Blue Jays 9, Mets 3: Happy Canada/Bullpen Daaaaaaaay!

 

just an objectively large flag

Patrick Corbin, recently relegated to the bullpen on account of how his starts so far in June have not necessarily been super duper serviceable, nevertheless pitched his full five-innings-whether-you-like-it-or-not in this new relief capacity, coming into the game after Braydon Fisher's scoreless openering (a term we can make happen if we all commit to it) and Rule-5-legend Spencer Miles' three excellent innings, earning, if you can believe it, the save! Patrick Corbin probably doesn't have too many of those! In fact I have just now checked, and it was but the third save of his fourteen-year career. It's easy to forget about that particular aspect of the save rule, isn't it? Some parts are comparatively easy to remember, because we encounter them so often: the finishing pitcher, but not the pitcher credited with the win, who pitches at least a third of an inning if they come into the game with the tying run on base, at the plate, or even on deck (fair enough); or, more commonly still, if they come into the game with a lead of three runs or fewer and pitch a full inning. These are the ones we encounter almost every time, right? But you can also get one for pitching the final three-or-more innings of the game, which is obviously not the way relief pitchers are generally used, and I don't think Patrick Corbin would have been used as he was yesterday, either, had the Blue Jays not put nine runs on the board (three run homers from first young Sean Keys and subsequently Myles Straw foremost among the high points in this regard) on what turned out to be an entirely merry Canada Day outing, one prefaced by a pregame ceremony that, among its other virtues, brought us two-time Nova Scotia Senior Baseball League MVP (1987 and 1988 [he also tied for the lead league in saves one year, actually, since we've been talking saves]) Matt Stairs. (As I trip all over myself to mention whenever Matt Stairs comes up, or can reasonably be brought up, Bill James has offered the following speculation on the subject of Stairs' strange and unusually compelling career: "Look at it. Somebody decided he was a second baseman, he tears through the minor leagues, gets to Montreal, the Expos take one look at him and say, 'He's no second baseman, get real.' He bounces around, goes to Japan, doesn't really get to play until he's almost 30, then hits 38 homers, slips into a part-time role and hits 15-20 homers every year for 10 years in about 250 at-bats a season. You put him in the right park, right position early in his career, he's going to hit a LOT of bombs." To which Joe Posnaski adds: "What can you say? It's all there. Stairs did not get 500 at-bats until he was 30—he had a .370 OBP that year, hit 26 homers, drove in 106. The next year, he had the 38-homer season. His average dropped the next season, and he never got 500 at-bats in a season after that." All here, if you are so inclined.) Alejandro Kirk, who has still barely played at all this season (just nineteen games!), had two hits and a pair of walks, and Vladdy, back in the lineup after resting his tricky back, doubled, walked, scored, and had a couple of nifty plays at first. Another Vladdy note: Dan Shulman reported on the broadcast yesterday that Vladdy has been taking about three-hundred swings pre-game each day (that's arguably a lot if your back is giving you grief? [I am not a doctor]), and about a hundred after the games, too (even though it's late then!) as he tries to get things right, and reports that in the cage, he feels entirely fine. What a strange time it's been for him (and indeed for us all).

So, on the whole, a strong Canada Day of Blue Jays baseball! Though it did not match last year's George Springer grand slam against the Yankees as far as full-on splendour goes, that is obviously too high a bar, and cannot be our splendour-standard going forward, lest we end each Canada Day at least a little disappointed, instead of having had a nice time. And this was really nice! Will nice times continue as the Blue Jays head west for this final road-trip before the All-Star break? The Mariners, Giants, and Padres offer us a number of eminently winnable games, should we bold enough to seize them. And as it happens, we are three games back of the Mariners for a Wild Card spot, so that's just a great place to start! We would need to go seven-and-two to be .500 at the break; I am going to put that down as a "stretch goal."

KS

Mets 3, Blue Jays 0: Here Lie The Toronto Blue Jays; They Never Scored

 

George Springer vs. Bo Bichette in a short-pants-off (so to speak)

For all the Blue Jays' woes at the plate, they haven't actually been shut out all that often so far this season, have they? I think this is just the third time, if my quick count on Baseball Reference that I did not double check can be trusted. A pity, really, in that Kevin Gausman was in fine form through six, but left the game down by a run; that Mason Fluharty and Tommy Nance allowed a run each in the innings that followed proved immaterial, in the end, on account of how we turned our six hits and two walks into very little (in fact nothing!). Vladdy sat this one out with back tightness, and not for the first time—is this nagging minor injury what's keeping him from mashing in the manner to which we've grown so accustomed? There honestly isn't much that I'd put past back tightness. Finally, I would like to note that Bo Bichette (who had a single through the right side and played a solid third base in this one) was greeted warmly by the crowd ahead of his first plate appearance once again, which was nice to see. Kevin Gausman went so far as to step off and throw both hands up to indicate that he needed a different baseball than the seemingly perfectly fine one already in hand so as to compel Bichette to linger in the moment as it developed. Gausman has always seemed like a good egg, and this was further evidence for sure.  

KS 

Blue Jays 2, Mets 1: Welcome Back, Bo

 

you're looking well

You're probably not actually as bad as you look when you're getting swept at home by the Rangers, and you're probably not actually as good as you look when you're beating the Mets, as the old saw almost goes. All it took was a fairly ludicrous little-league home run (a triple and an error, in this case) off the bat of George Springer ("I'm so tired; that's so far") and right past the glove of Juan Soto to open the game; a Myles Straw sacrifice fly to score Luis Urías in the fifth; and a very fine nearly-seven-innings from Trey Yesavage, who allowed a solo home run to Francisco Lindor, and nothing else beyond that. Fluharty, Rogers, and (who else?) Louis Varland tied up the loose ends. 

