Twins 4, Blue Jays 3: People Asking If I'm Good, I'm Perplexed

 

Tyler Heineman in simpler times

With the bases loaded in the top of the sixth, and the Blue Jays down 4-1, Tyler Heineman flied out to shallow left to end the inning (the top half of it, anyway). This was lightly disappointing, of course, but in no real way remarkable: Heineman, pressed into everyday duty with Alejandro Kirk out for weeks, has had just a brutal first month-and-a-bit of the season, making some particularly costly fielding errors early, and hitting just .176 en route to a stunningly negative bWAR of -0.8 already (to be fair, FanGraphs, which assesses catcher defense quite differently, has him at a comparatively balmy -0.2) and an OPS+ (in which one hundred is by definition league average) of literally twelve (FanGraphs has him at thirteen in the roughly equivalent [please do not @ me; I know how they are different {also it is always okay to @ me as we are all friends here} wRC+). It wouldn't have been surprising to see John Schneider elect to pinch hit in that situation, sending up a right-handed bat like Davis Schneider or Myles Straw against the lefty, and then replacing Heineman behind the plate with Brandon Valenzuela for the bottom half of the inning—or maybe you just skip the middle man, and send up the switch-hitting Valenzuela himself, after yesterday's nifty three-run homer in the Blue Jays' big eighth? That would have made sense, too. But what did not make immediate and apparent sense was for Tyler Heineman to first pop out, and only then be told to hit the pine (almost certainly not in those words, though I wonder if anybody actually still says that sometimes just to be lightly rude in an old-timey way?), as Brandon Valenzuela came out to start the bottom half of the sixth and take it the rest of the way. "Manager's decision," Schneider said after the game, which is not super helpful, in that they're sort of all manger's decisions, right? So no injury, then, you just took him out? "I’ll keep it to manager’s decision. Heineman’s in there." That doesn't sound great! Here's Heineman himself on it, as transcribed in the stalwart Keegan Matheson's article: "I think it’s just the situation, everything that’s been going on. I just didn’t get it done. It’s the manager’s decision. I stick by it. He’s one of the best managers in the game and the best manager I’ve played for. He has a reason for everything he does and I fully support it. That at-bat was pretty trash. I popped up on a pitch I should have drove. I've been pretty crappy the past ten games or so. He probably saw something he shouldn't have saw or that I did wrong. He made a decision." All pretty weird, I think! When Alejandro Kirk gets back, might that be the end of the line for the thirty-four-year-old Heineman? Valenzuela sticks with the team as the backup/catcher-of-the-fairly-distant-future, or do they want him back in Buffalo for developmental reasons? Much to consider! But all very much around the fringes of things, I suppose. 

What else did we have here Sunday afternoon, let's see: Trey Yesavage, without the benefit of his best "stuff," nevertheless yielded just the one run in his four innings, after which Braydon Fisher got uncharacteristically cooked for three, though Mantiply, Nance, and Hoffman all pitched well after him, but the Blue Jays bats were relatively quiet despite Minnesota ace Joe Ryan leaving the game after just one batter and the Twins bullpen being no great shakes in general. Okamoto got another one, though, which was neat! The Blue Jays' ninth-inning rally fell short, and it's tough to end a one-run game on a double play with the go-ahead runner on base, but I will admit to mistakenly thinking there were already two outs when Lenyn Sosa hit that game-ending grounder, so my feelings at the end were muddled. 

The difference between a four-game split and a three-to-one series win is weirdly enormous, and I would have of course much preferred the latter, but it is worth noting, I think, that everyone around us in the standings (to either side) didn't do a whole heck of a lot this weekend either, and so here we sit/stand (as you like it) in the Wild Card 3 position despite our sixteen-and-eighteen record! Pretty not that bad, kind of! The next stop on the road trip is, alas, the Trop, where the Tampa Bay Rays, after having taken a season off from their diabolical ways, have fully returned to them, and, at twenty-one-and-twelve, are just excellent. Our starter for the series opener is still listed as "TBD," but functionally that seems to end up being Eric Lauer, though I honestly half-expect Patrick Corbin to be pitching whenever I turn a game on at this point (not complaining!).    

KS 

Blue Jays 11, Twins 4: Eight-run Eighths For Everyone! (But Mostly Us)

 

Kaz got another one

Even before the eight-run eighth—which proved decisive!—this one had already felt like a whole entire baseball game, as we had already been offered much to enjoy (seven strong innings from Dylan Cease, home runs from two of our unlikeliest guys [Lenyn Sosa, Myles Straw] plus a truly towering one for Okamoto) and also a fair bit to mind, too (kicking it around a little on the infield [tough to see after several years of being spoiled by league-best defense], another home run by our noble foe Byron Buxton, and George Springer leaving the game after taking a slider directly to his already broken toe). Fair enough! I guess we'll just lose this one by a run, probably! Except we extremely did not: after Luis Garcia replaced Kody Funderburk ("you called down the funder?" is something I have not heard anyone say but we should maybe start), we went thus: Ernie Clement single up the middle, Vladdy walk, Okamoto single off a glove and barely up the middle, Lenyn Sosa infield hit, pitching change to our old friend Anthony Banda, who immediately botched a Daulton Varsho comebacker, then a Myles Straw walk, and finally a Brandon Valenzuela three-run homer. That's eight runs on the first eight batters to appear in the eighth! That's unlikely! And would you have believe that the Blue Jays put up an eight-run inning in which Vladdy appeared twice, and he only have walked in it, and just the one time? Baseball remains, as ever, full of surprises. Also surprising: with our much-improved record (nine wins in thirteen games!) now standing at 16-17, which you will note remains slightly (almost imperceptibly, really) below .500, the AL is still in such a state of "not good yet" that this actually has the Blue Jays in the third and final Wild Card position! Imagine where we might be if we were actually at .500 (possibly Wild Card 2), or even a little above it (still Wild Card 2, actually, as the Rays are one of two actually good AL teams so far [the Yankees, alas, are the other]). With Trey Yesavage taking the bump Sunday afternoon, I'll tell you what I am daring to do, and it is to dream. Please join me in this reverie!    

KS   

Blue Jays 7, Twins 3: Big Oak aka Big Baby (I am making neither of these up)

 

our guy has such a classic swing, too

Two homers for Kazuma Okamato! Or indeed for 岡本 和真 Okamoto Kazuma, were we to indulge in a little 日本語 Nihongo for just a sec (hey anybody else up for a couple thousand haiku in translation including the complete 芭蕉 Bashō? no? that's mostly just me? hey fair enough; just thought I would ask). It might well have been three homers on the night, given the deep fly ball Okamoto struck in his final plate appearance, but the explanation here is simple: "I didn’t have my pre-game quesadilla today," Okamoto told reporters with the help of his interpreter Yusuke Oshima. "I think if I’d had that, it would have been a home run." I can find no fault with this analysis. Okamoto is our team leader in home runs with seven, and over the last two weeks, has knocked in a league-best fourteen runs (largely a function of Vladdy being on base at an absurd rate, which perhaps bears mentioning [I actually love to mention it]). Okamoto has been a delight since he arrived, and revealed himself at once to be kind of a silly guy, telling the press on his first day with the club that the two most important things everyone should know about him is that he is very serious, and very manly. In a sense, why even mention either of these attributes, as they are the two qualities most clearly demonstrated upon his official webpage, launched in February? "YAKYUU UMAI," the scrolling text proclaims. "I am good at baseball." Just in case he switches it up someday, I want to preserve this webpage in its entirety for us here:

That's literally it; that's the whole thing. And lest we think there is maybe something we're missing culturally here (and I'm sure there's something, since there is always something), so far as I can tell, the response to the launch of this website within the Japanese baseball internet seems to have largely been "lol bro wtf even is this." Speaking of the Japanese baseball internet, prominent social media user "@ay222000" recently posted the following (just like this, in English): 

"I used to only watch the Blue Jays to see Kazuma Okamoto, but lately, I’ve noticed I get a bit grumpy whenever the team loses. I think I’m officially becoming a fan!

