2021 Game Four: Blue Jays 6, Rangers 2

 

9Ks!

Easter Monday responsibilities kept me from attending to the earliest innings of this afternoon's contest, but those responsibilities having been merrily discharged, I was just so pleased to learn that the boys, in my absence, had been boppin': a Vladito single cashed in a Cavan Biggio walk in the first, before Marcus Semien and Biggio hit home runs on consecutive pitches in the second, and all was as well as could be as I joined Dan and Buck for the middle innings (. . . and beyond). Biggio had a great day: he hit a home run, worked two walks, was hit by a pitch (he seems not to mind -- the pitch that hit Guerrero on the hands got minded pretty hard though, at least by me), and scored three of the Blue Jays six runs. It is important to remember that every success enjoyed by Cavan Biggio, certainly pleasant enough in and of itself, is rendered almost sublime by the extent to which it strikes a blow not only against Keith Law (a J. P. Ricciardi-front-office alumn! what an era!) but indeed against everything Keith Law chooses to be. I am going to try not to go on about this all season (I will almost certainly fail), but it is obviously no big deal to miss on a prospect, in either direction: you think there's something there, and it turns out there maybe isn't; or you don't really see what all the fuss is about, and the kid turns out to be totally fussworthy. Live and learn! And prospects are inherently weird! And so it is no great bother that Keith Law thought so little of Cavan Biggio's prospects initially, though I do take issue with the smugness with which he expressed this position (hey, tone matters). But to continue to maintain, once Biggio has put up 3.6 fWAR in his first 162 games, that Biggio is "not worth the roster spot," is such mean-spirited arrogance that it really grinds my gears. Oh man, I just checked Baseball Reference, and they've got Biggio at 5.0 wins! bWAR likes him even more than the FanGraphs version! I am so worked up right now!

Let us also get worked up with regard to reclamation-lefty Steven Matz, who gave up only two hits (and a walk and an HBP, to be fair) through six-and-a-third, and struck out nine, including his last four. I will note that he is the only Blue Jays pitcher my current, fairly disastrous save of Baseball Mogul seems to have any faith in, and I have come to share that faith. Matz's fine outing combined with the aforementioned boppin' (I credit the boys) meant no high-leverage relievers today: Chatwood and Mayza were fine, while Dolis is kind of all over the place. He'd have gotten out of the ninth fairly cleanly had Grichuk held onto the ball he caught as he flew into the wall, but hey, what was it doing at the wall to begin with, right? 

Finally, please enjoy these moments of tender fellowship between Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette, which seem almost to intimate to be broadcast, and yet here they are. Ours is a voyeuristic age, I suppose.

KS

2021 Game Three: Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1

 

I will not be silenced, Vladito.

As the sages totally foretold, T. J. Zeuch got a lot of soft contact, which, accompanied by home runs from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Randall Grichuk (about whom the notoriously smarty-pantsed Keith Law is so mean sometimes), and more lovely work from the bullpen -- Julian Merryweather! can you even believe this guy! -- gave the Blue Jays a 3-1 win and indeed a 2-1 series win against, let us be real, the best team in the American League, probably. 

Something I wanted to share with you from the broadcast today: in the second inning, Dan Shulman remarked that T. J. Zeuch's style, which is based very much around getting bad contact off of a two-seam fastball low in the zone, is not at all fashionable these days; it's all four-seam fastballs up and curveballs now -- which is totally working for everybody, obviously, this was not a diss of how pitchers currently pitch. But given how unusual sinker/slider types have become in recent years, Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker (of the 2003 Blue Jays! I loved them!) really feels that Zeuch's "old fashioned" mix can play, Shulman explained, if for no other reason that it's a little different (a sort of change-up, if you will). This led Buck Martinez to recall that when he entered the league in 1969 (holy cow!), everybody was throwing fastballs high in the zone and hard curveballs, but then the sinker/slider types came into vogue, and now we're back to high four-seamers and curveballs, and everything that's old is new again. Buck didn't say this with world-weariness, or with an air that he'd seen it all before so no big deal, but with a genuine enthusiasm for how neat it all was, and for how it made you think. Buck also mentioned, later in the game, that he played six seasons of winter ball after he made his major league début, since he was never really an everyday player and needed the at-bats. Dan and Buck! Buck and Dan! A great day both of baseball and of talking about baseball.

And now on to Texas, before a worryingly large crowd in these troubled times. Maybe it will all be fine?  

KS

2021 Game Two: Yankees 5, Blue Jays 2

 

My friend David's insistence that this year is
make-or-break for Gary Sanchez has lit a fire
that will consume us all

