Rockies 2, Blue Jays 1 (F/10): Guys What The Heck

 

hello baseballs my old friend

In his aspect and bearing (to say nothing of his performance), Brandon Little is exuding Charlie Brown energy on the mound these days to an extent not seen amongst Blue Jays pitchers since 2022 Tim Mayza (pictured here, and I really do encourage you to click through to see it), and what can anyone say about any of it but "good grief." This one was definitely on the bats, though, as you've really got to score more than once in ten innings to have a reliable shot at winning baseball games (as you can see from the grasp of modern analytics I am displaying right now, I do go to FanGraphs at all). Kevin Gausman was great again, and the strong bullpen went Rogers, Nance, Fluharty, Hoffman, and poor Brandon Little at the end there to deal with the Manfred Man, but the bats, man, the bats. It would be wrong, though, to say that Blue Jays fans had little to cheer about, because it was Schools Day, where thousands and thousands of kids come to the ballpark on field trips, and so every time a Blue Jay so much as rolls a grounder out to short, the crowd goes absolutely nuts, and has just a great time start to finish ("Boy, they can turn on you pretty quick out here on Schools Day, though," Dan Schulman did note at one point when the a Rockies pitcher made a throw over to first to check the runner, a move that was met with literally unhinged opprobrium). I feel a little silly minding any aspect of a four-and-two start to the season—which you would gladly take to start any and all seasons, right?—but after that best-case-scenario opening weekend, it was a bit of a comedown to drop two out of three to a ([n] in fairness much-improved) team that lost one-hundred-and-nineteen games last year, and to also lose a starting pitcher for almost certainly the whole season (Cody Ponce's knee is thought to be a mess). Not great! We've fallen a full game behind the Yankees for the AL East lead with only 156 games to go (the Yankees "magic number" is already down to 155)! And worst of all, it came before an off day, so we just have to stew about it until the White Sox home-opener Friday afternoon. This is the part that seems most careless of all. 

KS