Since I’ve been so focused on Okamoto, I have a few mysteries I need help solving:

• Mystery No.1: I saw a guy with a mustache at 2B one day, then someone who looked just like him made a diving catch in LF the next day. Are they the same person?

• Mystery No.2: Someone fractured their toe but was back running in less than a month. Is he a superhuman?

• Mystery No.3: I haven't seen the manager in a uniform yet. Is that guy actually the manager, or am I being pranked?

• Mystery No.4: A 'cuddly' player who was incredibly fast suddenly vanished. Where did he go?

I’ve already found the reporter who gets drenched in ice water by Vlad Jr., but I need more info! Which accounts should I follow to keep up with the team?"   

Responses to this delightful post have been cheerful and generous, and will no doubt serve to strengthen the already deep bonds between our two nations (anybody else have a Japanese sister city? we've got Hakodate! let's go 北海道日本ハムファイターズ Hokkaidō Nippon-Hamu Faitāzu! 頑張って! Ganbatte, guys!).

I would add in closing that all of last night's Okamoto fun occurred against the backdrop of another five (plus!) innings from Patrick Corbin, like it of not. We liked it! Kind of a lot! I don't blame anyone for giving up two-run dingers to Byron Buxton, everybody's favourite Twin since Joe Mauer. That's just a part of the game. 

KS 

Twins 7, Blue Jays 1: Yikes, And Yet . . .

 

this was more or less the size of it

A Daulton Varsho home run is not nothing—it is demonstrably something!—but beyond that, this one was just a whole lot of "serving it up" and "kicking it around" and really any number of three-word phrases that do not auger well for one's chances on a chilly evening in the Twin Cities. However! I have always found the ballpark in Minneapolis to be particularly lovely, ever since first encountering it on either television or in MLB 10: The Show (I can't remember which happened first? also: Joe Mauer on the cover; there's more Twins content for you right there), and on this night the Twins were wearing by far their most æsthetic jersies (the cream ones) and hats (the classic interlocked "T C" logo that they inexplicable forsake for an utterly generic "M" too often these days), and the light at first pitch and the earliest innings was beautiful. Not much else to recommend this one though, I suppose, aside from how Vladdy got another hit, as the march to three-thousand continues—just one thousand, eight-hundred and eight-three to go! Let's enjoy all of them! Should we be spared!  

KS 

Blue Jays 8, Red Sox 1: Unc's Still Got It

 

the unc of the hour (a tower of power [too sweet to be sour?])

In a game where pretty much everything went right start to finish—Vladdy three-for-three with a walk; a bases-loaded knock for Okamoto; Eric Lauer finally looking like himself; the bullpen (Fisher, Nance, Mantiply, Miles) essentially flawless; homers from both Clement and Valenzuela—the biggest cheers of all came in the bottom of the fifth, when George Springer was announced as the pinch hitter for (say it with me, it's super fun) Yohendrick Piñango in Springer's first appearance since he broke his big toe (the foremost piggy!) some time ago. Springer singled Vladdy home on the very first pitch he saw, which the crowd, as you might well expect, also enjoyed. And on the subject of crowds, might I make mention that this six-game homestand—an April one, I would remind you, with the roof very much closed—did not see a single crowd below forty-one thousand? This makes the energy on the broadcast fantastic, and I am sure the vibe in the stadium itself is strong, and I suppose too there are certain crass commercial advantages ("Crass Commercial Advantages this season brought to you by our friends at Rogers . . ."), but my thoughts turn, a little, to how nice it was "back in the day" (the day of, say, the $81 Toronto Star Season Pass) to have some room of one's own up there in the 500s (and indeed amidst them) to just stretch out (if only in spirit; one needn't actually take up extra seats) with one's scorekeeping book and one's slim radio (Tom and Jerry on the call, no doubt); or perhaps to engage in either easy banter with the homies, or, more precious still, in secret discourse with one's beloved. All great stuff! And yet a truly packed ballpark makes things a little different than that. I think what I am maybe suggesting is that for early-season or bad-weather games generally—any time the roof is closed, I guess—there should be a mandated number of seats (could be two or three, but maybe even one would do the trick) between all parties seated in the 500s. In fair weather, of course, it would be wrong to deny anyone a seat at the ballpark, and all should be welcomed, no matter how crammed. But not when the roof is closed. Yes, I have settled on it: this is my new belief.

KS  

Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 0: Trey Day, As They Say

 

who's got a ball / can I get a ball / who's got a ball

Amidst the long-awaited return of young Trey Yesavage (no runs on just four hits, no walks, three Ks, and a bunch of broken bats in five-and-a-third), Myles Straw's lovely sliding catch in right (a day after Davis Schneider's career-best dive in left), a nifty little two-run third (Giménez single, Vladdy double [just over the reach of five-foot-six third baseman Caleb Durbin], and Okamoto near-double [he was thrown out at second to end the inning] knocking in both), and some basically ideal relief pitching (Fluharty to polish off Yesavage's sixth, Hoffman striking out a pair in a clean seventh, Rogers with a characteristically excellent eighth, and everybody's favourite Louis Varland striking out the side in the ninth), a minor miracle occurred that was none of those fine things. And it was this: not only did Ernie Clement walk, but he did so twice, having done it only once previously this season, and never having demonstrated the least inclination towards the practice in all that we have seen and come to admire in him. He's third in the AL in hits, tied for the lead in doubles, and barely striking out, but our guy is decidedly not a walker. Nor should he be! In that he should do his own thing, and stick with the approach that allows him to be a useful major leaguer! It is indicative, though, of just how helpful both walks and home runs are to the overall cause of scoring runs that Ernie can be at-or-near the top of the league in both hits and doubles but, in the absence of a little more OBP and a little more SLG, he is an only slightly above average offensive player. Sabermetrics of the most ancient kind! Or, put another way, insights gleaned from Weaver On Strategy (1984) and enacted thereafter in Earl Weaver Baseball (1987)! (Foolish Bailey's "Earl Weaver Played Moneyball before Moneyball" is another good place to start on Weaver, if you have never Weavered, and the comment section includes this excellent information: "My favorite Earl Weaver fact is that even though he was third all time in managerial ejections, if you added the amount of times he was ejected before the game even started to his total then he's first all time.")   