The principle virtue of following a baseball game not on television, nor even mostly on radio, but primarily through play-by-play updates on the Gameday application is that it transforms an actual unfolding Major League game (occurring, we are assured, in the primary world of our experience) into a text-based simulation. Text-based baseball simulations are of course enormously compelling in and of themselves, and one comes to appreciate, in time, that they are scarcely more artificial than the locus of artifice that constitute "actual" baseball of the kind that's on TV and that we agree to discuss (we do not, as a rule, discuss our text-based baseball simulations except with a special few). Could we not say of the text-based simulation of baseball what Ken Snyder once said of the text-based simulation of the social world that constitutes the novel? That is, that its (their) function is "not so much to reflect 'reality' as to 'pierce' it (Lukacs); or to break the reification that is called 'reality' (Butor). We live within narrations, 'stories' of life within which and from which we derive 'a conduct of life.' When these stories lose their imaginative strength, their inspiring force, they collapse to cliche, to stereotype; they become 'reified,' that is we are tempted to take 'reality' as being real and final, when 'reality' is simply an imaginary/symbolic construct with tremendous ideological force. In a sense what is called reality is no less 'fictive' than what we call fiction. The difference is that the fictive of 'reality' is realized by force, is actual in the sense of its many contingent, felt acts, whereas the fictive of fiction is imaginative, allegorical, felt as an aesthetic response not a contingent force. But it is potentially 'critical,' can be the source of change." If that last part, which seems entirely decorous to the aims of the novel, seems to overstate the case for text-based baseball simulation, consider that the still-nascent "opener" trend by which an ace reliever starts a game rather than finishes it, as outlined in a fine piece by Zach Kram, was totally a thing that that same author experimented with in Out of the Park Baseball years before and could not believe had been made "real"; and consider too that I first found my way to that article through this also fine piece on the current state of the LOOGY in an article that credits Baseball Mogul-creator Clay Dreslough for his research in this crucial field of study (Steve Treder, too, who has been around since at least the earliest Baseball Primer Days). 

Think about it. Think about it. 

But even if you won't (and hey, I get it): Marcus Semien hit a home run and stole two bases, Ross Stripling did not pitch terribly, and the bullpen was pretty good again, so I do not find myself in the business of especially minding today's 5-3 loss to the Yankees, the details of which arrived to me in a mode that probably pierced reality at least a little, and possibly a lot? T. J. Zeuch throws tomorrow, and you like to see a groundball-pitcher on the bump in Yankee Stadium.

KS 

2021 Game 1: Blue Jays 3, Yankees 2 (F/10)

 

This is the least merry that things got today.

If you had been wondering if I could have been any more delighted by the Blue Jays' Opening Day Extra-Innings Win over the New York Yankees, first of all thank you for your interest, and secondly, no I don't think! And I was delighted early: in the home half of the first, Hyun-Jin Ryu pitched with such crafty-leftiness/lefty-craftiness that he had no less of a guy than Aaron Judge days late like days late on a 91MPH 3-2 fastball, and then did very much the same thing to Aaron Hicks. This contrasted mightily with Yankees starter Gerrit Cole, who was throwing bullets (some of the bullets were sliders!). I noted early on that Cole was getting calls on his slider a good few inches off the outside corner (I am not complaining: work those corners, and the realms beyond, young buck [he is thirty]), but was getting squeezed on anything off-speed that was up in the zone even a little -- guess which of these strike-zone quirks he minded! 

He pitched well for sure, though, giving up runs only on three straight singles in the second (Teoscar Hernandez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. [a 114.1 MPH rocket, the hardest-hit ball measured against Cole since these things have been measured], and the luxuriously-coiffed Lourdes Gurriel Jr.) and on Téo's just enormous home run in the sixth. Vladi worked a walk in a long plate appearance right after the Hernandez <<dingeur>> and that was it for Cole, who hit the dugout wall with his glove a bunch (still breaking it in). The Yankees runs both came on a good-sized home run from Gary Sanchez, which is huge for him, as my work-friend David has declared this season to be "last chance for Sanchez," and thus stakes are high. 

I had to leave things with the Blue Jays' defeat all but certain in the bottom of the ninth (our tacos were ready); imagine my surprise as I rejoined the game (whilst dishwashing) to learn that not only had Cavan Biggio thrown out Tauchman at the plate with the infield in, and that Jordan Romano (he's from Markham! and born in 1993! an auspicious year in Blue Jays history!) struck out Judge to end the inning, but also that Randall Grichuk had doubled home the go-ahead run in the top of the tenth, sending kind of an iffy one over Judge's head in right (rough game for Judge, when you lay it all out like that I guess). What? How? Neat! Relief-ace Julian Merriweather is a new one to me, but if he's going to throw 99MPH with a change-up in the low-eighties, we might have something here! I would also like to note that Rafael Dolis, who I think is neat because he has pitched for both the Detroit Tigers and the Hanshin Tigers, pitched well, as did Tyler Chatwood -- in fact, the two hits against David Phelps were the only hits the bullpen allowed all day (let us not speak of walks just now). 

It was all great!

Finally, I would also like to comment on the broadcast. Dan Shulman was calling the game from a studio in Toronto, with Buck Martinez I believe working from his home in Florida, and their call went out over the radio as well as on television -- this is to say, there is no dedicated radio-only broadcast this season, a notion that seems to have riled many, including Geddy Lee, who at his present age honestly should not be caused to be riled; it isn't right. But the parts I watched on television (or rather on computers, and indeed on computer phones [and for surprisingly little cost]) were as good as Dan and Buck ever are (exceedingly), and when I had it on the radio, it was the best a Blue Jays radio broadcast has been since Jerry Howarth had Alan Ashby with him nine years ago. So, no complaints from me at all, nor do I anticipate any when the Blue Jays road games are handled in this same way, with Dan Shulman on play-by-play, and Buck on colour. My understanding is that the "home" games, such as they are this season, will have Buck on play-by-play (oh no), joined remotely by Pat Tabler (oh no), which will probably have me right there with Geddy, grumbling about the spirit of radio. "But it bears a gift beyond price, almost free," you'll hear us say, plaintively. 

Until then, let's play ball!

KS

Notes from the Bleeding Edge of FanGraphs Audio; or The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract: No Longer New?