But this one was all about the return of Bo Bichette (uncharacteristically emotional pregame press scrum here; warm standing ovation with Vladdy encouraging him to tip his cap here), our best shortstop since Tony Fernandez (words one does not utter lightly), an essential, integral part of the whole wonderful era of Blue Jays baseball that began with the weird, abbreviated 2020 season in which these preposterously young Blue Jays were already good, somehow, and culminated in last year's run to Game Seven of the World Series in what turned out to be my favourite baseball season ever (hey, one of them's gotta be). Over that lovely and uncommonly companionable six-year stretch, one that seemed from the very beginning to be the Vladdy and Bo era (and extremely turned out to be), the Blue Jays played .543 baseball, good for one AL East title, four trips to the postseason, an AL pennant, and, as you'll no doubt recall, really very close to almost a World Series championship as well. All of this, I got to share with my young family (Vladdy and Bo are friends; watch how they take care of each other). Bo Bichette's three-run home run in the third inning of Game Seven off of Shohei Ohtani was, in my view, the swagmost home run in Blue Jays history, given the overall context (WS G7), the opposing pitcher (the greatest baseball player to ever live), Bo's hobbled status (his knee was still unmistakably wrecked), and, crucially, as regards swagness, the tiny little bat-drop (no monstrous José Bautista flip, this) with a subtle, nearly disdainful flick of the wrist, one that we had seen before, and that always seemed to connote Bo's low-key disbelief that this pitcher—again, in this case Shohei Ohtani, the greatest baseball player to ever live—could have possibly thought that they could get that pitch by him. Had it been enough, as Dan Shulman noted last night, it's a home run that stands alongside Joe Carter's in Blue Jays history. But, as I believe Nick Ashbourne said in the aftermath of last season, if the Blue Jays had won, all of those moments would have become unavoidable, almost compulsory memories; that they lost means that we'll have to remember them ourselves. I'm happy to.

KS

Rangers 3, Blue Jays 2: Good Grief!

 

how can we lose when we're so sincere?

There comes a time in every truly lamentable winless streak where it feels like you're inventing genuinely new ways to lose baseball games, and this is, I believe, the dark territory we entered today. Shane Bieber, in his second start off the IL, allowed a home run to Joc Pederson (I miss the pearls, honestly, and wish he would bring them back) on the very first pitch he threw, but only gave up one run after that (our non-Mason-Fluharty bullpen-lefty Adam Macko allowed an inherited runner to score in the sixth). Jeff Hoffman, who has actually been great all of June, was lightly awesome yet again, I would like to add, getting four outs to keep things close enough through the seventh (and beyond!) that Nathan Lukes' two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth was enough to tie the game as we headed towards the ninth. And in that ninth, that ultimately regrettable ninth, Louis Varland struck out the first two, but shook Alejandro Kirk off three times to get to the slider, a slider that was ripped to the wall for a double, which shouldn't have been a huge problem with two already down in the inning, except for the absolutely hellacious wild pitch that Louis subsequently spiked in front of Alejandro Kirk, which ricocheted off the umpire's hard shoulder pad and got all tangled up in the netting, allowing Josh Jung to score from second base. On a wild pitch. From second base. In the home half, Brandon Nimmo made a leaping catch at the wall to retire Alejandro Kirk—who very nearly got enough of it to tie things up, and yet did not quite—to end the game. 

So that's six straight losses, which honestly should probably be a wrap on things, as far as figuring out where we stand heading towards the trade deadline, and yet it isn't at all, in that we are still only two-and-a-half games out of the final Wild Card, because the American League on the whole remains no less baffling an ordeal than this Blue Jays first-half in particular. On the broadcast today, they flashed up a graphic that indicated—kind of to my surprise, honestly!—that Blue Jays' starters rank thirtieth in earned-run average for the month of June, and are just as bad in terms of walk rate right now. Has it felt like that to you? I'd have told you that it's been a rough turn through the rotation this last time around, but holy moly! I guess it has been considerably worse than that! In a way, it's emotionally easier for just about every aspect of the team to be underperforming a little, even if it's a way easier fix for the front office if the problem is just one particular black hole in the batting order, or one spot in the rotation or bullpen that desperately needs an obvious upgrade. When the malaise is broader, I take comfort in it not being seen as just one guy's definite fault. I worry about that more than you might think.  

Anyway, our old friend Bo Bichette and his new friends the New York Mets are in for three this week, so that should be interesting! Also the final round of All-Star balloting opens up tomorrow (it runs through Thursday, I believe) and I intend to vote a fully partisan ticket across the board—no regard for merit whatsoever—the maximum number of times permitted each day. I don't care even a little. Ernie Clement kicked two grounders today, and I was like, "All-Star starter; let's go." I don't even care a little.  

KS

Rangers 7, Blue Jays 4: Sheesh McGeesh!

 

Kirk got one, at least

Dylan Cease struggled with his control, and walked really any number of guys (actually I have just now checked, and the particular number was five), but also struck out ten, and it seemed like he was going to get through five innings (fewer than he'd like, but a creditable amount) with just the one run. Not so, however! With two outs in the fifth, the Rangers scored five more runs—five more!—off of first Cease, and then the Fluharty (in this case Mason) who relieved him (an uncommon Nathan Lukes misplay in right cost us two runs very directly in that fifth inning, I'm afraid). Not a great situation, but a familiar one, in that the Blue Jays were down by a whole bunch before the bats finally kicked in: a two-run homer from the recently recalled Yohendrick Pinango (Davis Schneider, who failed to get on base all week, was understandably but regrettably sent down) got the people going, even if it only brought the score to 6-2; Alejandro Kirk's home run in the next inning (the five-hundredth base hit of his career!) was met with even more delight, in part because it drew us closer still, but also just on account of how much everybody likes Alejandro Kirk. But things did not especially improve from there, and despite a handful of further baserunners, there was really nothing much doing. Vladdy had a miserable oh-for-five day, with just the one strikeout, but several hard-hit balls directly at people (Rangers fielders, regrettably). That makes five straight losses, all at home. It really was quite a mess, but on what appeared to be a perfect summer afternoon at the SkyDome, so you take the bad with the good, I guess.