I also wanted to mention that, at the end of play Tuesday night, only three American League teams—only three!—have winning records: only the Yankees (20-10) and Rays (18-11) have been legitimately good, the scrappy A's have been scrappy (15-14), and everybody else has been, if not bad, at least troubled. And so my unalterable belief that .500 baseball is pretty much fine (and then hopefully you rattle off a couple of streaks, maybe, and then you're all set) has never been more actually true than right now! The Blue Jays, somewhat absurdly, are at once three games below .500, and yet just a game out of both the WC2 and WC3 postseason positions. We have picked the perfect April, probably, for nearly all our guys to be hurt.   

KS  

Red Sox 5, Blue Jays 0: Blink And You'll Miss It (If You Blink Long Enough I Guess)

four-seamer, if you look close

Dylan Cease? More like Dealin' Cease for those first four innings of efficient one-run baseball, right everybody? The fifth got lightly away from him, though, and the Red Sox, now coached by almost entirely new guys, added two, and then another in the sixth, and that really was about the size of it, as the Blue Jays managed just two hits off the mercurial (in performance; in terms of temperament he seems fairly steady) Ranger Suarez (doubles by first Jésus Sanchez on a little "excuse me" swing, as they say, and then another from a pinch-hitting Daulton Varsho in the ninth [good cut, Varsh; attaboy]). This one just whizzed by, and felt even faster than its actual two-hours-and-thirty-minutes. Even when we lose, I cannot help but respect a baseball game that respects the audience's time. And so I am fine.  

KS  

Blue Jays 4, Guardians 2: Almost Nice Enough Out to Open The Roof, Too

 

let me tell you something shocking about Louis Varland:
George Springer is actually a bigger guy (really makes you think about proportions)

Patrick Corbin again! Five innings, whether you like it or not! And this time, certainly, we liked it just fine: two runs on six hits and a couple of walks in what I suppose was, in truth, just four-and-two-thirds. Even so! No runs on just a hit and a walk for the bullpen thereafter: Fisher, Rogers, eighth-inning Jeff Hoffman (I remain a staunch Jeff Hoffman guy, on a human level), and Louis Varland throwing smoke to close it out (following the talk of the Blue Jays moving to a "closer-by-committee" approach, some wags have begun referring to Varland himself, fondly, as "The Committee"). Jésus Sanchez homered, Ernie Clement hit his league-leading thirteen double (I feel that doubles are arguably the most "show" thing you can lead in), Name Guy Young Legend Yohendrick Piñango picked up his first career hit (a crisp single!), and Vladdy kind of ho-hummed his way to three-for-four with a double: the only the time he was retired, it took a remarkable grab in left by young Angel Martínez (whose father Sandy was a backup catcher for the mid/early-late-nineties Blue Jays, you may recall [it is okay if you do not]) that saw a literal tip of the cap (a batting helmet molded into the shape of a cap, I suppose) from Vladdy to acknowledge its slickness. A fine Sunday afternoon of baseball, I'd say! When it began, I'd wondered if our defensive set-up—Pinango and Sanchez in the outfield corners, Clement at short (not a problem) and Schneider at second (not a great situation) with no Gimenez in the lineup (just a day off I think), and Lenyn Sosa at first to give Vladdy the half-day at DH—might lightly cost us, but my concerns proved misplaced (excuse me, misplacened).   

Next up for three games at the Dome we have the truly messed Boston Red Sox, who, in a remarkably bold move, fired pretty much everybody yesterday. The last-place Red Sox—an eighty-nine-win wild card team last year, you will recall—have only been like a game-and-a-half worse than the Blue Jays through these first twenty-five games or so, but the vibes are different, and seemingly desperate. It changes things, I suppose, that the Red Sox have not had quite the injury misfortune the Blue Jays have: as someone noted on the boards Monday afternoon, just as the Blue Jays placed Max Scherzer on the IL for both right forearm tendonitis and left ankle inflammation (and also probably just for being old [he is a younger man than me, so I say this in sympathy]), this makes our sixth starting pitcher to hit the IL so far, along with the one, two, four, five, and six hitters in our lineup, and, to be fair, really only one of our high-leverage relievers (though it is Yimi, which hurts more). But Trey Yesavage is set to make his first start of the season Tuesday! And Springer is taking BP! Taking BP and running a little! Some of our guys are less hurt than previously! Let's go!

KS

Blue Jays 5, Guardians 3: "All Guas, No Break," As A Sign Said One Time (It Took Me A Minute)

 

"I like to get out and I like to meet and talk
to people from Canada"—me too, Kevin Guasman; me too

Something of a nervous ninth, sure, but ultimately Louis Varland elected to just strike out a couple guys real quick to end it with the bases loaded and the tying run in scoring position, no big deal or whatever. We probably could have done without the ninth-inning shots of lightly-deposed former closer Jeff Hoffman, which I believed hoped to find him all sad, but instead just found him sitting in the bullpen (you've seen this; you know how this looks). Tyler Rogers was great ahead of him, and Mason Fluharty struck out the only batter he was tasked with (let me task you with this ask real quick, Mason Fluharty) in the seventh, given how Kevin Guasman pitched six-and-two-thirds, and continues to deal to start the season (did you know he pitched more than literally anyone else did last season, when you add in the postseason? even more than Yamamoto! [though Yamamoto probably could have pitched an extra hundred-and-fifty innings or so if anybody had just asked]). Kazuma Okamoto hit his second monstrous home run in as many days, and a delightful sixth-inning rally was highlighted by Vladdy stealing second on a three-and-oh count to Okamoto (who singled later in the at bat, but sharply, and so Vladdy had to wait until a little later in the inning to actually score, but the steal itself still ruled, even if it accomplished little beyond the æsthetic [are stolen bases broadly, but especially Vladdy's stolen bases in particular, autotelic? I am talking myself into that being the case, I think]). The Guardians played notably shoddy defense, and though they were charged with no errors, they were very much charged with a Giménez double that knocked in two and a Varsho RBI single, both of which I bet Cleveland pitchers would really have much preferred been just regular outs, given how they were right by guys. But so it goes, and today it went in our favour. Somehow Patrick Corbin is pitching again tomorrow as we try to take the series. I don't understand how this could possibly be.

KS

Guardians 8, Blue Jays 6: Scherzing Sub-Maximally

 

I share José Ramirez's concern for Nathan Lukes
and his benighted hamstring

Pinch-hitter/living-lesson-in-contingency Eloy Jimenez came to the plate as the potential winning run with two on in the bottom of the ninth, and even though rather than homering for a walk-off win, he instead extremely grounded into a double play, this was nevertheless far more than I'd anticipated from this game once Max Scherzer, who came into things needing just one more strikeout to reach thirty-five hundred in his first-ballot Hall-of-Fame Career, instead struck out precisely none, and instead allowed five run in the first, and seven total in just two-and-a-third innings. The bullpen, though, turned in a low-key mighty effort (Mantiply to Miles to Nance to Fluharty to Fisher), and the bats batted admirably, led by Kazuma Okamoto, who walked, singled, and hit a towering home run to "the deepest part of the ballpark," as we so often say of straightaway centre field (find me a part that's deeper! unless your park is weird!). This was, on the whole, a far more pleasant evening of baseball than I'd expected after the top of the first, that's for sure! Or after the very first batter of the bottom half of that same inning, I should mention: Nathan Lukes ripped a double, but looked lightly hobbled as soon as he left the box, and sure enough, he's now on the IL with a hamstring strain that John Schneider described as "week to week," which sounds bad? In other roster news, which is I guess more usage news than roster news as such, Schneider (in conjunction with GM Ross Atkins [aka Ross the Boss]) also let it be known that Jeff Hoffman is not going to be used in the closer role (indeed rôle) going forward, and instead it will be more of a "closer by committee" approach (I bet the committee will be chaired by Louis Varland), while everyone remains open to the possibility that Hoffman can pitch his way back into high-leverage situations should his performance improve (and I bet it will, at least a little, if not enough to have him in tighter situations than Fisher or Rogers or Varland any time soon). Hoffman, who has always seemed like a good team guy, one who honestly might take more on his shoulders in his public comments than he probably even should, took it with a characteristically earthy grace. There are no villains here, just a guy whose mistakes are getting uncommonly crushed. This is a time for empathy.