I realize this is not a photograph from the era
of the New Bill James Historical Abstract but I like it

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with FanGraphs Audio of late, having taken on the (honestly fairly obvious) project of listening to every Carson-Cistulli-hosted episode in reverse chronological order. This is to say, I began some weeks ago with Episode 844: Carson Cistulli Fulfills His Obligation (November 16, 2018), and have thus far worked my way back to, let's see . . . Episode 678: Eric Longenhagen, Lead Prospect Analyst (August 30, 2016), with every intention to go all the way back to the earliest days. (The earliest episode I remember distinctly and with real clarity featured the inventor of Big League Chew, Rob Nelson, interviewed by a Carson Cistulli who bordered on ékstasis throughout; some quick searching reveals this to have been Episode 57: Rob Nelson of Big League Chew [January 14, 2011]). This endeavour has understandably and perhaps inevitably led to several tensions between the primary world of our experience and the secondary worlds of memory and subcreation (in Tolkien's sense) to the extent to which this reverse chronology of baseball analytics and fellowship has intersected with the false chronology (or the true chronology of a realm bound by artifice?) of my current MLB The Show 2016 season (guess which MLB The Show is the last one they made for the last video game console I will ever own: that's right it is MLB The Show 2016! lucky for me it's really good! I turned Josh Donaldson with less than a year left on his contract and an aspect I do not enjoy into Hyun-Jin Ryu, Kenley Jansen, Kevin Jepsen, and Trevor Plouffe! and brought in Shin-Soo Choo for a somewhat-washed R. A. Dickey [no disrespect, a very neat guy]! but I am "showing you my Pokémans" so hard right now, forgive me). On the whole, this has been an enormously pleasant undertaking, though one that, at the same time, has made clear both what FanGraphs once was (a completely idiosyncratic mélange of æsthetics and ænalytics that emerged out of a years-long conversation between Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli) and what it is now (a still-good thing that is not that). This is nobody's fault, other than the major league teams that keep hiring up the people who were at the heart of it all, I suppose, a process ably detailed in Jen McCaffrey's excellent FanGraphs piece for The Athletic (subscription only but I have guest passes; let me know), and I still spend a good deal of time there bearing witness to Jay Jaffe's remembrances of guys past, particularly around Hall of Fame time. It's good! But it's also a little bit of a mess: cluttered with decreasingly-lucrative ads to the point where purchasing an add-free membership seems almost a requirement (and yet not quite one), encouraging its readers to pick up some merch from a store that has not restocked in months and months ("Do You Go To FanGraphs At All?" in a men's medium, where art thou?), and with a greatly diminished signature audio show despite the best efforts of fine writers and contributors who -- through no fault of their own, and probably to the overall benefit of their general person -- are not Carson Cistulli.    

And yet despite all this I come to you today with a report from the bleeding edge of latter-day FanGraphs Audio, which, despite its limitations, undeniably had Bill James on with David Laurila for a great little fifteen minute segment, which you can listen to here. The premise: "David and Bill reflect on The New Bill James Historical Abstract (2001), Bill’s rankings of the best players at each position, and how his opinions may have changed in the two decades since. How does new research inform what we know about the greatest players of all time, and how do the new greats match up? And how does Bill feel these days about his 'most underrated player of all time?' [oddly it is Darrell Evans!--ed]." Some alarming information here concerning the passage of time, but it has grown increasingly hard to argue that 2001 was not twenty years ago, as strongly implied in the above. Beside me now sits my hardcover copy of The New Bill James Historical Abstract, which I think I bought pretty much as soon as it came out, and I have been trying to reconstruct how or why that happened. I think it's this: having arrived in Toronto in 2001 and attending Blue Jays games for the first time (and frequently!), I definitely began visiting the ESPN MLB page, a site at which Rob Neyer enjoyed both prominence and non-paywallèdness (Neyer is probably how I found my way to Baseball Primer, also of 2001, now that I think of it, and that was pretty much it for me [as for so many]). In any event, here it sits, twenty years later, this rich tome vital to my baseball education whose tone I do not necessarily enjoy anymore ("55. Cecil Fielder: A big fat guy who hit home runs for a few years" as the entirety of an entry is not irreverent so much as it is mean-spirited, or too mean-spirited for me, at least). A reminder: the big idea James used in his player rankings was Win Shares, an all-in-one measure of value of his own devising with a goal very similar to the Wins Above Replacement statistics that have totally superseded James' earlier efforts (though James himself is kind of not having it, as recently as late last year). But bWAR is on the back of Topps baseball cards these days (whither fWAR?), indicating a pretty full-on ship-sailing. Also this seems as good a place as any to post the screen capture of Carson Cistulli's appearance on MLB Network in which the chyrons seem to indicate an incredibly dystopian future until it settles in for you: 

the minor leagues have always been
a grind but I don't know

Okay then, to the New Historical Abstract rankings! And their revisiting! 

In 2001, here is who James had at the top of his list for first base (in the book, the lists go a hundred deep, but not here they won't [nor did they in conversation with Laurila, obviously {that'd be too many}]):

1. Lou Gherig

2. Jimmie Foxx

3. Mark McGwire

4. Jeff Bagwell

5. Eddie Murray

6. Johnny Mize

7. Harmon Killebrew

8. Hank Greenberg

9. Willie McCovey

10. Frank Thomas

As of 2021: Generally, the 21st century has seen more really good players at first base than at any other position, we are told. Pujols, though trailing off at quite a rate, would now be either number two or three. Mark Teixeira isn't going to be top five or top ten, James notes, but he was a really good player. Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt are very good! And there would be twenty first baseman from the 21st century in the top 100 now, probably. Joey Votto would be top fifteen, "and Carlos Delgado, I mean he was a beast" (that's true!). Todd Helton is mentioned, too, as someone who should be in the Hall of Fame. 

