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| safe at home / safe as houses |
At absolutely no risk of getting ahead of anything at all, I note eagerly (though not overly) that these five-and-two 2025 Blue Jays are on pace to surpass the 114-win 1998 Yankees and match the 116-win 2001 Mariners (a team that you may well recall for being the first one that had Ichiro Suzuki on it [hey he's going into the Hall of Fame this year, isn't he?]). I would note further that not even the gods themselves could prevent this from happening.
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| this is my new friend Andrés Giménez |
After an Opening Day debacle that really couldn't have gone worse—aside from how we had hot dogs, root beers, and crinkle-cut fries—the Blue Jays' big Friday-night win came on an Apple TV+ game, making it worse than if it hadn't happened at all (a radical view, but one that I hold resolutely). Saturday afternoon, they'd just gone up 4-2 on Andrés Giménez's second home run of this our young season (he has also already made some very nice plays at second) when, like fools, we decided to go for a nice walk. When we returned, of course, all was blasted. How pleasing, then, to see the Blue Jays hold on to their 2-1 first-inning lead (I missed the first inning) throughout the long remainder of yesterday's game, tacking on a late run on a homer from Taylor Heineman, of literally all people (just his second in career that has seen him bounce in and out and around the majors since 2019 [he was stoked about it]). A season-opening split is fine! I have no problem with it! I don't know that the Orioles will be ninety-plus-wins good again this season, but they sure don't seem likely to be bad, so I'll take it without complaint (aside from those listed above). It is regrettable that Max Scherzer seems to be lightly hurt already, that Daulton Varsho continues to be unwell, and that we have already DFA'd our best-named relief pitcher (Richard Lovelady), but I am genuinely looking forward to this season of Blue Jays baseball, not in the sense that I have great hopes and aspirations of a remarkable outcome of any sort (I agree with FanGraphs projection of eighty-four wins!), but more that I am just very into the idea of it being, like around. Let us endeavour to discuss it here! Lightly! A little! Things definitely trailed off around these parts last season, but so too did the Blue Jays themselves, you may well recall, so I only (baseball)feel(ing[s]) a little bad about it. Anyway, the Nats are in next! I have no ideas of any kind about them! Let's see!
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| the lads |
Anyway, as Keegan Matheson noted recently, "baseball: they just keep playing it." Let's see how it goes!
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| bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro bro |
I can only understand this three-game sweep against the Angels as a further attempt to troll me with a belated charge at the .500 mark, and honestly, I'm not thrilled about it. Nor was George Spriger thrilled, one might transition seamlessly, about a hit-by-pitch call that did not occur the other night, and which became the subject of a pretty good Jomboy breakdown here. The only thing Jomboy misses by talking over the in-game audio is George Springer's delightfully high-pitched "What?" of pure disbelief just before he totally lost it. Even when he is lightly misbehaving, as he certainly is here, I nevertheless find George Springer a likeable guy, and I hope he is able to continue with his recent work of not being the league's worst hitter (it's more fun for me when he isn't).
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| I think they should just believe Vladdy in these situations |
28 Shawn Green (1999)
26 John Olerud (1993)
26 Shannon Stewart (1999)
26 Edwin Encarnacion (2015)
25 Scott Rolen (2009)
22 Vladimir Guerrero (2024)
22 Vladimir Guerrero (2022)
22 Carlos Delgado (2000)
22 George Bell (1989)
Some surprises there for sure! Is Shawn Green the best Blue Jay I usually forget ever even played for us? I think he might be!
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| go Vladdy go |
Well alright! Well okay! Two out of three from the first-place Orioles! That's all we need! Do that like eight more times and we're right back at .500! And still probably in last place in the AL East, but there is a quiet dignity to every .500 season, in my view, and it remains my genuine although distant hope that we get there. I will note, though, that one problem we seem likely to come up against in that regard is that, between the deadline deals and some regrettably persistent injuries, the bullpen is looking a little thin, quite frankly; things are a little lean out there. A little lean. Out there.
