they dropped two laughers before laughing back just this one time right at the end) has the Blue Jays again leading by three games (functionally four, as the tiebreaker remains deliciously ours), thus assuring us at least one more weekend atop the AL East. The Orioles, who are in town this weekend, are very much at the bottom of that same division, but they've also won eight of their last ten, and have played the Blue Jays reasonably tough(ly) in recent years, so I take little for granted, other than that I will have a nice time watching baseball, or at the very least having it on in the background whilst I pursue complementary pursuits. The Yankees and Red Sox play this weekend—each other, I mean—which means each Blue Jays in the coming days will expand our lead against one or the other. A cheering thought! We're deep enough into all of this that, if the Blue Jays can wrap their final sixteen games at a perfectly .500 eight-and-eight, the Yankees would have to end their season on a twelve-and-four tear, or the Red Sox at twelve-and-three (those tiebreakers are huge). Eighty-four wins is really a very fine place to be with two-weeks-and-a-bit left in the season, and it would be a real shame to make anything less than the most of it, I feel. 

KS

Another 83 310 Loonie Dogs Last Night, if The Auxiliary Scoreboard in Right Field Can Be Trusted

 

bring it on in, Tyler Heineman; bring it on in 

It was easy to feel relatively okay heading into last weekend's series in Yankee Stadium, given that there was no possible result in that three-game set that could see the Blue Jays unseated as AL East leaders heading into the season's final weeks. And yet! It sure would have been a drag to just get dragged, would it not? Have been? How fortuitous, then, that we could set even that possibility aside with so thorough a 7-1 Friday night drubbing that, in that very drubbing, the Blue Jays chased young Yankees starter Cam Schlittler (Buck Martinez's pronunciations did not disappoint) in just the second inning. That the Blue Jays dropped the next two closely contested close contests was no great matter, even if the two-game lead with which they departed New York was not, strictly speaking, enormous. The greater loss, for sure, is that of Bo Bichette, who, correctly sent home on a fly ball to right just ahead of a looming and obvious rain delay Saturday afternoon, slid awkwardly into the catcher's shin guard, and sliced and sprained his whole deal down there. What a rough couple of seasons it has been for Bo Bichette's poor knees: it is no wonder that his once exquisite baserunning has fallen off a cliff (he is a little slower than Vladdy now, which I did not see coming) and his range at short has been hampered. But his bat will be sorely missed, I'm sure, over this stint on the ten-day IL. Maybe he will benefit from just the general rest, this far into the long season? And then rake all October? (On the field of play, is my hope, rather than the field of his yard.)

Last night's game, though, was really something. Before my commitments with regard to the exquisite art of 講道館 柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō took me away after the top of the first, I did manage to both see and lament the two-run shot the Astros' Carlos Correa visited upon Shane Bieber; I lamented further when I put the game on the radio after the gym and learned that, aside from a lone Springer dinger in the sixth, there was really nothing doing, 3-1 Astros late. At least the Tigers had gone up big in New York, I consoled myself, and every day that we can just hold fast brings us one day closer to the AL East title, I could be heard to remark (internally). Imagine, then, my delight, when the Blue Jays put together a Kirk walk, Clement single, Schneider walk, IKF two-run single (IKF! he's back!) bottom of the ninth to send it to extras, whereupon Vladdy made a throw across the diamond to nail Altuve (in his rôle as Manfred Man) with a throw I'm convinced no other first baseman in the league even attempts, let alone makes, before he himself—that self-same Vladdy!—legged out an infield hit in the bottom of the tenth ahead of Tyler Heineman's walk-off fielder's-choice grounder towards a helpless and hapless Christian Walker ten feet off first. Heineman ran through the bag, exultant, and instead of maybe heading towards home plate, where Myles Straw had slid in just ahead of the throw, went straight to Vladdy at second (he had been running on the pitch!) for just a great big hug of a great big hug. I'm not sure by what process Heineman was unshirted before he got to Hazel Mae for the postgame interview alongside Isiah Kiner-Falefa, but in the end he was as shirtless as anyone has ever been; it was a shirtlessness so profound that one could not but ponder on it. 

So here we are, three games up on both New York and Boston—functionally four, in each case, having won the season series against both—with now eighteen to go, and things seem as plausible as ever, or at least as plausible as they've seemed at any point in these last ten years. This has all been, and continues to be, just wonderful. Lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, I will note, too, that even with the top non-playoff team, the Texas Rangers, low-key surging, the Blue Jays should still be safe for at least the final Wild Card spot with literally two or three more wins this season, literally two or three out of the eighteen games that remain. In the spring, I would have totally signed up for an eighty-six-win, final-wild-card-spot 2025 season, and even now I would welcome it, even amidst the sheer madness of the kind of collapse it would take the rest of the way for us to end up with only that. I actually think I may have just talked myself into wondering pretty hard what that would be like? Almost to the point of wanting it to happen, a little? I will push those strange thoughts to the side, though, and stay focused on the task at hand. We've all got to do our part down the stretch, guys.      

KS

. . . And Just Like That, We're The Top Team in The AL Again

 

what like that's hard?

Two crushing bullpen collapses against the scrappy and likeable Milwaukee Brewers were forgiven, though not forgotten, after a super pleasant 8-4 sunny Sunday afternoon semi-romp against those very same Brewers. But then all at once it was off to Cincinnati, to watch ninth-inning homers from Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho drift away on the summer breeze, both in the sense that they lofted their way out of the park quite sweetly, and also that they proved super ephemeral, as the bullpen once again got torched. However! Our time in Cincinnati was on the whole a great boon, as what followed were two truly wild wins—the first 12-9 after leading 8-1; the second 13-9 after trailing 5-0 (Dan Shulman rightly noted that Shane Bieber weirdly put together one the best 5-0 outings you're likely to see)—that are perhaps best understood as living manifestations of the immutable R.B.I. Baseball ethos. It really has been quite a time! With the Blue Jays off today, but the Yankees playing the last of their set in Houston, our AL East lead will sit at either three games or four as the big series gets going in Yankee Stadium on Friday, and I would much prefer the four games to the three, I'll say that much! Though it is true that the Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker by dint (or at least by partial dint) of their unreal four-game sweep of the Yankees in and around Canada Day—and so even a tie at the end of the weekend would still be a Blue Jays lead, of a kind—that would be altogether too ticklish for my liking. So long as the Blue Jays go unswept this weekend (hopefully not too much to ask), we will remain very much in business headed into these final weeks, as far as the AL East is concerned. Setting aside that rightly coveted divisional title for a moment, I would note, finally, that the Blue Jays remain nine-and-a-half ahead of the first AL team that is not in a playoff position, which, with just twenty-two games to go, really makes October baseball very nearly a certainty, for good or ill (I find that it can be . . . a little tense?). 

KS