KS

Angels 7, Blue Jays 4: José Soriano, Sure; Mike Trout, Obviously; But Nolan Schanuel?

 

a great photo, but as something of a glove sicko I am mostly noticing the way
Zach Neto's mitt sits above the heel of the hand, indicating
a "two fingers in the pinky" mode of glove-wearing
(try it! it changes the pocket quite pleasingly!) 

It is one thing for José Soriano—six starts into the season, zero runs allowed (an MLB first, I have heard tell)—to scatter seven hits (no walks, crucially) over five scoreless innings; the man's ERA+ (in which 100 indicates a league-average performance, adjusted for ballpark) currently stands at 1826 (it looks like I have mistakenly added a digit, but no, there are four of them). It is similarly fine for Mike Trout to have homered: he's already got eight this year, and seems poised for his first great big Mike Trout season since 2022 (though limited by injury in recent seasons, ever think about how Mike Trout had definitely secured a Hall of Fame spot by the time he was twenty-seven? I do, sometimes! it's pretty neat!). But I draw the line at Nolan Schanuel's four-RBI day; I found neither his solo home run off Lauer in the fourth nor his bases-clearing double off Fisher in the seventh agreeable in least! It's out of proportion, as Philip Larkin famously said about Nolan Schanuel's big day one time. As for the Blue Jays bats, it is a shame that a nifty three-run seventh didn't get us any further than it did. Vladdy's oh-for-four dropped his average to .337, whilst Ernie Clement's three-for-five raised his to a .320 that has sort of snuck up on me; batting average understandably isn't what it used to be, but it remains a great pleasure to see your guys at or above .300 all the same (perhaps more so, in that it has become a rarer thing). Eric Lauer, who pitched okay despite his velocity being down a titch, continues to be a bit of a weird and discordant guy: having already complained about being used behind an opener (contemporize, man!), he took to the mound Wednesday with all kinds of athletic tape (K-Tape is a brand name looking to attain Kleenex status, but, as a 3M man, I resist this) running up his neck, which John Schneider said was the first he learned that Lauer was having any physical problems at all of late. He seems like he is lightly making himself an issue? Does this risk "the vibe"? I understand remaining salty (or at least lightly salted) after losing an arbitration case (that can't be any fun at all), but your ERA remains north of sixth, my brother (let's actually check the ERA+: yikes, it's 67; -0.3 bWAR, too [I really am spending less time at FanGraphs than I ever would have anticipated]); you have been about half as good as Patrick Corbin, for example, who, by contrast, is a sled dog (or so the legends say).

Back to Toronto, then, to host the Guardians, and the rightly beloved José Ramirez (always a pleasure!), well on his way to another All-Star/Silver-Slugger/MVP-votes kind of season in a Hall of Fame career whose shape has been quite different than Mike Trout's (a model of consistency, rather than Trout's historically great early career peak), but no less assuredly rad. Each holds its place, you would think, in the divine economy. 

KS

Blue Jays 4, Angels 2: Spare A Further Thought for Jeff Hoffman, Probably

 

among my favourite Renaissance paintings
of Vladdy scoring from first on a double

Yes, Louis Varland threw a first-pitch (only pitch!) change-up to induce (compel? engender?) a game-ending double play with the bases very much loaded and secure the Blue Jays' first series-win this month (haha what! that's pretty weird!). Previous to that, but not all that much previous to it (it was in the eighth), newcomer Lenyn Sosa doubled home both Ernie Clement and, in the most exciting play in baseball, Vladdy from first (he had been intentionally walked), and Sosa was himself singled home soon thereafter (in proxy form, as Davis Schneider had by that time come in to run for him) by Eloy Jiménez, who, a couple innings previous to that, had sac-flied-in Vladdy (who had, for his part, singled; Vladdy is getting on so much). All of this is great stuff! As was starter Patrick Corbin's outing, it must be said, with just the one run on two hits over five innings (Corbin, who joined us extremely recently, seems like he pitches every other day, though I know that he does not; it's strange but true that since 2019, he is the MLB leader in starts, losses, hits, total bases, and all kinds of other stuff that's going to accrue to a guy who is every bit good enough to just keep on getting out there [if you give Patrick Corbin the ball, it's been said, you're getting five innings, like it or not]). Miles, Fluharty, and Rogers in relief, all great, I grant you. But poor Jeff Hoffman! With a three-run lead in the ninth—a save situation, sure, but of the faintest kind—Hoffman struck out Zach Neto (looking good!), gave up a single to Mike Trout (no problem; at least you kept him in the ballpark), and hit the next two guys (oh no). At that point, Louis Varland starting warming up as immediately as anyone has ever warmed up (Louis Varland is throwing hatless; repeat, hatless). After a Yoán Moncada single scored one (I still don't really understand why it didn't score two, but the Angels have had weird cutoff throws in both games in the series so far [fundamentals: a crutch for the talentless?]), that was a wrap on Hoffman, and it is getting harder to know what to do with him: his ERA is pushing eight, and his WHIP is over two, but he has also struck out twenty-four guys in ten-and-two-thirds innings of work this year. As rough as things got for him at times last season, he had seven blown saves in his forty opportunities, and so far this year, he's already at three. Meanwhile, Louis Varland (who we've got until at least 2030!) has literally not allowed a run yet, and has been roughly as valuable as the Padres' unreal Mason Miller: granting that Wins Above Replacement is not our best measure for relief pitchers, there is but a tenth of a win between those two guys. But bullpens are mercurial, as Mark Shapiro said on the radio one time, so who knows. This was another great game, and another great win, but I am not carefree about it!  