KS

Rangers 5, Blue Jays 4: And Yet . . .

 

safe, believe it or not, despite the lightly scorpioned Clement

You might well think that this was more of the same—the Blue Jays go down early, as Patrick Corbin's five-innings-whether-you-like-it-or-not ends up being five runs over four-and-a-third; we eventually put some runs together, but the comeback falls short; and, ultimately, we lose our fourth straight since getting to .500 (this exact same thing has happened several times already this season!)—and that is certainly extremely true and very much the case. But this was actually, on the whole, pretty merry? I was cheered by the big Friday-night crowd's enthusiasm for just about everything as the Blue Jays made their way mostly back, let's say, from a pretty dispiriting start (three Rangers runs in the first, and two more in the third): the crowd chanting "Ernie" or "Vladdy" (as appropriate) with great spirit; the big cheers for Davis Schneider when he came in for Jésus Sanchez (badly rolled ankle at the wall, it looked like, for big Jésus); the full-on ovation when Alejandro Kirk pinch-hit late. These are huge crowds every night (41 689 most recently), and the amount of affection they have for their Toronto Blue Jays, for these specific guys, after last season (and really these last seasons [it's been a heck of a time!], remains just very stirring to be around (it's okay to be stirred, Beavis). They sure like some of these new guys, too: 岡本 和真 Okamoto Kazuma, for example, who hit another two-run home run in the eighth, and continues to be an absolute delight, and threatens to make us all retroactive fans of the 読売ジャイアンツ / Yomiuri Jaiantsu / Yomiuri Giants (what of our pre-existing loyalties to the 北海道日本ハムファイターズ /  Hokkaidō Nippon-Hamu Faitāzu / Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, based in no small measure on sister-city relationships with 函館市 Hakodate, though? these are incompatible 日本野球機構 Nippon Yakyū Kikō loyalties!). 

The other Blue Jays runs on the night came off the bat of the beleaguered but beloved Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who went two-for-four, knocking in a pair and scoring one. A solid night for him, obviously (in that two-for-four every night would make you toweringly awesome, what with the three-hundred-plus hits per season to go along with the 1.000 OPS and everything), but broadly speaking, his struggles continue. I have been quick to note, when the subject of Vladdy's unhappy first half comes up, that after playing tremendously for the República Dominicana in the WBC, Vladdy was hitting .354 through then end of April, with an absurd OBP, and an OPS north of .900; it's not that it's been a lost season, but just an improbably, seemingly impossibly bad very specific stretch, even allowing for the early Sabermetric semi-maxim that just about anybody is capable of just about anything over the course of one hundred at bats (this has honestly been as helpful to me as any of the full-on maths-stuff over the many years [indeed decades!] since I first encountered it). Andrew Stoeten, of the once mighty Drunk Jays Fans (an entity whose time and place of triumph are communicated entirely in this image, and whose downfall serves us still as a cautionary tale [Baseball Feelings is not for sale, private equity firms, so stop asking]), did us all the favour of breaking Vladdy's season down week-by-week in terms of wRC+, "weighted runs created plus," a measure which I concede to be the most useful (in the "quick comparison" sense) all-in offensive number available to us even though I am still a little mad about this 12/8/08 blog post in which FanGraphs dark overlord David Appleman announced "[t]onight we’ve completed the phasing out of Runs Created (RC) and Runs Created per 27 Outs (RC/27). In their place you will find two run stats based off wOBA, which is a sounder metric than the previously used Runs Created," a betrayal about which I have blogged previously, and will almost certainly mention again (pretty soon, too, I bet!). Anyway here's what Stoeten has for us week-by-week (in wRC+, one-hundred is league average; fifty is obviously half as good as that, and two-hundred is Aaron Judge when he is having an especially good year even for him [Ohtani's best, for example, is 180 {to be fair he is also often pitching}]; Vladdy's best seasons are 166 [2021] and 164 [2024]):

(we're gonna go "Week Of: wRC+" here)  

3/23: 182

3/30: 105

4/6: 175    

4/13: 133

4/20: 162

4/27: 120

5/4: 11

5/11: 40

5/18: 135

5/25: 153

6/1: 40

6/8: 53

6/15: 86

6/22: 6

That last one will have come up a little since Stoeten posted it (I have just now checked at FanGraphs [whose splits-leaderboard has actually gotten easier to query! I think!], and his most recent week now stands at 37, rather than 6, not that the week's over), but the overall result is a wRC+ of 102 on the season so far, which is to say that a borderline-incomprehensible Vladdy-slump has left us with a slightly above-average hitter over the first half, one who is actually still probably going to have a better overall season than his 2023 in terms of fWAR on account of improved fielding (just last night he made a nifty play to throw a runner out after a weird single that could easily have become a weird double!) and baserunning (he is six for seven stealing bases this season, somehow; also there is no accounting for the sheer joy of all involved [Vladdy, us, the cosmos] when he scores from first on a double).

So there's your Vladdy Report, or, more precisely, your My Feelings About Vladdy's Struggles And How I Think We Should Still Remember To Be Nice Report. I am finding internet responses to Vladdy's slump saddening, but it's my fault for reading them; I am finding in-the-ballpark responses to Vladdy's slump, in which a loving crowd encourages him [ganbatte, Vladdy-san]), to be quite bolstering. I hope that he does, too! I also hope for dingers—just all kinds of them—perhaps as soon as slightly later this afternoon?  

KS

Rangers 6, Blue Jays 5: Pretty Close At The End There!