Second Base, through 2001:

1. Joe Morgan

2. Eddie Collins

3. Rogers Hornsby

4. Jackie Robinson

5. Craig Biggio

6. Nap Lajoie

7. Ryne Sandberg

8. Charlie Gehringer

9. Rod Carew

10. Roberto Alomar

In 2021: Chase Utley is praised lavishly as someone who seemed to be at the top of the leaderboard for every new thing James learned to measure between 2006 and 2010; Utley would certainly make the top twenty. No other players are mentioned. 

Third Base, through 2001:

1. Mike Schmidt

2. George Brett

3. Eddie Matthews

4. Wade Boggs

5. Home Run Baker

6. Ron Santo

7. Brooks Robinson

8. Paul Molitor

9. Stan Hack

10. Darrell Evans

In 2021: A lot of Darrell Evans talk! Great player, and I happened upon his 1988 O-Pee-Chee card no more than two hours ago, but even so I think his lure eludes me slightly (it does not elude Bill James). No less a thirdbaseguy than Mike Schmidt himself has said that Nolan Arenado is really just a few more seasons away from being the best ever at the position, and it would have been neat to hear what James thought of this, but third base continues to be neglected by even the people who first informed you that third base was too often neglected. On to short!

Shortstop, through 2001:   

1. Honus Wagner

2. Arky Vaughan

3. Cal Ripken

4. Robin Yount

5. Ernie Banks

6. Barry Larkin

7. Ozzie Smith

8. Joe Cronin

9. Alan Trammell

10. Pee Wee Reese

In 2021: Derek Jeter continues to be the belle of every ball, and Bill James has him at fifth. How long would Fernando Tatis Jr. (whose rookie card values are a problem for the set-completionist, but I wish him every success all the same) have to play at his current level to rank highly on the list, James is asked, but James is hesitant to say much of anything about that (four years, he eventually offers).  

Catchers, through 2001:

1. Yogi Berra

2. Johnny Bench

3. Roy Campanella

4. Mickey Cochrane

5. Mike Piazza

6. Carlton Fisk

7. Bill Dickey

8. Gary Carter

9. Gabby Hartnett

10. Ted Simmons

In 2021: Ivan Rodriguez "would be very close to the top of the list now," which is honestly a joy to hear. "The 21st-century catchers" Jorge Posada, Joe Mauer, Yadier Molina, and Buster Posey are all to be considered in the same group just behind Simmons (Joe Torre was ranked 11th through 2001, by the way!).

Pitchers, through 2001:

1. Walter Johnson

2. Lefty Grove

3. Pete Alexander

4. Cy Young

5. Warren Sphan

6. Tom Seaver

7. Christy Mathewson

8. Bob Gibson

9. Kid Nichols

10. Sandy Koufax

In 2021: Pedro Martinez would be ahead of Koufax, with Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, and Roger Clemens all just ahead of Pedro. James thinks Koufax comes in lower than he should in WAR and Win Shares and everything else; there is just something about Koufax we've all somehow missed, I think he is saying (himself included); which is interesting. 

Right Field, through 2001:

1. Babe Ruth

2. Henry Aaron

3. Frank Robinson

4. Mel Ott

5. Pete Rose

6. Tony Gwynn

7. Reggie Jackson

8. Roberto Clemente

9. Paul Waner

10. Sam Crawford

In 2021: They mostly talk about Bobby Murcer's ranking at number seventeen, and James admits he made a mistake with that ranking, and he can't even remember why. And then they move on! No! Say things about Ichiro! And Vladimir Guerrero! Nooooooo!

Center Field, through 2001:

1. Willie Mays

2. Ty Cobb

3. Mickey Mantle

4. Tris Speaker

5. Joe DiMaggio

6. Duke Snider

7. Ken Griffey Jr. 

8. Kirby Puckett

9. Billy Hamilton

10. Jimmy Wynn

In 2021: The first order of business is the Hall of Fame case of Andruw Jones, and Bill James is not super duper buying it, as James thinks WAR's evaluation of Andruw Jones as a significantly better fielder than Willie Mays is not credible. Kenny Lofton, on the other hand, James sees as a clear Hall of Famer. I would love to see it! "Drinkin' Henny like I'm Kenny Lofton, outstandin'" is Action Bronson's contribution.

Left Field, through 2001:

1. Ted Williams

2. Stan Musial

3. Barry Bonds

4. Rickey Henderson

5. Carl Yastrzemski

6. Joe Jackson

7. Al Simmons

8. Tim Raines

9. Willie Stargell

10. Minnie Minoso 

In 2021: The big question is what do you do with Barry Bonds, right? James has him holding steady at number three despite his enormous production in the final years of his career, applying a significant discount to what Bonds achieved in the uneven playing field of the steroid era. 

They close with a brief mention of James' overall list of The 100 Greatest Players of all Time, the top ten of which looked like this in 2001:

1. Babe Ruth

2. Honus Wagner

3. Willie Mays

4. Oscar Charleston

5. Ty Cobb

6. Mickey Mantle

7. Ted Williams

8. Walter Johnson

9. Josh Gibson

10. Stan Musial

David Laurila notes the richly deserved but unusual inclusion of two Negro Leagues players in this top ten, and I would interject here that the substantial sections of the New Historical Abstract that addressed the Negro Leagues were a complete revelation to me in 2001. "And we know more about those guys now than we did years ago, due to the the research that's been done," James adds. Alex Rodriguez would have to land somewhere near the top of that list now, James says, so I guess maybe Musial would have to go (a shame but hey, that's the game). James says that when the pandemic is behind us, he wants to meet with Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and talk about any adjustments that may need to be made. Bob Kendrick is on Twitter at @nlbmprez, by the way, a worthy follow in his own right but also a surprisingly good source of Geddy Lee content.