KS

Blue Jays 5, Angels 2: Vladdy Got One

 

yes sir, there she goes (let's admire that one)

I would ask that we set aside not just Dylan Cease's twelve further strikeouts, rad though they were, but also the strong relief pitchings of Braydon Fisher (nice inning!), Louis Varland (who blew a fastball by Mike Trout to finish his four-out appearance), Tyler Rogers (just the two batters), and Jeff Hoffman (back on the horse!), and even, too,  the bottom-of-the-order "manufactured" runs that made the difference as things wore on, and instead focus our attention almost exclusively on Vladdy's two-run homer in the top of third. Not long after that mighty dinger was dung, a Reddit poster commented, "Very nice! Hopefully a positive sign Vladdy is getting his grove back." I do like to think that a man of Vladdy's means would count at least one grove amongst his many holdings, but beyond any merriment we might find in typographical error (hey: we've all made 'em), is this not a wild sentiment? And yet really very coomon! A subsequent poster noted, as the entirety of their comment, "He's hitting .350," which was of course true at the time, but by the end of the game, Vladdy was actually up to a league-leading .354, making up a healthy portion of his .442 OBP (I appreciate that batting average and on-base percentage [which is rarely expressed as a "percentage," is it? remember when people used to say "on-base average"? no? nobody but me remembers this admitted triviality?] have slightly different denominators, but this is all close enough for jazz, as a wonderful music teacher would kindly joke as we tuned). And so we see again the perils of being Vladdy: hit forty-eight home runs when you're twenty-two (the most struck by anyone that young ever), put up an all-time great round in one All-Star Home-Run Derby and win another one tidily, then mash eight (eight!) home runs in as great a month of postseason baseball as anyone has ever managed, and all of a sudden nobody is satisfied unless you're "going yard" (people don't say that one as much as they used to, do they? not sure I ever liked it, honestly). Never mind the 161 OPS+, or 166 wRC+ if that is your preference; even his wOBA (linear weights! let's go!), despite just the two homers, is at .413, just a tick below the .416 of the fairly monstrous 2021 season that seems to have, in the expected-homers sense, lightly cursed him. I have said this many times (I am sorry), and I'm sure I will say it many more (please forgive me), but if Vladdy is to become a true Hall of Fame guy, it will not be as a five-hundred homerist, but rather as un frappeur de trois-mille coups sûrs (arguably the purest Hall of Fame credential). And on that front, Vladdy has just passed José Bautista for sixth place on the list of Blue Jays all-time hit leaders with 1106. Let's have a look at the top ten, actually, just out of general interest (it's actually a fairly specific interest, I suppose): 

First of all, what a great list of great guys, obviously, right? But beyond that, let us ponder a minute on how, barring significant injury, Vladdy will probably have more hits than any other Blue Jay by the end of his age-thirty season (it might take him until thirty-one), and then he'll still have ten-or-so seasons toss another fourteen-or-fifteen-hundred more on top of that. Won't that be something!  

KS  

Blue Jays 10, Diamondbacks 4: Considerably More Like It

 

ganbatte, Okamoto-san

Single, double, single, single, single, single, double, walk, strike out, double, pop out, strike out: that's an eight-run inning! An eight-run first inning! The Blue Jays' trouble throughout their woeful four-game losing streak was a lack of runs, certainly, but not so much a lack of hits (consider, if you will, the twelve hits with which they somehow only managed two runs on Saturday night); it has been a question of sequencing. How pleasant, then, to have sorted that out entirely, and to step boldly forth into an era in which we knock starters out of the game having pitched but a third of a single inning. Vladdy's three hits were as pleasant as ever; Okamoto doubled and happily homered; and Nathan Lukes, who has been suffering significantly from vertigo (a pernicious and only somewhat treatable matter, unfortunately), was good for three solid hits from the leadoff spot. All great stuff! And how strange for it to have occurred on a day Kevin Gausman started, as our longstanding approach has been to scrape out scarcely any runs at all when he is on the mound. But maybe that's all sorted now to! Later this same night, I will note, in the idyllic realms of ソフトボール天国 / Sofutobōru Tengoku / Softball Heaven (the superior, critter-heavy Japanese original of Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball), I defeated the Amazons team (no mean feat: for me, this is taller NES task than defeating Mike Tyson in the Punch-Out!! that bears his name) by the nearly identical score of 10-5, which is the best I have ever done in that context. Just a tremendous sporting Sunday all around. 

KS

Diamondbacks 6, Blue Jays 2: The Eighth-Inning Grand Slam Felt Decisive

 

another member of the my-sized-guys roster

"It's too bad that it's Corbin Carroll coming up with the bases loaded," I distinctly thought moments before our doom, "since he's a more or less perfect baseball player." Sure enough! Poor Jeff Hoffman, who couldn't find the plate with anything but his fastball, and who is really going through it broadly right now. There has been some chatter (including in SMS texts I am receiving) about inserting young fireballer Louis Varland (whom all rightly esteem) into the closer's rôle in his place, but I find this doubtful, given Varland's multi-inning versatility—and actually, the end result of Varland being used in high-leverage, but not specific "save" situations, is that Varland's usage actually lines up better with the modern understanding of how top bullpen arms are to be deployed, so I am on the whole okay with it. I will never fault the pitching staff (any part of it) for losing a game in which we only scored two runs, but perhaps understandably, that's not how Jeff Hoffman felt about it at all. "It's heavy. Usually, I'm the reason whether we win or lose. It definitely carries some weight. You feel terrible when outings like this happen." Brutal. On a more cheerful note, Vladdy made a nifty over-the-shoulder basket catch well into right field for one choice out, and a nice scoop and glove-first-dive to first base for another, and he seemed pretty stoked about both (me too!). 

KS

Diamondbacks 6, Blue Jays 3: Mistakes Were Made

 

friends since small times, these two here

I have been simulating a good deal of early twentieth-century baseball in recent months, and one of the initial shocks of so doing is the legitimately stunning number of errors that the computer is required to commit on your behalf in order for vraisemblance to be maintained (vraisemblance aside, don't even get me started on verisimilitude). Slowly, and not without fleeting moments of slight impatience (that bordered, here and there, on low-key exasperation, I will admit to you here amidst the peace and safety of Baseball Feelings), I have become at least lightly accustomed to what might be, in any other baseball-historical context, madly bananas numbers of errors. I was interested to learn, though, that this newfound sense of things did not seem to influence in any discernible direction my experience of Friday night's game, in which the Blue Jays committed three errors—a perfectly quotidian happening in the earlier years of our previous century, but one which, in the year of our lord 2026, still, it would seem, has the capacity to unsettle, to disquiet. I didn't like it one bit! Worst of all, one of these several errors was charged (not unduly; please do not mistake me) to Vladdy, and that is the surest way to see that guy sad: Vladdy loves to field; he absolutely loves it, and when it does not go his way, the mark of it is borne not just in the official scorer's pencily little records, but in his heart, too, for at least for a while. Ours too, probably. And so not a great start to the series. I was a little surprised to hear Eric Lauer mention after the game that he really doesn't like pitching behind an opener, and to voice these preferences in fairly strong language for a guy with an earned-run average over seven for a team that keeps on losing. Read the room, my brother! I'm not too worried about it as like a long-term thing, but it was an unusually discordant note from the Blue Jays clubhouse. I'm going to keep a weather-eye on that Eric Lauer for at least a spell.  