 

Big Oak got another one

It gives me no pleasure to report that veteran slugger Joc Pederson opened the game with a leadoff homerun to end an eleven-pitch at-bat, and, worse still, that's more or less how the whole evening went for Kevin Gausman. That's two tough ones in a row for Gausman, though of different sorts, in that, against the Cubs, he couldn't find the zone, and his defense betrayed him utterly; whereas against the Rangers, he found the zone, but the Rangers found the seats repeatedly (oh no). Despite three homers and six runs allowed in just the first three innings, Gausman stuck it out admirably, and managed to spare the bullpen for the six innings he ultimately struggled through. Simeon Woods-Richardson took it the rest of the way, walking some guys, sure, but allowing none to score, in this his third outing since being claimed off of waivers from the Twins (that he was DFA'd pretty much right after this is understandable but lamentable, and probably pretty tough for him personally, though I'm sure he'll land another major-league spot somewhere). The Blue Jays slowly managed to work their way back into this one (Davis Schneider hit a sacrifice fly with the bases loaded; Myles Straw knocked in a pair with a single) to such an extent that when Kazuma Okamoto hit his two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, they were within one! But then of course the game ended really very soon thereafter. So it goes.

It was perhaps a fitting end to this, the eighty-first game, and thus the true halfway point, of this strange-so-far Blue Jays season. That we find ourselves in a four-team, sub-.500 tie for the final Wild Card spot sounds about right, doesn't it? Given how many of our guys got, and in some case remain, hurt? And how not all the bats are really quite humming along to the extent that one might have hoped? Still plenty of baseball left (literally half of it!), and so lots of time for things either to improve even slightly, in which case we would be in clover, or to fall apart significantly, in which case at least all of the anxiousness would be out of it. Either way, really! Keeping with this midseason theme, I would like to note that Ernie Clement, as the American League's leading All-Star vote-getter, has already been announced as the starting second baseman of that coming game; he has been spared the run-off balloting that in recent years has given the selection process more of a French-presidential-election vibe than it had held previously. Ernie's 3.2 million votes were exceeded only by Shohei Ohtani's 3.3 million (he will be the NL's starting DH, and I suppose might even pitch), which led Ernie to quip that it was tough coming in second place to the Dodgers again, haha! Several Blue Jays who have put forth first-halves of varying quality find themselves as run-off finalists for this round of balloting, and although this has elicited a good deal of commentary about Canadian fans unduly stuffing the ballot boxes, as a full-on partisan of the worst kind, I don't feel the least bit funny about it at all, and instead hope that literally all of our guys get in—and I mean literally every one of them, even Alejandro Kirk with like ten games played. "I was surprised that I'm in first," Guerrero told beat reported Mitch Bannon about it a little while ago. "There's a lot of first basemen doing a better job than me. But I don't control the fans, I don't control the vote." In my view, though, he should.   

KS 

Astros 3, Blue Jays 1: Oof.

 

You said it, George Springer

This one was pretty straightforward, really: the starting pitchers, Trey Yesavage and Mike Burrows, each allowed a first-inning run, and then pitched ably into the sixth. From there, Jeff Hoffman allowed an eighth-inning triple off the wall, despite Daulton Varsho's best efforts, and a botched pickoff attempt at third (weird play: Kirk was probably wrong to call it; Okamoto missed the sign; and Hoffman tossed it right by him [Hoffman was the least at fault of the three, for those of you scoring along at home]) brought home the go-ahead run. The Blue Jays had a real chance to tie it in the bottom of that same inning, when Springer ripped one to the wall in right, but Cam Smith stuck with it, made a fine catch, and doubled Luis Urias, who had badly misread the ball, off of second base. It's true that Mason Fluharty struggled in the ninth and allowed a further run, but it's not particularly germane to the outcome. 

Kind of drag, this one! Two tough losses to drop the series. Hey, though, did you know that over the last thirty games or so, the Blue Jays have actually been the third-best team in baseball behind the Dodgers (fair enough) and Brewers (you know what, also fair)? I sure would not have been able to tell you that had this apparently factual information not been fashioned into a handsome graphic and shared on the Sportsnet broadcast! Oh hey, also on the Sportsnet broadcast generally, for a moment, if I may: although Dan Shulman remains the finest play-by-playiste of his generation, I really do feel that the colour commentary situation has become fairly dire. We all knew there was no replacing Buck Martinez, who, for all his quirks (perhaps because of them), is at least as beloved as Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth as far as voices of the Blue Jays go, but we have been alternating between Joe Siddell, whose aspect has thus far been that of a fussy scold, and Caleb Joseph, whose command of the language has not yet proven up to the task. Let us assume that they are both lovely people; what's more, let us wish nothing but the best for them. But neither has been an inviting on-air presence with which to spend hours and hours each week, in my view. I am fond of Chris Leroux's easy, chatty colour commentary on the radio broadcast, though I appreciate that his aspect might be a little lower-energy than what they'd be after for television; but I can't for the life of me figure out why Madison Shipman, who has been great in every role she has taken on, hasn't been given a real shot at it: her technical knowledge is excellent; she's a much more articulate communicator than several of her peers who get more play; and she's super pleasant! I know I have been on this for a while, forgive me, but I am becoming more steadfast in my resolve on this with each passing game. I am very close to becoming a single-issue voter. I can feel it coming. I am going to be very unpleasant to talk to about any of this. 