And that's it! Should they have gone much longer? And discussed a far, far greater number of guys? Yes, certainly. But a pretty fun exercise all the same! I don't think it's likely we'll see another Historical Baseball Abstract on the scale of the 2001 edition, which took James about four years to write, so little tweakings such as these are probably about all we're going to get. Neat, though!  Where will Vladito, who looked great in the Blue Jays win over the Yankees yesterday on the first afternoon of the year that really felt like spring, one day rank? Really very near the top, you would almost certainly have to think. Let's find out together, maybe! 

KS

Jose Bautista: Male Witch

 

How Else To Explain It

Although the biggest Blue Jays story in recent days is for sure the enticing prospect of a new ballpark (someday! maybe! although if it ends up anywhere but right where the Skydome is it will probably feel like a mistake!), and the second biggest is Vladimir Guerrero's Jr.'s ongoing wagon-reduction efforts (arguably misguided, I must say, and yet fundamentally I am here to support Vladito in all his doings), number three would have to be the surprising dismissal of longtime Fan 590/Sportsnet Radio Blue Jays commentator Mike Wilner. Well, sort of longtime, longtime for some stuff: although he'd only been doing play-by-play (selected innings) for the last few years, he had been on the radio for about twenty, and first came to my attention as the person whose on-air responsibilities consisted chiefly of reading the Home Hardware Out-of-Town scoreboard, a task to which he possessed adequacy. I would argue that less adequacy -- perhaps not inadequacy, but less adequacy -- was displayed in Wilner's handling of the "Jays Talk" post-game call-in, in which he often treated ill-informed callers with derision and disdain. I will be the first (or at least among them) to admit that the quality of the calls Wilner received was often disappointing, but there was, to me, an unattractive and angry smarty-pantsness (smarty-pantsness is not a good quality) to the way these calls and callers were handled. This smarty-pantsness (or smarty pantsèdness, perhaps), I am pleased to report, didn't especially carry over into Wilner's actual play-by-play work when he was later afforded that opportunity. To say that Wilner was no Tom Cheek, or Jerry Howarth, or Dan Shulman, or Alan Ashby is both totally true and also no great slight, but I have seen very little comment on his dismissal to the effect that "oh man they shouldn't have let him go, he was great!" and instead a good deal along the lines of either "that's too bad; he really loves baseball" (which, as a thing to say, is interesting) or "you know what, I can see it" or, less charitably, "good." I of course have absolutely no desire to see anyone lose their job, especially given our present circumstance (but really whenever). At the same time, I can totally see why the Blue Jays might want to go in a different direction with their radio team. Ben Wagner seems pretty good! Maybe get him another guy! The 2020 television broadcasts were unrivaled, pretty much, as Dan Shulman (with Buck Martinez) is I think the best announcer in baseball these days (did you listen to the ESPN Radio feed of the World Series to hear Dan Shulman? or were you instead like "you know what, I really do like it when John Smoltz has things to say about John Smoltz" as you opted for Fox [haha!]). It felt unnatural for television to be more pleasing than radio for Blue Jays baseball. And frankly I want that stopped. 

The several-day internet focus on Toronto Blue Jays' broadcasters and broadcasting that followed Wilner's largely unexplained (and yet not inexplicable) dismissal on what we might as well call "the boards" has led to some fairly intriguing stuff, like a revisiting of the impressively durable rumours that Jerry Howarth didn't give a hoot about Mike Wilner (conspicuously unmentioned in Howarth's memoir, I am told), and that Wilner himself returned no hoot (of the many thanked in Wilner's note of farewell, Howarth was not among them), all of which is devastating, as Howarth is Toronto-baseball Mr. Rogers, and previously known only to have it in for Jose Reyes (I liked him!) and J. P. Ricciardi (I really didn't!). 

But by far the most important thing that came out the collective remembrance and reflection surrounding Wilner's dismissal is how, in 2015, people kept calling in to Jays Talk to ask if Jose Bautista was a male witch, as immortalized in a reddit thread titled "People keep calling in to Jays Talk to ask if Jose Bautista is a male witch." There is not much more to it than that, other than that a number of callers from the Cambridge/Kitchener area, seemingly in some manner of (coven-like?) co-ordination, kept calling in to Jays Talk to ask if Jose Bautista was a male witch. And Mike Wilner was not having it. Miraculously, a ten-minute audio compilation of several of these calls survives, and I would like to share them with you at this link. The final moments of the final call are the greatest moments in Blue Jays radio history that feature neither Tom Cheek nor Jerry Howarth. Alas that it seemed not so to Mike Wilner, whom we wish the best in all his future endeavours.     

KS

Can I Baseball a Feeling?

Hello, friends!