KS   

Brewers 2, Blue Jays 1: As Small As Ball Gets

 

find me ball that's smaller
("inside baseball," in the original sense of that term)

As it turns out, I remain somewhat sensitive to one-run baseball games that end on a ground ball to short leaving Vladdy stranded at third as the tying run, but those concerns aside, this was a suitably excellent finish to an æsthetically pleasing series between two teams that, last year, pretty much everyone seemed to agree were the two most stylistically interesting teams to watch. Of the three runs scored today, two of them came on safety squeezes (safeties squeeze?), which is wildly improbable, and the Brewers bunted three straight times in a single inning, definitely the first time I've ever seen that happen (and I am very, very old). Patrick Corbin, it must be said, was just great in his second start as a Blue Jay, and really the pitching staff on the whole acquitted itself quite nicely this series against these underperforming-but-still-super-neat Brewers; the bats, though, got a little sleepy again after their nine-run effort Tuesday night (perhaps Tuesday left them all tuckered?). Vladdy was just one-for-four today, with no walks, which is about as close as he can have to a poor day at the plate, the way things have been going so far, and I would speculate to you that it is harder for him to stay fully engaged and present in the game when he is DHing (like he did today), as he is such a busy, merry presence on the field in his everyday role, seemingly relishing a nifty play in the field as much as any dinger. I'm sure this could be looked up, his relative performance when playing first vs. his rare DH appearances, but here I am, still not looking. Let us file this alongside Dan Shulman's speculation that Vladdy's OPS in plate appearances in which he nods emphatically after taking a pitch has to be insane; it just has to be.

KS   

Brewers 2, Blue Jays 1: Can't Really Just Score The One, I Suppose

 

I'll say this for young Abner Uribe: he's a jaunty fellow

Dylan Cease's six scoreless innings (two hits, three walks, six Ks) looked so good (league-leading moustache) that it seemed possible Jésus Sanchez's sac-fly plating of Daulton Varsho in the first might hold up. And it very nearly did, aided one inning further than it might have otherwise by Mason Fluharty and Braydon Fisher, who combined for a suitably nifty seventh. But Tyler Rogers—who has been tremendous so far, and whose style leads to a good deal of soft contact—got BABIP'd to bits, and was granted no boon, surely, by young Brandon Valenzuela's split-second decision to let a little dribbler dribble lightly in the hopes that it might dribble lightly foul (it did not) rather than seek the relatively easy out at first (which really could have used, as it turned out). But a 2-1 loss is never really on the pitching and/or defense, is it? One would hope to mash, or to have already mashed, such that the first two runs of the Brewers' night would not prove definitive. Ah, but so it goes. Another really good game in Milwaukee, played at a brisk pace (2h26min) that demonstrated respect for how the viewing audience might want to watch at least a portion of a movie later in the evening. My thanks to all involved.    

KS 

Blue Jays 9, Brewers 7 (F/10): An Objectively Great Game That I Nearly Minded But In The End Did Not

go Kaz

John Schneider totally emptied the bench (always fun! get on out there, everybody!), and probably more of the bullpen than he would have super duper liked to have, but it was all in the service of a much-needed and indeed quite sick win. Kevin Gausman unfortunately continued our starting pitchers' early habit of allowing three-run homers (this has happened so many times already), but solo shots from both Andrés Giménez and Daulton Varsho kept things close enough that our three-run top-of-the-ninth had things looking pretty good! Except then Hoffman had a tough time in the bottom of the ninth! Which necessitated a tenth! In which we actually thrived, don't worry! The double that Vladdy ripped to the wall, I would say, was my favourite part of that tenth, and although he has hit just the one homer so far, have you noticed that Vladdy is hitting well over .300 with an OBP comfortably over .400, and is on pace for like a nine-win season, at least according to the Baseball Reference version of Wins Above Replacement (I find myself at FanGraphs less and less; have they changed? have I? I think maybe both)? This is bound to keep on happening, I suppose, especially now that Vladdy has demonstrated that his ceiling is "best October hitter in the history of baseball," but it is wild that the early results can have Vladdy on pace for his most valuable season (by kind of a lot—he hasn't had a seven-win season [yet]), and people can still be asking "what's wrong with Vladdy?"  The gift and the curse, I suppose, and a burden that I think it is fair to say Vladdy seems fit to carry; I would not say that I worry, exactly. Anyway, to return to the pitching for a moment as we wrap up here: Louis Varland looked really good again, helping Hoffman out of the ninth, and wrapping things up in the tenth, leading some observers to wonder (in texts they have sent me) if maybe Varland should be closing on the reg, but I think the Blue Jays probably value his multi-inning ability, and his seeming indifference to being deployed in high-leverage, whether that occur in the fifth, or the tenth? Also, one must note that, not unlike Hoffman, Varland can be a little homer-prone, so there's no perfect answer here, but also no bad ones.

KS

Twins 8, Blue Jays 2: In A Stranger Way Than You Might Think, Though

 

we've certainly seen him Scherz more than this

Did a Blue Jays starter give up a three-run homer for the third day in a row? Sure did! And did Scherzer get so thoroughly cooked for eight runs that he didn't even make it out of the third? Brother, he barely made it into the third (not actually true, just playing around with the language here). None of that's any good, obviously, but the really striking thing about this one is that the Blue Jays managed only two runs out of twelve hits—twelve! that's so many of them!—which is a wild occurrence. That's a lot of traffic, but with some truly unfortunate sequencing. Ah well! Would you believe that the Twins are the top team in the AL at the moment? If you are wondering how this can be, it is because nobody in the AL has been all that good yet. Over in "The Senior Circuit," as people seem to say less now than they used to (the National League is a senior circuit, one might well reply), the Dodgers have won eleven against just three losses (hey one of those is because of us!), but every team in the American League is all bunched up and middling. And so, despite this super tepid early stretch, the Blue Jays are just two games back of the AL East lead. Maybe even stranger still, they haven't actually even played a game against an AL East opponent yet! That's not about to change any time soon, as we're off to Milwaukee—which cinéma has taught me is Algonquin for "the good land"—where the Brewers, last year's winningest team in either league, are playing miserably and have lost five straight. Baseball stays weird.

KS

Twins 7, Blue Jays 4: Feels Bad, Man

 

there's no way that's good

Aside from the company on the couch, which was exquisite, and the snacks, which were also strong, this was a tough one, and never really felt as close as the fairly reasonable final score might suggest. Varsho's two-run homer in the first ruled, of course, but the worm turned hard as all heck in the seven-run third, all off of Eric Lauer, who still seems weakened by the virus that is running through the Blue Jays pitching staff (not a metaphor or metonym or anything at all; they are literally guys who have gotten sick). Lauer gutted through just a miserable five-and-a-third, wearing all those runs, and just grinding through it so as not to tax the bullpen in a game that already looked a little out of reach. Spencer Miles, our Rule 5 pick (which is to say, among other things, that in order for us to keep him, he needs to stay on the big-league roster all year), pitched three-and-two-thirds scoreless as the game's sole reliever (for our side, I mean), allowing just one hit and one walk which is honestly pretty remarkable. Is it odd to have been kind of impressed by the Blue Jays' pitching in a game in which they allowed seven, and so were never really in the game after the third? Surely it is, and yet it is lightly how I feel about it, aside from also feeling like "dang it" on account of how that really is just too many runs. Jesus Sanchez, who seems to have already totally fit into the overall ethos of things, hit a pretty remarkable ninth-inning home run that saw him stagger into the right-handed batter's box (he is of course a great-big lefty) to, as I have said before, make this one seem a little closer at the end than it ever really was, but I am nevertheless grateful for it, as I am for all Blue Jays dingers (you only get so many; treasure them all, my friends). My only other thoughts about this game are that i) Joe Ryan really is a very good pitcher, isn't he, and also ii) that I would like to see more of Twins reliever Kody Funderburk, a promising name-guy, and finally iii) oh man what a drag that George Springer fouled a ball super hard(ly) off his big toe, and totally smashed it to the point of fracture. Could this mean Eloy Jimenez gets the call-up from Buffalo? Anybody else remember when the top three prospects in baseball were Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis, and Eloy Jimenez? Anybody else lightly but perpetually haunted by contingency, or is that just me and my dude Eloy Jimenez?