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| reality has reached the point that it often looks almost as good as MLB 10: The Show |
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| curse that handsome devil |
"Blue Jays Hoard Prospects in Eight Deadline Deals" is probably pretty far from the kind of headline any of us had expected headed into this season, but with a seeming lock on last place in the AL East one hundred games into this lightly dismal summer, it's the thing to do, right? To identify prospects? And then to hoard them? Notably, the Blue Jays did not trade anyone to whom their contract commitments extended beyond this present year, but only those who would be leaving in a couple months anyway: Yimi, Nate Pearson, and Danny Jansen, as we'd mentioned previously, followed by Justin Turner, Kevin Keirmaier, Trevor Richards (whose changeup will be missed! by me!), IKF, and, completely unsurprisingly, Yusei Kikuchi, in a deal that had Astros fans bemoaning how much they were giving up for really-not-that-many Yusei Kikuchi starts. To those Astros fans I would say firstly that Yusei Kikuchi is a special guy (just you wait and see), and secondly thank you very much haha. I am insufficiently "up on things" to really know how the Blue Jays made out on all these trades, but the consensus from the wags seems to be that they made out really quite well, given the circumstances? With the expanded Wild Card playoffs keeping more teams in the running later into the season, and so (in the sense of "thus") fewer teams truly selling, guy-yields (how much you for your guys) are now significantly higher than we're used too. A silver lining!
And here's another: Vladdy went seven-for-ten with three doubles, two homers, and five RBIs in Monday's doubleheader against the much, much better Baltimore Orioles, and is on as hot a run as he's had at the dish as at any point since his monstrous, MVPesque 2021 season (a troubled time for us all, but less so for Vladdy [though perhaps I presume too much]). For the rest of the way, I will mostly just be on VladdyWatch, I think, though I will try to keep my heart open to the possibility of other neat things happening as well.
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| 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 . . .
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| "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!
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| 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!
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| you said it, Yusei Kikuchi; you said it, brother |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| get a roof |
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| oh I hear you loud and clear, Yusei Kikuchi |
It is with more relief than sadness that I note that this weekend was when I stopped worrying about the Blue Jays' 2024 season: in terms of making a run at the postseason, or even a run at run at the postseason, it is now pretty much a wrap (and in June, no less!). This is certainly not an unfamiliar place to be as a baseball fan in general, or a Blue Jays fan in particular, but these last few years have of course been very different: the Blue Jays have played "meaningful" games (understanding that in the broader context there is of course no such thing [or/also that in the broader broader context, perhaps everything is such things?]) literally every day from the weird (and yet crucial) 2020 season through the end of 2023. With the Blue Jays now in a truly brutal and fairly hopeless slide, there has been much chatter about how ineptly the team has been constructed, and how everybody in charge needs to go, and all that sort of thing, and hey maybe so (there comes a time), but over the last four seasons before this still-unfolding disaster, the Blue Jays have played .556 baseball, which is exactly a ninety-win pace, and have made the playoffs three times. That's about as good as it gets! And I would remind you that, for as much fun as was had in 2015 and 2016, these last few years have been the first time the Blue Jays have been this good for this long in thirty years. Not that they are good now, obviously; now they are in fact quite bad, and this particular series in Cleveland felt legitimately cursed. How can you get swept while hitting eight home runs? That's wild! How do you throw seventy pitches in a single inning? That is perhaps even wilder! (Apparently it hadn't happened to anybody in like ten years.) But it's all fine. There's still baseball on. It'll be nice.
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| hey man looking sharp |
The bad news is the Blue Jays were swept at home at the very moment they seemed poised—a little poised? lightly poised?—to finally get back to .500 with (maybe? possibly?) a series win against the beatable Red Sox, and it is truly a worrisome drag that they did not; but the good news is that Vladdy's new haircut is pretty good! The braids were often tremendous, no question, but at a certain point it's just time for a change, you know? My initial analysis is that short-haired Vladdy looks even more like his father, even though his father, as you will no doubt recall, often wore braids himself. Can't explain it!
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| the slam is grand |
After a dismal three-hit performance Friday, and a rousing romp of a bullpen game on Saturday (I think they're neat!), Daulton Varsho's Father's Day grand-slam gave the Blue Jays just barely enough to withstand a ninth-inning meltdown and injury to Yimi Garcia. But will I? Be able to withstand it? I have my doubts! The three best arms in the Blue Jays' pen—Romano, Swanson, and our guy Yimi—are all down, which I suppose leaves the ticklish bits to Chad Green, which would normally sound like a fine proposition, but for his various tribulations this year. Things continue to go really quite poorly, even as the Blue Jays manage a series win against a much better team, and yet despite these many fardels we must apparently bear, here we sit just a single game below .500 (despite a genuinely appalling run differential), and really just one team separating us from the Wild Card spots: the very Boston Red Sox who are in town next. It would take a series sweep to move past them, which is obviously asking a lot, but how about series win, to sidle right up alongside? Maybe one of those? To do that?