One never knows, does one, when one will have baseball feelings (or indeed Baseball Feelings) visited upon them by some strange confluence of present circumstance and the strange weight of remembrance, but given that eventuality (indeed, that inevitability), it is really pretty good, isn't it, that we still have this nice little blog with Bert Blyleven in a low-key off-colour t-shirt atop it wherein we might, at both the very least and the very most, note them (the feelings). (Blyleven does not seem to be loading "on mobile" and I can't explain it; I am sorry.) Lately, I have been paying much closer attention to this ill-advised and almost certainly wrong baseball season than I would have guessed, and find myself in a surprisingly September Baseball mood, so much so that, in addition to having actual games on with greater regularity than I have in years, I also have a non-actual (and yet so actual) game of Baseball Mogul open presently on the selfsame computer from which I now type to you (hey why didn't the 2001 Blue Jays pick up Sammy Sosa and Roberto Alomar without even giving up all that much? Explain yourself, "Gord Ash.") If you want to get weirded out by the primary world of our experience being folded into and around the subcreation (in Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories" sense [I am not using this correctly]) or second-order world or our imaginings, then I think you'd like it; the 2017 one is free; give it a shot; it's for computers. I used to play a lot of it years ago and ran it with a "baseball card mod" that replaced the generic, logo-wiped player pictures with old baseball cards (be they Topps, Fleer, Upper Deck, Donruss, Score, O-Pee-Chee, and that's it I can't remember any more old baseball card kinds really [Leaf! I had a Ryan Klesko Leaf rookie card that the guy at the store gave me two more packs for! Leaf!] but now I find there is a genuine charm to these objectively charmless images to the extent to which they participate in an æsthetic I have come to think of (just now! you can get it on the ground floor on this one!) as j o s t e n s w æ v e. 

I mean look:

Yung Doc (R.I.P.)

this one is also
v l æ d w æ v e

So I haven't changed those and instead wish to inhabit them insofar as I am able. But this is a seductive æsthetic and in time you may have to come for me. When that happens, I hope that I am able to accept your help graciously and gratefully but there is honestly no telling what kind of state I will be in (because of it).  

Another "state" I would like to talk about is the "state" of Blue Jays baseball! (Yessssssssss.) It's a lot of fun! I should begin by saying that I recognize that I am a jerk for even watching, in that I felt actual relief when the federal government decided not to permit Major League Baseball to hold games in Canada this season, given MLB's somewhat lax "well maybe not everyone will get sick necessarily" approach to public health; if it was not super cool for the Blue Jays to play baseball in Toronto this year (and it was not), it is not all of a sudden super cool for the Blue Jays to play baseball so long as it is an hour-and-a-half drive away in Buffalo (in a pretty lovely minor league park [park loveliness will not save you though, man]). And so none of this should be happening: the playing, the viewing, the enjoying. But this is a pretty fun team! Of spirited young men, many of them rather heavyset! Although my personal preference has long run towards slick-fielding speedsters lean as whippets, the lure of the big fat station-to-station slugger is by no means unknown to me. Although no one thing defines these 2020 Toronto Blue Jays, with the exception of comically awful baserunning (which, from a sheer entertainment standpoint, is very much to their credit), heft is a major theme and almost certainly the predominant one (the only other real contender is how fondly I remember everybody's dads). The off-season addition of 류현진 Hyun-jin Ryu (a move willed into being by a single-minded twitter pal of mine), perhaps the Blue Jays' girthmost starter since David Wells, was a bold step in this probably correct direction, but it was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s off-season addition (oh ho!) of a whole bunch of extra in the middle (and lower-middle) that cemented it. Lest you think I am in any way body shaming through a thin veil of irony let me assure you I am on the contrary body encouraging with all sincerity: I am here to venerate and embrace every bit of this, and to celebrate the "all bodies are beautiful" nature of baseball as a sport. There are those who have suggested that Vladi Jr. has taken his natural baseball-bod gifts too far in quarantine, and that his current physique is to his detriment, but I am here to say: let's let this play out; let's see where this goes. 

A big change for me and my own experience of baseball is that I am no longer principally "of the radio," despite long maintaining that radio is the medium most decorous with the game itself (this is not an "original" nor necessarily even "good" thought). My circumstances, though, are this: Jerry Howarth, my favourite baseball broadcaster ever (to such an extent that I enjoyed lead-Jerry with Alan Ashby as much or maybe even more than Tom Cheek [may peace be upon him; may Allah be pleased] with Jerry Howarth as his number two) has earned the rest of what we can only hope will be a long and happy retirement (I think I am going to read Jerry Howarth's book! if I do I'll let you know about it, how about?) and what little time I have spent with baseball on the radio since then has not been the same, and I say that with no disrespect intended towards (let me check wikipedia . . .) Ben Wagner, Mike Wilner, Kevin Barker, and Duane Ward, all of whom I am sure are doing a good job. But when you can type "Blue Jays stream" into your phone and three clicks later have an HD feed of the legitimately great Dan Shulman on play-by-play and Buck Martinez on colour, that seems like the thing to do. (Buck Martinez: an actual problem on play-by-play, a true joy on colour; it's so weird.) This is new but I like it! The last few seasons most of my Blue Jays Awareness has come through following the team on twitter, which, since they only really show you the good parts, is a pretty misleading but very cheering way to keep up (after a fashion) with a baseball team that isn't winning many games but which has some players who are neat. But now they're good!

So here we are for some September baseball, the Blue Jays ahead of the Yankees (against whom they have ten games, including the one they are losing right now, in the next few weeks) for second place in the A.L. East, and well-positioned, it would seem, for the strange playoffs we will presumably get to see (should we be spared), and I am really enjoying it. I do think the Blue Jays' powder blue jerseys are excessively mannered, and I say that fully aware of how Angela Carter in her rejection of the term "literary post-modernism" accepted that there was a new mannerism, so don't even start with with me (please). But that is my only real problem with the team these days (the baserunning, which is complex, we've covered). I see from looking at my most recent posts on this blog, and how they are from years and years ago, that we have definitely not spoken since the Blue Jays improbably hired the great Carson Cistulli, formerly of both Fangraphs and the viewless wings of poesy, to a position in analytics or scouting or the intersection of those two things (perhaps of all four of the things just named, maybe; who can say). I wanted to note this truly excellent turn of events through positing two old photos and then a "Rate My Professors" student evaluation from Cistulli's time teaching on contract (I am pretty sure; if am mistaken please correct me [that's how I have taught for more than a decade so this is no diss]) at the University of Massachusetts long ago; here we go:

Which is just devastating.