KS 

Blue Jays 10, Twins 4: Dan Shulman is Right; Doubles Are Fun

 

safe imo

As a holder of an actuarial certification and a contemporaneous reader of the earliest Bill James material, Dan Shulman is no fool as regards numbers. And so for him, counting to six as regards the total of Blue Jays' doubles in Friday night's game against the Twins was nothing; he could do that in his sleep. "Doubles are fun," he remarked to Joe Siddall (who does a good job, but who might benefit from the example of his radio colleague Chris Leroux, who begins a fair number of statements with "I wonder if" and "Do you think that maybe," rather than speaking with undo certainty about complex matters, and the resulting vibes are really quite nice over there on the Fan 590 Radio Network [I don't think they call it that any more]). Siddall, for his part, noted that they are also cool. All true! Down by four runs after new-to-us-yet-old-and-crafty Patrick Corbin's four innings (Max Scherzer, by the way, described Corbin as "a sled dog," which left everybody a little confused [Corbin said he and his wife figured it was complimentary but they really puzzled over it] until Scherzer clarified that he meant that he's one of the team and he pulls his own weight [that's actually a really good metaphor then actually, Max Scherzer; thank you for it]), I had pretty much given up on this one (not in the sense that I turned the game off or anything that drastic), but the five-run fourth and the five runs that followed even after that made me feel a little foolish for having done so in my heart if not with my computer/phone/computerphone. As from the really-quite-a-few doubles, switch-hitting rookie catcher Brandon Valenzuela's first career home run—a true vulgarity rocket to right—was the big highlight. He seems quite promising! Excellent "pop times" behind the plate, too! It's still six weeks until Alejandro Kirk is back, I think, so he'll definitely get his reps until then, at least. 

A mere game under .500! And once you're back to .500, all things are possible! Or at least most things! Some, certainly!

KS   

Blue Jays 4, Dodgers 3: Juggernaut Status Restored

 

we are as back as Vladdy's position relative to Davis Schneider in this photo
(in that he is in back of him)

A two-run seventh to tie! An eighth-inning Davis Schneider homewards scamper (easily the best kind of baseball scamper) off an errant throw during an Andrés Giménez stolen base to take the lead! Jeff Hoffman locking up Shohei Ohtani to catch him looking in the ninth with 97MPH exceedingly down the middle (there is a vulgar phrase for this occurrence that I enjoy but I will not burden you with my own internal squalor)! All this, along with Dylan Cease's five innings of thrown smoke, served as a balm for our recently-troubled souls (troubled on account of having watched several baseball games we enjoyed less than the amount we usually prefer to enjoy them). And so at last ends our weekus horribilis. It is worth noting, I think, that after this stretch in which things went just awfully for the Blue Jays, whilst going pretty much ideally for the New York Yankees, the actual state of play in the AL East is that we are three-and-half back with one-fifty left to play. It's still early enough that we have quirks on the order of "there are more teams with winning records in the NL Central than in the entire American League," fun and silly little things like that. We're still only just starting to have baseball. It takes a while to ramp up. The Twins are in next, and they've been pretty good, and still have the delightful Byron Buxton around, so there's ever reason to expect a pleasant weekend of Blue Jays baseball.

KS 

Dodgers 4, Blue Jays 1: Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

 

baseball glove æsthetics have come so far this century

It's getting a little weird, isn't it, how often Kevin Gausman pitches really very well indeed in front of a packed SkyDome only to be bested by Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitching absurdly well on the other side of things? Like, how many times in a row do you figure that's probably going to happen? Is it an infinity of times? I would imagine Kevin Gausman—who told Hazel Mae he watched and/or listened to (whilst working out) every one of his postseason starts in order to deal with the heartbreak of it all and move on (it's like going through old voicemails before deleting them after a bad breakup, he offered, in a rare window into a man best known in Toronto for his love of cinnamon buns [no diss whatsoever; it's a strong legacy])—is at least as tired of it as the rest of us, if not more so. "Haha!" he must surely be thinking. "That quirky thing has occurred once more!" And so here we are. It is worth considering that, even if this season goes badly—there's no real reason to think that it will, yet, but let's say that it does—even then, this losing streak that we are currently on will probably end up being the longest one of the whole season even if that streak (the losing one) ends tomorrow. We're just getting it out of the way early, probably! And in the reasonably unlikely event that this does not prove to be the case, and we have a bunch of stretches like this (again, an unlikely scenario), then we've got much bigger problems than this one bad stretch that we're on right now. So either way, things are probably pretty okay? 

KS

Dodgers 14, Blue Jays 1: It's Dark, And Hell Is Hot

 

Daulton Varsho, styled uponst jauntily 

I can't be the only one who is a little surprised with how often Tyler Heineman has pitched so far this young season, right? Even if it is just three innings over two appearances, that's still more than you'd figure out of your backup catcher over the first ten games, isn't it? Not only is his 15.00 ERA not the worst one posted by a Blue Jays pitcher so far, but it actually suggests (incorrectly, but nevertheless suggests) that we'd have really been no further behind if he'd thrown the whole game Monday night against the Dodgers, who touched up five Blue Jays pitchers before Heineman shut the door (in an admittedly limited sense) in the ninth. Max Scherzer left after just two innings, and Dan Schulman understandably speculated that Scherzer might have caught the virus that had made things difficult for Eric Lauer recently, but no, he is in fact dealing with forearm tendonitis, which sounds appreciably worse as far as it relates to pitching in an ongoing fashion. What a mess! And there were nearly forty-one thousand people there to see it, too; I can only imagine the in-stadium vibe (the vibe on the broadcast was itself ungreat). 

It's true that it's super early, and that things have been super weird for lots of teams so far (only four AL teams are above .500, and you can't even take that all that seriously since one of them is the Angels; the Red Sox, inexplicably, are but two-and-eight), and that the Blue Jays were not super duper better than this to open the 2025 season. All true! But wouldn't it be great to grab a couple against the Dodgers here before things unravel further? It's Gausman and Yamamoto tonight, Cease and Ohtani Wednesday afternoon, so plenty of potentially less cursed baseball ahead (possibly).  