KS 

Astros 9, Blue Jays 7 (F/11): A Wild One In Which, To Be Fair, We Had Our Chances

 

It's okay, Shane Bieber (pat pat); you did a pretty good job today mostly (pat pat)

The last time Shane Bieber was on the mound for the Blue Jays, you may well recall, was in extra innings in Game Seven of the really very good 2025 World Series. When Beiber entered that game, I honestly felt like we were good indefinitely, that we would have as many chances as we needed to push a single run across in the home half of really any inning, however many it might take. I was at least as surprised as anyone, and probably more surprised than most, when Will Smith homered in a way that proved to be enormously consequential (within the admittedly limited realm of baseball game outcomes). It's entirely possible that I have a disproportionate sense of Shane Bieber's excellence, as our parasocial relationship was forged in the fires of Baseball Mogul, and that can do strange things to one's capacity for objective assessment (my status as perhaps the internet's foremost Yimi Garcia Ultra is no doubt another consequence of this phenomenon). But consider, too, the role (pardon me, the rôle) Bieber had played in the Blue Jays' postseason up to that crucial point: although Bieber simply did not have it in his start in Yankee Stadium (Bieber left that game in the third inning down 6-3 in a game the Blue Jays would ultimately lose 9-6, in no small part because Aaron Judge "went off" [the foul poll, specifically, in this instance]), do you recall that the Blue Jays dropped their first two at home in the ALCS? And that it was Bieber's start in Seattle that got things going in Game Three? Or that, after the utterly absurd eighteen-inning World Series game in Los Angeles that, in the end, did not quite go our way, it was Shane Bieber who started the next night, and did so ably? 

I was very pleased to hear Dan Shulman remind the audience of all of this (admittedly he did not say much about that Yankees game) as Bieber made his long-awaited and exceedingly welcome return to the lineup after a winter and spring of arm, shall we say, uncertainty. And Bieber looked pretty good! For a while! A first-inning run, sure, but then a relatively breezy second and third before, well, admittedly, he did allow back-to-back-to-back home runs (all solo shots, though!) to Yainer Diaz, Cam Smith, and finally Taylor Trammell, who, fair enough, hit it into the 500s; that's where he hit it; we can be open and honest about that. The Blue Jays battled back, though! Two-run home runs from newcomer Luis Urías (recently obtained from Arizona for Cash Considerations [who sounds like a third baseman to me]) and Daulton Varsho had things looking pretty good, and Kazumo Okamoto's two-run single to left in the bottom of the eighth (scoring Springer and Vladdy) seemed like it was going to be enough to get it done with Tyler Rogers coming in to pitch the ninth (Louis Varland, who is pitching constantly, was unavailable). But instead of his usual soft contact more or less directly to guys, Rogers allowed some reasonably hard contact less directly to guys than you might hope, and, combined with a costly catcher's interference on Brandon Valenzuela's part, we were all tied up, and headed to extras, where neither Springer (groundout to the drawn-in infield) nor Vladdy (flyball to the edge of the warning track in centre) were able to bring in the runner from third (who had been nicely bunted over by Giménez), and Braydon Fisher, after a fine tenth (I neglected to mention that Hoffman did well again, but he did; let's get that in here to, however inelegantly), had our old friend Joey Loperfido down to the Astros' last strike of the inning before a fairly towering three-run shot was hit very much to right. Okamoto, whose OPS in June is at-or-near 1.000 (super good!), knocked in Vladdy in the home half of the eleventh, but that's where it stopped. A great game, honestly, but we're back below .500 (that's bad . . .), but still in the WC3 playoff position (. . . that's good!). So, a mixed bag, as we look towardst a series win Wednesday night? I wonder if Trey Yesavage might strike like a whole bunch of guys out, maybe. 

KS   

Blue Jays 4, Astros 2: A Low-Key Honey Of A Game (To Me)

 

Further Oak

Amidst an afternoon of fairly pleasant yardwork ("working yard? or yardly working?," one might well josh), among the several balados I enjoyed was an ancillary Blue Jays one in which able host Blake Murphy described the Blue Jays' relationship to the .500 mark this season as "asymptotic," which delighted me considerably. Would you believe that, before just now, the last time we were at .500 was May 29th, and before that it was April 4th? April 4th! We have really not been an especially good baseball team so far, haha! Except that now of, of course, we are, following Monday night's 4-1 win over the comparably (though not identically) underperforming Houston Astros. We've sorted it all out, probably! At the outset, Dylan Cease looked like he may have been in for a bit of a rough night, and not just because the first pitch he threw was lined to left for a base hit by Jeremy Peña (who would later leave the game after hurting himself mid-at-bat), but also on account of how the Astros loaded the bases in the first with just one out and a run already in. However! A slickly-turned double play (Giménez to Ernie Clement to Vladdy [who had two hits and an RBI, I might add [go Vladdy, I would additionally add]) got us out of trouble, and from there Cease settled in considerably, and allowed just the one other run in his five-and-two-thirds. The Blue Jays' runs came on a Kazuma Okamoto solo homer (he is cooking!) and three sacrifice flies, which is really a lot of those, but we had loads of runners on all night, somewhat surprisingly (in that Hunter Brown is a very good starting pitcher, though he was chased after just three innings). Fisher, Rogers, and Varland took it the rest of the way, aided in no small measure by a couple more sweet, sweet double plays (the really are the best). Objectively, this game was probably just a perfectly ordinary Monday-night win at home, but perfectly ordinary Monday-night wins at home are lovely; I can't imagine I will ever weary of them.   

KS 

Blue Jays 8, Cubs 6: Insanely More Like It

 