And that's more or less where I am at with my Baseball Feelings at present. I'm way in: Blue Jays baseball on my phone while I do other things (let's not go nuts), scoreboard watching, Baseball Mogul, Jomboy podcasts and videos (they know so much and are so merry! and yet they are young and so do not recognize Kent Hrbek on sight), searching "川﨑 宗則 Munenori Kawasaki" on youtube and watching all of the results; realizing "my new hat" is like nine years old; just the whole works, man. 

I mentioned earlier that I'd had a look to see what my most recent posts here had been, and I found that there was one from E5's walk-off in 2016, and a bunch before that in 2015. At the end of a 2015 one where it looked (to me at least) like the Blue Jays were not going to get any further than the ALDS with Texas (I was mistaken!), I wrote this:

"But even if this is pretty much it, and the Blue Jays don't even get out of this round (maybe not this weekend, even), I did see people on their break at Sobey's playing catch outside on the grass yesterday, and just totally firing it in there, so this excellent half-summer of everybody (really, it seems like everybody) enjoying baseball here, at least a little, has been really nice, and I look forward to it being really nice again when it happens when I am 58. None of our current cats will be around then, so let's enjoy their company as much as we are able, and also, to a lesser extent, some baseball games."

It made me sad to read this, but once I had, I wanted to close by wishing the best to any and all cats of that era who are with us still, and to ask that we take a moment, if we could, to reflect on the memory of the cats of those days who are no longer around, except in the broadest sense.    

Your pal,

KS

PS Vladi Jr. just hit a two-RBI chopper past the first basemen with the bases loaded and then stole second by a lot: let's let this play out; let's see where this goes . . . 

PPS ten-run inning, Blue Jays 12 Yankees 7. 

Blue Jays 5, Orioles 2 (F/11): My Cat Peed On My Modem So I Am Using Data And Typing On My Phone And Will Therefore Be Brief

E5ever

This is super dark to even think about now but remember when Edwin Encarnacion was well and truly E5? It had been going on for a while already by the time I heard Keith Law and Eric Karabell (I refuse to check spelling in my present circumstance) talk about it on the old Baseball Today podcast (of which I was fond!). "Do you . . . do you know what they're calling him? Encarnacion? Blue Jays fans? At places like Drunk Jays Fans [editor's note: r.i.p.]? They're calling him 'E5.'" And Eric Karabell was like "That's . . . just brutal." And it was! But we all did it, because of both the unabidableness of the situation and our own manifest unkindness. It had gone way past the point where one could even fault Encarnacion for sailing it into the fucking stands every other game: I was, and remain, confident that he wanted that to happen even less than I wanted that to happen. But they kept running him out there, man.  I don't know, but also definitely do know, that the throw to first tormented his every waking moment and plus haunted his dreams.

But he has long since been freed of that tyranny and we are all the richer for it, and so good.

Why not go, Jays?

Your pal,

KS

NATS (66-45) BETTER THAN GIANTS YESTERDAY

 Tanner Roark's somewhat 
 anonymous, but he has 
 become solid start 

 Melancon got his first save 
 as a Nat; (fuck Papelbon) 

NATS (65-45) WORSE THAN GIANTS TWO DAYS AGO

 Strasburg's sixteenth win 
 did not happen, Giants scrapped 
 together a win 

 might this be playoff preview? 
 I hope Strasburg's loss was not 

NATS (65-44) BETTER THAN GIANTS THREE DAYS AGO

 after achieving 
 rare six-nine plus four-twenty, 
 Gio starts again 

 the Nats Dionysian 
 destiny is sealed; they won 

NATS (64-44) BETTER THAN DIAMONDBACKS FIVE DAYS AGO

 oh, Max Scherzer? he 
 just struck out eleven dudes 
 over 8 innings 

 also got two-run single, 
 all for six-nine, four-twenty 

NATS (63-44) BETTER THAN DIAMONDBACKS SIX DAYS AGO

 another ten-run 
 offensive bombardment for 
 6-9, 4.20 

 sixty-nine is sexual, 
 four-twenty is ancestral 

NATS (62-44) BETTER THAN DIAMONDBACKS A WEEK AGO

 in celebration 
 of Gio's magic 6-9 
 4.20, Nats smash 

 14 runs while Strasburg aced 
 type smashing, with Melancon 

NATS (61-44) WORSE THAN GIANTS 8 DAYS AGO

 baseball is magic 
 game of numbers, and magic 
 always shows itself 

 with loss, Gio's 6 and 9, 
 with 4.20 ERA 

NATS (61-43) WORSE THAN GIANTS 9 DAYS AGO

 bullpen gave up four 
 walks, helped fuck this thing up good, 
 but NEVER MIND THAT 

 Nats acquired Mark Melancon - 
 to fix our shitty bullpen 

NATS (61-42) BETTER THAN GIANTS 10 DAYS AGO

 Maximum Scherzer 
 was just his normal top-shelf 
 self over 7 

 but of note is Nats turning 
 first triple play since "the Nats" 

NATS (60-42) BETTER THAN GIANTS 11 DAYS AGO

 hard not to love that 
 Johnny Cueto, but Tanner 
 Roark performed nicely 

 Papelbon tried to blow it, 
 but Dusty relieved him first 

NATS (59-42) BETTER THAN INDIANS 12 DAYS AGO

 aside from Strasborg 
 returning to his ace form, 
 what of Trea Turner? 