KS     

White Sox 3, Blue Jays 0: Honestly Not An Ideal Week in Blue Jays Baseball

 

sometimes you just gotta pat your homie on the butt and mark XP

"Life moves pretty fast," (fictional?) Chicago baseball enthusiast Ferris Bueller once noted in the (documentary?) film whose title both bears his name and also tells you what kind of day he is having. Too true, Ferris; too true! Just one week ago, whomst amongst us did not thrill to the thrilling thrill of three spirited wins over the Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland/Sacramento/[spits]Las Vegas[spits again] Athletics to open a season filled with promise and a widely-held-but-basically-impossible hope for an outcome that could improve (even just by two outs, say) upon the one we had just last year that was both unreal and yet also lightly crushing? (I'm sure you remember it, at least in its broad lines.) And now here we gather, just one win against five losses later, having seen first Cody Ponce (probably gone for the season [wrecked knee]), then Alejandro Kirk (you'd have to think for weeks [broken thumb]), and perhaps now Addison Barger, too (messed ankle [day-to-day, hopefully?]) joining really quite a few other guys in being too-dinged-up-for-baseball at present as we slip to a game below .500 for the first time in really quite some time. Objectively not great!

And yet I must confess that I am having a pretty good time. I am enjoying the baseball games, with our old friend Dan Schulman telling me all about all the things happening in them, and my family checking in on things here and there, and a few texts with an old friend who worries about the pitching, and some light banter about matters around the league with tha boiz in the group chat. I am enjoying this return to Normal Baseball after the unsustainable "pitch and moment" (baseball Hamlet pun! let's go!) that overtook Blue Jays baseball throughout much of last September, literally all of October, and just the one day in November. Though it brought with it many other pleasures—chief among them, of course, a broader appeal to the non-sicko Canadian sporting public than the Blue Jays have ever enjoyed previously, and all the easy fellowship that carries with it—it was altogether too much, too far outside of the usual emotional register of baseball as I have come to enjoy it in this my fifth decade of doing that (baseball-enjoying). I like this better. Old friends may recall that I have long maintained that I am fundamentally a Regular-Season Guy ("One-Sixty-Two: More Than Enough," our banners read), which one could reasonably write-off as sour grapes during a considerable Blue Jays playoff drought, say, of which there have been several over the many years of our blogging together (thank you, as always, for your patience with me), but I have always meant it sincerely. Would I feel differently about this had a couple of innings played out slightly differently last fall? Hey maybe, but I really do remember quite vividly what it is like for the Toronto Blue Jays to win the World Series (twice in a row, even), and to me it all figures as cautionary rather than sustaining, I think.

Dodgers up next, though! Ohtani and Scherzer going tomorrow night at the SkyDome! I remember the last time this was the case! Turned out to be a pretty tight game!

KS 

White Sox 6, Blue Jays 3: I'm Not Even Sure Who I Feel Worse For (Pardon Me: For Whomst I Feel Worser)

 

at least Vladdy got one (great job as always, Vladdy; you're the best)

Should it be Brandon Little to whom we extend our fellow feeling this day, given that he was brought in to face an inning rich with lefties, and allowed home runs to two of them, on what may well prove to be his last appearance before being sent down to Buffalo to figure things out (should that be available to his practice)? Or should it mostly be Tyler Heineman, who not only made the third out (that's all the out they give you in any one inning, which is honestly something we might want to revisit) of a potentially game-changing inning trying to get to third with two out (you will recall that it is nearly meaningless to be on third with two out rather than to be at second with that same number of outs [two]) and—and this is the part that really tears it—Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on deck? Vladdy, who'd homered in his last at bat, is reported to have hit the indoor batting cages no more than fifteen minutes after the conclusion of the previous day's disappointing game, trying to fix whatever it was in his swing that was limiting him to only getting on base a little less than half the time. And sure enough, he got that one today, a true blast to left-centre off of former Blue Jay Anthony Kay, back in the bigs after a several-year stint in Japan that was apparently quite kind to him (though he no longer wears glasses on the field, which saddens me a little). That put the Blue Jays up 2-1 in the sixth, the homer did, but it was the bottom of that same inning that saw Brandon Little just totally cooked by those lefties aforementioned, the very guys he is specifically there to go uncooked by (he is there to ensure everything remains raw, in a sense). Anyway, Heineman's Vladdy's-on-deck-please-no gaffe ended the seventh, and then a ball he just totally sailed in what should have been an inning-ending pickle in the eighth (but instead produced two runs! a two-run pickle!) really settled the matter: for Tyler Heineman, much like Brandon Little, this was just a brutal day at work. 

Unlike Little, who we probably won't be seeing all that much of in the next while (mere speculation on my part, but I would be surprised if Adam Macko or somebody isn't up as a new bullpen lefty for a bit), Heineman will be front and centre, given the news about Alejandro Kirk's thumb: it was dislocated, so they popped it back in after the game, x-rayed it, and, yep, sure enough, that's a thumb that's broken, mister. For now, he's just on the ten-day injury list, but they don't yet know if it'll need surgery or what, so while it is already a bad scene, it could prove to be a far worse one pretty soon.

It's Eric Lauer on the mound tomorrow (today it was Mason Fluharty as an opener ahead of Lazaro Estrado, by the way, and that was all at least totally fine, bordering on really good), and I enjoy his work, but I do not feel that things have gone well in Chicago so far, and I worry that this may continue to be the case tomorrow, too. Prove me wrong, guys! Then it's back home to face the Dodgers, haha!     

KS 

White Sox 5, Blue Jays 4 (F/10): An Objectively Great Game That I Hated

 

peace was less upon me than I'd have liked by the end of this one

Andrés Giménez's two-run homer to tie the game at three in the eighth (the Blue Jays' first run having come all the way back in the second on an Alejandro Kirk hustle-double [they're of course all hustle doubles for our guy Kirky]) felt so good, man. Giménez is such a great defender that he is almost unreasonably valuable as an even slightly-below-league-average hitter, so when he shows flashes of maybe possibly perhaps hitting like he did in his monstrous 2022 season (his 2025 ALCS was pretty happening, too, you'll recall), one cannot help but be like yes please. And yet it did not prove enough on this cold Chicago day that also ended up in a flood warning, according to my people (honestly just one person) on the scene in that presumably fine city (I have never been). It's true that my innate distrust of extra innings had to be set aside, however briefly, after George Springer did not so much beat out a play at first so much as a lightly errant throw across the diamond drew Murakami's foot off the bag at first by like maybe an inch, and the umpire totally noticed, allowing Davis Schneider to scamper on in. But it (my innate distrust) was if anything redoubled in the home half of the tenth, when, mere moments after Alejandro Kirk had to leave the game immediately upon taking a foul tip off his gloved thumb (he looked into the dugout immediately, which seemed like a terrible sign [sure was!]), Derek Hill craftily laid down a bunt that backup catcher Tyler Heineman had to field while both literally and figuratively cold. Field it he did, one would have to acknowledge, but he sure hucked it down the first base line, didn't he? Like way past Vladdy? Rather than the game-winning third out being registered (I like that word a lot when paired with outs), in came the game-tying run on the error, soon followed by the game-winning run (for the wrong guys! the wrong guys!) on (Winkler, Manitoba's) Tristan Peters' single to right field off Jeff Hoffman, who you can't really pin this one on at all, given the error on what should have been the third out, and all. Not great! Except that it was, as a game; except that it wasn't, as far as my enjoyment right at the end of it. Guess which one stuck with me the most! And so we fall to a barely-keeping-our-heads-above-water four-and-three, whereas we were a few mere bounces away from a juggernaut-that-defies-all-sense five-and-two. The strictures of April baseball are demanding.  

KS