Big Oak

"Dad, can we play R.B.I. Baseball?" is a question I answered in the unhesitating affirmative not long after Matt Shaw took Patrick Corbin deep to left for three runs to end an at-bat in which a missed third strike call (an understandable one, as Brandon Valenzuela had set up inside, and the breaking ball just clipped the far side of the plate; that's tough for an umpire) had gone unchallenged to the consternation of Dan Shulman and Joe Siddall in the booth, and to the mystification, if nothing else, of those of us gathered on the couch with our shared bowl of Old Dutch chips and our tiny Orange Crushes. From there, everybody went outside for a while, and returned home to a five-run Cubs lead (Pete Crow-Armstrong had homered off of Lazaro Estrada), rather than the three-run lead that had already been enough to lightly discourage us. The Blue Jays didn't even manage a baserunner until Valenzuela's single in the fifth, and though they got a little something going in the sixth with Giménez and Straw singles to start the inning, an easy flyout and a comebacker that turned into a 1-6-3 double play left that promise unfulfilled. But Daulton Varsho (back in the lineup, though with quite a contraption on his still-imperfect left wrist) homered off of our old friend Trent Thornton, thus knocking in both Vladdy, who had reached on a single, and Okamoto, hit by a pitch. Five-three! Getting there, maybe! A little! Jeff Hoffman, for whom I seem to be rooting so hard this season, navigated the seventh, which set the stage for just such a top of the eighth: Myles Straw walked; Springer singled to left; Alejandro Kirk entered the game as a pinch hitter, singled in Straw, and was immediately replaced by Yohendrick Piñango uponst the basepaths (fair enough!); Vladdy singled to right-centre just like you'd hope to knock in Springer; and, after Valenzuela struck out, 岡本 和真 Okamoto Kazuma really got a hold of one for his team-leading sixteenth home run, hitting it several rows deep into Wrigley's famed left-field bleachers—which seemed to contain a disproportionate number of Blue Jays fans, a significant portion of whom were attired in matching custom t-shirts that suggested perhaps a bachelor party or some other sort of pals-fest? (Let us note, too, that the day after Dan Shulman mused that it was so perfectnly sunny a Wrigley afternoon that it recalled nothing so much as the Cubs game depicted in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Shulman could not have been happier to explain Saturday afternoon that three fans in the stands were dressed as they were [a Gordie Howe Red Wings sweater, a Save Ferris t-shirt, and a very specific vest, respectively] in tribute to that fine film.) Incredible! Big Oak! We love that guy!

From there, it fell to Mason Fluharty, who struggled uncharacteristically in the home half of the eighth, so much so that he left the bases loaded and nobody out for Louis Varland, for whom such circumstances seem to be no big deal necessarily? A groundout that brought in a run (no complaints here), a strikeout of the likeable Seiya Suzuki, and a nifty catch by Myles Straw down the line brought the eighth to a close (John Schneider seems to have responded to the unusually high degree of outfielding foolishness that marred Friday's game by running out Straw, Varsho, and Lukes [who made a great bases-loaded catch to end the fourth] on Saturday, essentially an all-centre-fielder outfield [kind of like the post-Moneyball-A's, for a little bit there? because of how defense was relatively undervalued, and a skill that peaks early/whilst players are more affordable than they would be under freer market conditions? this brief moment perhaps looms larger in my mind than it did on the field on account of how it was a point of interest in the early-to-mid-period FanGraph Audios [FanGraphs Audio?] of Carson Cistulli and his guest Dave Cameron, of which/of whom I am perhaps inordinately fond). The ninth passed fairly unremarkably for Varland, aside from a throwing error of his own errantry, and there you go, a fantastic comeback win enjoyed by all! Except for the Cubs fans who grew increasingly and understandably annoyed at how loud the "Let's go Blue Jays" chants were getting towards the end there! There really were a tonne of Toronto fans there. I figure it must have something to do with Second City. 

All of that is happy news, but I am saddened to report that this is where out time in Chicago must end for now, as whomever made the call to not install a retractable roof over Wrigley Field when it first opened in 1914 as home to the Chicago Whales of the short-lived Federal League totally has egg on their face today, in that today, it is just way too rainy for baseball in Chicago. A truly hideous turn of events for those of us in non-rainy locales whose afternoon yardworks were to be accompanied by the radio call of the game. It scarcely seems worth it to be out in the yard on a lovely June afternoon at all now, given the way things have turned out. Maybe it can yet be salvaged. I don't know. It's hard to say just now. 

KS

Cubs 16, Blue Jays 2: I Mean, Yikes

 

Wrigley Field remains pretty nice though

The two-thousandth inning of Kevin Gausman's very fine career was a scoreless second, set against the picturesque backdrop of a Friday afternoon game under clear skies at Wrigley Field. Not bad! It is a to be lamented, though, that the one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth inning of that same fine career, the very inning that preceded it, was a twelve-batter, seven-run mess—although one that could have been stopped well short (like five runs short!) of what it became, it must be said, had the generally and genuinely delightful Jésus Sanchez not had one clank off his glove as he ran towards the foul line for what was charitably scored a key double rather than a brutal error (Sanchez insisted the ball had been foul, despite there being not enough room for a camp chair, as Vin Scully has said in similar circumstances, between the right field line and the wall; it was a truly baffling sequence). There was plenty of poor pitching from the inordinate number of Blue Jays pitchers who took the mound, as you would expect from the grim final score, but roughly half of those sixteen Cubs runs arose out of defensive miscues in considerable excess of the two errors posted to the scoreboard: Okamoto kicked one at third, Schneider muffed a pair at second, and Sanchez, in addition to the strange ordeal described above, also managed to turn a perfectly catchable ball into a bases-clearing triple later in the game with just one of the worst jumps you'll see (good guy, bad reads? is that the Jésus Sanchez story?). It really was quite a spectacle! In addition to the seven runs charged to Guasman, the only other Blue Jays pitchers to actually get dinged were the recently-recalled-and-immediately-thereafter-demoted Brendon Little (that's a rough twenty-four hours, and entering a game with a 24.55 ERA only to see that number increase after an inning of work has to be a bad feeling), and, unfortunately, Tyler Rogers, dinged for five, though it is surely some consolation that none of those runs were deemed "earned." Let's hear it for Myles Straw, though, who, in our post Tyler-Heineman-era (he has been traded home to the Angels [not a euphemism for an untimely demise, but literally where he has gone to play further professional baseball close to his actual home]), is our only position player willing and/or able to just coach-pitch it in there when things get out of hand, and he lobbed a creditable inning-and-a-third, allowing four hits and a walk along the way, but no runs charged to him as such. A mercy that we only needed to cover eight innings, and not the full nine!