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| "spring" and a miss? are people saying this? |
It is getting harder and harder to overlook the fact that, nearly halfway into the season, George Springer has been among the worst batters in either league (by just about any metric you please), especially when he is the only one having a perfectly non-competitive at-bat in what was otherwise a big comeback ninth inning that fell just short in the rubber match of a three-game series against a strong Brewers team. Let me premise this next part by acknowledging that I am in no way "a swing guy" in the mechanical sense beyond being able to teach the absolute fundamentals to kids (hey okay nice cut!), but it looks to be as simple as this: the bat speed just isn't there anymore, is it? It happens to everybody eventually, and it seems to have happened to George Springer now, with two years left on his massive contract after this one. Friends, it is just brutal, which Springer himself freely admits, saying he realizes he is "not living up to his end of the bargain." In slight recognition of this, Springer has been dropped from the leadoff spot (that's good), but is still usually batting like fifth (that's bad), instead of the two best spots for him right now, which would be either "ninth" or "rarely." He is still playing a good right field, and obviously trying super hard, but man oh man.
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| feelin' fine |
On Friday night, the very first pitch thrown by the Blue Jays' bullpen resulted in a walk-off home run (making a fine hash of Chris Bassitt's best start), so Kevin Gausman wisely elected to pitch a complete-game shutout on Saturday. Great call, man! Sunday's game was one in which it felt like a million things happened on a perfect afternoon, but it was Isiah Kiner-Falefa's bases-clearing double in the tenth that left the greatest impression (and yet could it even have arisen had Varsho not stolen third, to be sac-flied in by Davis Schneider to tie it a little earlier?). A sweep would have been fantastic, obviously, but two-out-of-three leaves us, improbably, just a game under .500 and—you are seriously not going to believe this—just two games out of a Wild Card spot. What? For real? Yes! I assure you! I have checked a bunch of times! Milwaukee is our next stop, and they've been really, so this might not be super fun, but it does give us a chance to check in with the great Bob Uecker on the radio. I should also note that this weekend was the last time the Blue Jays are ever going to play the Athletics in Oakland, and that is a truly miserable thing. The Blue Jays' broadcast, led by Dan Shulman, talked about it a lot over the course of all three days, and appropriately mournfully, with great sympathy towards the faultless Oakland fans. The crowds were small this weekend—how could they not be?—but they were loud and fun and loved baseball. I am super sad for them.
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| Bo is essentially wearing shorts at this point |
A four-game split in the truest sense, in that the first two games had me feeling like Donald Sutherland after last year's playoffs, while the last two suggested to me that we are possibly still in this thing (in the broadest possible sense)? The hapless Blue Jays of the first two games bore almost no resemblance to the steely guys who emerged in the final two, aside from how Vladdy homered for both. Sure hope everybody enjoys bimodal distribution!
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| night mode |
Yusei Kikuchi's first bad start in what seems like forever was genuinely hurtful (to Yusei, visibly, and to me, too), but aside from that, what a weekend! Friday night's fourteenth-inning (double "Okay Blue Jays"!) Davis Schneider walk-off home run was for sure the highest of lights, but Sunday's win was a real honey, too, with a marvelous catch in centre field from Daulton Varsho, whose acclaim as baseball's best outfielder is rightly growing. The "Night Mode" City Connect jerseys, which débuted Friday, are really pretty great, as far as City Connect jerseys go: the Padres are in a class of their own (like, amongst all garments), but after that, I really think the Blue Jays ones are as good as any, and quite a bit better than most? And how many others put you in mind of the "City Night" stage of Yu Suzuki's Hang-On, particular in the Sega Master System port? Precious few! The weekend's other big development, and this really is a wonderful, marvelous thing, is that Vladdy got a start at third base, his first since 2019. When he fielded the ball, and made a play, everybody was so happy (Vladdy himself tried to play it cool, but we knew; we knew). In order to get Turner (who is not really hitting) and Vogelbach (who is) in the lineup more often, it makes all the sense in the world to get Vladdy some starts at third, so there is a rational reason to do it, but to me this really has to be considered a matter of the heart.