 he has become the lead-off 
 hitter the Nats always lacked 

NATS (58-42) WORSE THAN INDIANS 13 DAYS AGO

 Gio with strong start, 
 but the bullpen unravelled, 
 capped by Papelbon 

 he gave up 3 in the 9th; 
 Dusty is playing long con 

NATS (58-41) WORSE THAN PADRES 15 DAYS AGO

 fucking Papelbon 
 gave up 4 runs in the 9th, 
 took another L 

 stupid fucking Papelbon, 
 French for "piece of shit fuckface" 

NATS (58-40) BETTER THAN PADRES 16 DAYS AGO

 Maximum Scherzer 
 was maximal as always, 
 yet Papelbon won 

 stupid fucking Papelbon, 
 French for "locker room cancer" 

NATS (57-40) WORSE THAN PADRES 17 DAYS AGO

 Friday evening 
 home series opener Saint 
 Diego Fathers 

 someone attends ev'ry game 
 and that person is insane 

NATS (57-39) WORSE THAN DODGERS 18 DAYS AGO

 beloved Stephon 
 Strasborg suffers his first 
 loss of this season 

 five runs off two homers by 
 some fuckface Justin Turner 

NATS (57-38) BETTER THAN DODGERS 19 DAYS AGO

 Ultimate Harper 
 with the first inning dinger 
 (dork phrase for "home run") 

 Gio Gonzalez winning 
 fills my heart with shining joy 

NATS (56-38) WORSE THAN DODGERS 20 DAYS AGO

 when the Dodgers are 
 successful, I think of them 
 as like the Yankees 

 that is, they are evil and 
 I hate all that is "Dodgers" 

NATS (56-37) WORSE THAN PIRATES 22 DAYS AGO

 the guy I work with 
 went to this game, but they left 
 around tenth inning 

 it was hot as fuck; at end 
 of game, nobody was left 

NATS (56-36) BETTER THAN PIRATES 23 DAYS AGO

 scrappy Tanner Roark 
 pitched like a Strasburg, got 
 the shut out win, bruh 

 dude I work with - Pirates fan - 
 went to this game; he was mad 

NATS (55-36) BETTER THAN PIRATES 24 DAYS AGO

 baseball's long slog lost 
 me there for a long minute - 
 return out of guilt 

 Strasburg went 13 and 0 
 on another top-notch start 

NATS (54-36) BETTER THAN METS YESTERDAY

 Gio Gonzalez 
 shaky perhaps, but held his 
 his together well 

 Daniel Murphy home run helps 
 destroy his former team's hopes 

NATS (53-36) BETTER THAN METS TWO DAYS AGO

 Maximum Scherzer 
 remains pretty amazing, 
 striking out mass fools 

 also Daniel Murphy is 
 pretty swell ball player too 

NATS (52-36) BETTER THAN METS THREE DAYS AGO

 Stephen Strasburg is 
 an unstoppable force of 
 dominant presence 

 (I hope he doesn't break in 
 half before October though) 

NATS (51-36) WORSE THAN METS FOUR DAYS AGO

 the Mets used pitchers 
 with the last names "Bastardo" 
 and "Familia" 

 this comedy helps lighten 
 Luke Giolito's failures 

NATS (51-35) BETTER THAN BREWERS FIVE DAYS AGO

 Ultimate Harper 
 smashed himself a first inning 
 homer, with two on 

 offense continued smashing 
 enough to keep cushioned lead 

NATS (50-35) WORSE THAN BREWERS SIX DAYS AGO

 another shitty 
 Gio Gonzalez start - this 
 has become common 

 and yet how can you not love 
 scruffy smiling Nat Gio? 

NATS (50-34) WORSE THAN BREWERS SEVEN DAYS AGO

 capital city 
 team called Nationals - 4th of 
 July holiday 

 only thing that can beat us? 
 alcoholism (Brewers) 

NATS (50-33) BETTER THAN REDS EIGHT DAYS AGO

 return of Strasborg 
 of course equals another 
 superlative win 

 11 wins to 0 
 losses - epic beginning 

NATS (49-33) WORSE THAN REDS NINE DAYS AGO

 Joe Ross got hammered, 
 and then the bullpen did too; 
 HOLIDAY WEEKEND! 

 nothing's more American 
 than getting lit with fireworks 

NATS (49-32) BETTER THAN REDS TEN DAYS AGO

 TEN DAYS OF BASEBALL 
 LOST TO WHIRLWIND REAL LIFE SHIT; 
 I wouldn't say "lost" 

 there's reasons this game appeals 
 to statistical dorks - slow 

NATS (48-32) BETTER THAN REDS LAST NIGHT

 Gio still gave up 
 4 runs, but also offense 
 smashed back for 13 

 I love Gio Gonzalez; 
 he has Power of Lounge look 

NATS (47-32) BETTER THAN METS TWO DAYS AGO

 Maximum Scherzer 
 does not fuck around; went out 
 up by 4 long runs 

 bullpen gave back two (uh oh!) 
 but held on; bitch Mets got swept 

NATS (46-32) BETTER THAN METS THREE DAYS AGO

 "Lucky" Lucas F. 
 Giolito makes first start, 
 appeared competent 

 rain delay ended his day 
 early, but Nats still blanked Mets 

NATS (45-32) BETTER THAN METS FOUR DAYS AGO

 a thorough crushing 
 of divisional rival 
 Metropolitans 

 Daniel Murphy dominates 
 all realms of this sport of dorks