I must also note finally and with regret that, contrary to my hopeful hopes, it seems as though Vladdy has not, in fact, figured everything out in the wake of his home run at Fenway, but really quite to the contrary, seems to have instead gone oh-for-three and left the game early after clearly wincing in discomfort with more of the light back troubles that have lightly troubled his back for more of this season than you'd hope to see (backs are tricky!). Today is probably the day though! If he hit one-homer-per-series the rest of the way that'd be pretty good! Think about it! That's still a good amount!  

KS

Blue Jays 4, Red Sox 3: A Sweep! A Palpable Sweep! (I'm Palping It Right Now)

 

maybe George Springer would have been safe if he'd wanted it more

Let's work backwards, maybe: on a day where we knew the bullpen would be a little thin, it fell to Mason Fluharty to get the final three outs against this weirdly horrendous Red Sox lineup and protect a one-run lead that came from the fairly unlikely source of an Ernie Clement dribbler cashed in by a Brandon Valenzuela double off of awful guy/borderline-Hall-of-Famer Aroldis Chapman in the top of that very same ninth. What great fun! That's the kind of ninth inning I think we can all get behind! The eighth hadn't gone quite as well, as Trey Yesavage allowed back-to-back solo home runs (the first to our old friend Isiah Kiner-Falefa, the next to borderline-Name-Guy Caleb Durbin), but that Yesavage was even out there in the eighth tells you what kind of day he had (and also, again, shows that the back-end of the bullpen had worked the previous two days—it fell to Tommy Nance to get the last two outs in the eighth, after Yesavage left, and we thank him for his service in this regard). Nathan Lukes had homered in the seventh for the Blue Jays third run of the game; their second had come way back in the inning of that same numerical designation when Andrés Giménez (whom I really like) sac-flied Okamoto home from third. But my favourite thing that happened in this one, by far, came all the way back in the first, when Vladdy—who despite his prolonged troubles at the plate, could be seen amiably and affably and quite winningly chatting it up with some young Boston fans in the first rows moments before the game began—hit his first home run in twenty-three games, only his fourth of the season, very much over the green monster. When he got back to the dugout, and the home run jacket made its appearance, you could hear John Schneider (who has known Vladdy since he was, what, seventeen years old?) say lightly, "It still fits!" Once all the highs were fived, the camera caught Vladdy exhaling and offering a low-key but obviously heartfelt "gracias padre" at the far end of the dugout. Is it too soon to speculate that Vladdy is totally fixed now? "We need to live where our feelings lead us," the RZA said somewhere one time (evidence of this is that he is making little prayer hands above this quotation in a small picture I have up on the wall of the room in which I compose this present composition), and my feelings lead me to conclude fairly definitively that this is in fact it, that Vladdy is all set now, and is probably about to go on a tear that will make mad the guilty, appall the free, confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed, the very faculties of eyes and ears. He's done it before! Maybe it's already begun again! Perhaps he will be buoyed, too, by how the Blue Jays are in a playoff spot now, and also that a simple series win (you don't even necessarily sweep this one, guys; I appreciate that that is hard to do) over the Cubs in Wrigley this weekend would see the Blue Jays head home with a sweet, sweet .500 record (we love those!). Yes, it really is probably potentially already upon us, maybe. And if turns out not, I'm sure we'll figure it out.

KS

Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 0: More Like A Bullpen Dayum

 

Braydon Fisher, an opener, seen here opening

When I went to open up the box score ("my favorite urban flower, the baseball box score," the peerless Roger Angell writes in a section of The Summer Game called "Rustle of Spring" [in the same piece he describes the box score as "modestly arcane"), I saw as a headline alongside it "Key Takeaways: Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 0," and I thought to myself that, fundamentally, I have but one takeaway from this gem of a game, and it is that it absolutely ruled and that I liked it so much (maybe that is two takeaways, though, and so the plural in the original in justified [I did not "click thru" to see how MLB.com's may have differed from my own]). As you may recall, dear reader, bullpen days have become a significant point of interest and indeed enjoyment for us here at Baseball Feelings, and I suppose were I pressed to identify a turning point in my appreciation of them (a strange matter to be pressed about, but readiness is all), I would probably have to go with the Blue Jays' 5-2 series-ending defeat of the New York Yankees in Game Four of the 2025 American League Division Series (as previously baseball-felt here). They really can be a lot of fun! Here, let's all enjoy a list of everyone who pitched for the Blue Jays in Fenway Wednesday night, and, parenthetically, for how long: Braydon Fisher (an inning and a third), Simeon Woods-Richardson (three innings), Mason Fluharty (a third), Spencer Miles (an inning and a third), Jeff Hoffman (an inning), Tyler Rogers (an inning, too), and finally Louis Varland (an especially neat inning), the only Blue Jays pitcher throughout this hard-won shutout to allow no baserunners, and instead to strike out the side in the ninth on just ten pitches (you will note, I'm sure, that that is very close to the minimum number of pitches required to do this). The pundits' refrain about all of these bullpen days is, understandably, that you can't just keep running everybody out there like that all season long, but my counter-proposal is that I don't know, maybe you can? So long as you adhere to reasonable pitch limits, and to general precautionary measures like not pitching guys on insufficient rest (Yoshinobu Yamamoto don't read this)? Which is very much how this is being done? Is having a bunch of guys go out and throw between ten and fifty pitches more risky to the overall health of the pitching staff than having one guy go out and throw ninety-to-a-hundred pitches, and two or three fewer guys come out of the pen? Obviously I don't know, but starters' arms explode all the time! We know this to be the case. Certainly, the approach we have been taking makes gives Pete Walker and John Schneider an awful lot to organize, for sure, but I like those guys; I think they're up to it. And the results have been pretty incredible, as the last eight bullpen days have gone thus(ly): 7W-1L, 2.75 ERA, 1.10 WHIP, .195 OPP AVG, 66K, 29 BB. If that were a guy, you'd be like woah! Who is this guy! What a guy he must be! But what if instead a conventional guy, it was one great big guy made up of smaller guys, like, I suppose, Voltron, a lens through which more of this season is coming into focus than I had anticipated at its outset? You never know where each season is going to take you, I guess. 