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| the unsung Trevor Richards |
Guys, guys, guys: we are probably so back. Timely hitting! Palpable dingers! Further excellent pitching! All of these things together for three consecutive games! The only real hiccup, I guess you would have to concede, is that Alek Manoah, who seemed totally back on track, left in the second inning of his start with what appears to be a fairly significant arm injury. Medium-to-long-term, that is a pretty big problem for us, but in the shortest of short terms, it gave Trevor Richards a chance to shine (what a handy fellow, that Trevor Richards, especially if you enjoy changeups). I will concede that all of this good baseball was played against the league-worst Chicago White Sox, who have only recently pulled up slightly from an historically bad start to the season, and so it may be reasonable to remain cautious about our fortunes, but at the same time, the Blue Jays won three games this series, and it is irrefutable that this is literally the maximum "of games" that anyone could have won under these circumstances (of playing three of them). Let's go.
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| pretty much your standard soul-crushing three-run walk-off (two outs, full count, etc.) |
Amidst all of this, though—and it really is terrible!—I would like to note the extent to which Vladdy, just like as an individual dude, has turned it around after a rough start. Would you believe that, two months in, he is actually on pace for his second best season? There's no reason to think he'll ever equal his MVP-level (in a non-Ohtani year, he'd have won it) 166 wRC+/6.3fWAR 2021, but the 140wRC+ he has put up so far this year is for sure a far sight better than last year's 118, which put him at 1.3fWAR, a deeply meagre total for a guy who is Vladdy. But now, he's hitting .302, he's getting on base at a .393 clip. Admittedly, the power isn't where you'd expect it to be, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think it's still in there somewhere, given his still-ludicrous bat-speed and exit velocity.
It's not even the end of May, though, and this is what I have been reduced to: looking to individual performances, because the team is utterly cooked. It's been kind of a while since this has been the case, but I have seen more bad seasons than good, certainly, and am adjusting fine (I think).
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| the ancient tableau |
This is perhaps an odd response to a series win in which the Blue Jays scored nine runs twice, but I am dispirited, so dispirited, in fact, that I am switching to series-recap mode. I find myself in a similar state of mind to that expressed by Kevin Gausman after Wednesday night's two-hit, shutout loss to a terrible team (allowing, of course, for the fact that Garrett Crochet is for sure a good pitcher) in that i) I too think this is a good group of guys, and ii) this group of guys will not be together very much longer unless they start winning some games here guys, golly (heavy emphasis on the second syllable). But surely a series win, you might well ask, in which the boys would appear to have at least temporarily elected to bop, should be enough to allay this dispiritment slightly? Surprisingly, no! People are asking if I'm good—I'm upset!
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| easy, big fella |
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| help him before he pitches again |
Here's a way we haven't lost in a while: blowing a four-run lead! Not a great result, but there was novelty to it, in that sense. Nate Pearson made a fine hash of the up-and-down Kevin Gausman's admirable start, and another impeccable inning from Yimi, and the objective fact of Pearson's 6.00 ERA now fully supports my subjective impression that you cannot run this guy out there in situations that matter at all, and my hope is they use him differently going forward, maybe? That aside, it was a great relief (unlike Nate Pearson! he's not great at relief!) to see Davis Schneider in the leadoff spot (Springer batting sixth), and Vladdy's three-for-four deepens the sense that he might have figured things out? A little? The loss drops the Blue Jays to six games below .500 for the first time since the end of the 2019 season, which is dark, but serves as a reminder of just how much fun it has been to watch the 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 teams. It felt this way at the time, but I feel it more and more as time passes: 2021 really was the year . . .
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| hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey |
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| come on, man |
You'll never guess who hit the walk-off home run of Jordan Romano in this one! Haha just kidding, you absolutely would, in that it was Adley Rutschman, his third of this rain-shortened two-game series (a welcome reprieve for the short-handed Toronto Flu Jays). But this was a great game, just like the Monday-night opener, low-scoring and strangely intense given the small (but lore-wise) Baltimore crowds. It's not like the Blue Jays have started scoring or anything—let's not go nuts!—but if they're going to play in games of this quality, it's going to be hard to mind any of it. These two games in Baltimore are for sure the æsthetic high-point of the season so far.
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| more like Daulton Varsho(w) |
An eighth-inning Varsho homer to tie it, a little ground ball to second (also Varsho!) to knock in the winning run in the tenth, and tremendous work from Berrios and Yimi before handing the ball off to Romano for a two-inning save, which is all to say this was just about a perfect outing from the Blue Jays, but what I am left more than a little haunted by are the two Adley Rutschman home runs, in that this kid is going to be a problem—for the league generally, but for my enjoyment in particular—for like ten years. It's going to be brutal.
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| by no means the problem |
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| genuinely refreshing |
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| eight innings of this (didn't matter though!) |
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| the whole game was exactly like this |
Five runs on five RBI-singles! By four different guys! Praise be! Vladdy, who is quietly snapping out of it, had three hits on the day, and with Justin Turner dropping off a little from his ludicrous first few weeks, Vladdy is probably our best hitter again? So at least that much order has been restored, I guess.
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| even so, though |
An iffy call on a checked swing extended an inning that culminated in a grand slam, sure, you're mad about it, John Schneider, I get it, but my concern is broader: if we're going to start losing the ones José Berrios pitches, too, then that's it. That's just it.
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| it's not gonna save you, man |
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| come on, Blue, you can't throw a guy out of the game for hating himself |
A home run from the returning Kevin Kiermaier, a very strong five-and-a-third from Kevin Gausman, and maybe we are back to our winning ways after this recent two-and-eight "blip"? What was most notable to me, though, was Bo Bichette's first-ever ejection, as he slammed his helmet down and uttered a single word (guess which one?) after a (not great) called third strike. It was genuinely surprising that he got tossed for this, as he specifically turned away from the umpire before any of it, which usually means you get fined for an "equipment violation" maybe. And though it was definitely the called strike that got him, Bo's anger seemed (characteristically!) directed at himself as much as anything external (wherever you Bo, there you are). He didn't say another word to the umpire, nor did he even turn his head to look at him, nor yet break stride as he walked back to the dugout and soon thereafter the clubhouse. Bo Bichette was the single most composed tossed baseball player I have ever seen. It was extraordinarily "show."
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| guys it is one thing to disappoint *me*, but your actions are hurting Yusei Kikuchi right now |
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| come on, man |
This one wasn't happening anyway—see, if you can even bear it, the Blue Jays' second straight four-hit batting debacle—but the three-run, eighth-inning home run Michael Massey hit off Nate Pearson sure put a stamp on it. This is consecutive getaway-day games that have been a huge drag, which is particularly hurtful because of how much I enjoy getaway-day games; or rather, how much I would like to enjoy getaway-day games.
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| No it's fine. I feel fine about it. |
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| high five high five high five high five high five high five |
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| first of the year! |
Gausman largely dealing through seven, a pair of manufactured runs, Varsho snagging one against the wall off the bat of Shohei Ohtani early and another off the bat of Max Muncy late (to get Yimi and Mayza out of an exceedingly ticklish eighth), an opposite-field solo shot from the struggling but beloved Alejandro Kirk (three-for-three! struggling no more!), a remarkable diving George Springer catch in right (his best since the diving centre-field catch in Detroit that time?) to help Romano through the ninth . . . what more do you need for a pleasant Sunday afternoon of Blue Jays baseball? The roof open, I suppose (it is so sunny outside here that I feel like it should be in Toronto, as well, a view that I understand has no basis), but let us not make the perfect the enemy of the rad.
Hey also: you may have noticed that one of the songs Sportsnet plays as it goes to breaks is, not infrequently, Sloan's "Money City Maniacs," for sure their best-known song, but actually a fairly poor one compared to their songs that are, like, good (or indeed excellent). I would like to propose that they stick with a Sloan song, but opt for a deeper cut, and while really just about anything would do, I think it should probably be "Junior Panthers" at least to start. Thank you.
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| I had honestly forgotten they'd traded for Glasnow |
A two-run game in which the home team brings the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth was objectively a close game, but the way the Blue Jays have been hitting this week—more like not hitting this week! I mean, come on! (we are taking your calls live on air through the top of the hour)—this one felt finished when the Dodgers went up by four in the fourth. It's a bad way to feel, man, and that's just if you're me: imagine poor Yusei Kikuchi! Four runs through six complete is certainly on the low end of what he's done this year, but it's not like a disqualifyingly bad start. It is if nobody's scoring any runs, though! That's five straight losses, turning a totally fine 13-10 into a worrying (to meeeeee) last-place 13-15.
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| well that didn't take long |
Hey have you noticed how the top of the Dodgers order this year—Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman—consists entirely and exclusively of sure-thing future Hall of Famers? And that all of them are going to be around for kind of a while yet? This is pretty bad news for the National League—the West, especially!—and generally not all that big a deal to AL teams, but it looks like it could be a major problem for the Blue Jays this weekend, if Friday night's endless drubbing is any indication. Chris Bassitt, who would be the first to tell you he has had a lousy month, gave up seven runs on nine hits and three walks and didn't even get out of the third. If we were going to lose this one anyone—and we sure were!—I don't at all mind that an Ohtani home run was part of it, because I just think those are neat.
KS