Like for example, would you have anticipated the Blue Jays stealing five bases in a single game against anyone at all this year? Or that three of them would come in a single inning, two of them on a double steal (among the raddest of steal-kinds)? And that three of these steals on the night would come from Andrés Giménez, and the other two from George Springer? Find me a more sprightly unc these days than George Springer; I defy you! I would also like to note that while things are still not going at all right for Vladdy, he nevertheless went two-for-four, knocked in two of the Blue Jays' three runs, made some sharp plays in the field, and plainly kept up the chatter in merry fashion. The only times he seems visibly down in the dumps is immediately following his plate appearances, and then he switches it back up to regular Vladdy mode. This has been tough. Maybe his two-for-four last night is the beginning of the big turnaround, though! Maybe he'll get ahold of a couple today! It's an afternoon game in Fenway, maybe the ball will really be flying! It could be, you know!

KS   

Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 1: The Boys Were Somewhat Boppin'!

 

oh it's a dinger all right

Three home runs! That's such a good amount of them! And all of them crushed, really: Davis Schneider wacked his over the green monster; Andrés Giménez deposited his into that weirdly deep triangle in right-centre (he's got sneaky pop! even though he's very a regular-sized guy!); and the three-hundredth home run of George Springer's very fine career was a no-doubter up and over everything in left and seemingly out of the ballpark entirely (although I did see a photograph later of Springer holding the ball smilingly, so maybe it was retrieved from the netting?). What a lot of fun! Dylan Cease pitched five scoreless, despite getting into at least a little bit of trouble in each of those five innings, but in the Hoffman-to-Rogers-to-Nance-to-Varland bullpennery (bullpenury? maybe that's only when it goes poorly?) that followed, only Tommy Nance got into any pickles or jams (either can be "jarring," haha), and Louis Varland struck out three in his four-out save to alleviate any trouble there, so no harm done, really. Just a delightful game in a beautiful ballpark against a team that is just straight-up struggling. I think I saw that the Red Sox' record this season in games in which they have trailed by three runs at any point in the game—at any point—is oh-and-thirty, which is just a miserable state of affairs (for them [I'm fine]). Still with misery, for a sec: Max Scherzer, each of whose starts these days feels like it might be the last Max Scherzer start ever, will not make any such starts in Boston, or indeed in the Chicago series that follows, as he has been placed on the Injured List with back spasms that, honestly, might as well be just about anything at this point; I'm sure there's any number of reasons in his right shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, thumb, or fingers that would merit a trip to the fifteen-day IL at this point, but back spasms is what we're going with here, and I'm sure those are legitimately no fun. And so, returning to the big-league roster in his stead, we have Chad Dallas (aka The Dad Chalice), whose honest-to-goodness full name is (you are not going to believe this but I swear to you this is true) John Chadwell Dallas. Incredible, right? A bullpen game tonight, then, but it turns out we love those. Perhaps we'll bop our way through it?        

KS 

Yankees 8, Blue Jays 3: "'A grind of a game.'—Dan Shulman"—Baseball Feelings

 

would that we all possessed Alejandro Kirk's equanimity

Two ninth-inning losses (I suppose they're pretty much all "ninth-inning losses," unless they run late or get rained out early, but you see what I am after) in a little under twenty-four hours is no way to lose a series (on the contrary, it is a great way to lose a series, haha!), and yet I choose to remember the good times—a Davis Schneider homer, a strong and well-received inning of relief from the largely beset Jeff Hoffman—rather than the really very bad: the two-homer, five-run, Yankees ninth off of first Braydon Fisher, and then Tommy Nance. I'm not mad about it! They're both solid guys! Everybody gets hit sometimes! The Yankees are the best team in the league! And we, alas, are not. We are, on the contrary, four games under .500. Will three against the weirdly lowly Red Sox in Fenway this week be of any service in our quest to be perfectly, indisputably average? Sounds like a lowered expectation, on account of how it obviously is, but I would welcome it pretty hard all the same. I don't know if we have it in us, but I would like for us to have it in us. At present, the Athletics and Rangers are tied for the final Wild Card spot, a game-and-a-half ahead of us, and neither has a winning record. Are we better than them? It's not impossible. Are we better than this? We have been previously, certainly. Might we be again? Too soon to say. 

A somewhat rough couple of days of Blue Jays baseball seem as good an occasion as any to mention that I have come to understand that I really don't actually mind it all that much when the Blue Jays are playing poorly (it is, after all, just baseball, and only one iteration of it at that [and I am a pretty old guy; I have genuinely "seen some shit" as regards Blue Jays baseball]); what I really do mind is the careless type of thing other people say about the Blue Jays when they are playing poorly, the kinds of complaints they have and make. I find them irksome and ungenerous! This is, obviously and self-evidently, entirely my problem, a prison of my own making (though probably at least as bad as literal prison). Although I eliminated all sports talk radio from my life many years ago for this reason (among others, certainly), and have since done the same with nearly all sports podcasting (sports talk radio's slightly-though-at-times-insufficiently elevated cousin), I do have a weakness for checking in on "the boards," and it is a habit I must cure myself of outside of really just one exception (more on that lone exception in just a moment). I found the Blue Jays-specific boards fairly silly and strangely doomerish even throughout much of their miracle run of 2025 (a season which is really a very easy test as to whether or not you might enjoy Blue Jays baseball), and I have only myself to blame for persisting with them into this new season. I think my position is that the team-specific internet is a failed genre (of internet). I will say, though, that r/baseball, for its part, remains the best general baseball board since the pre-"Think Factory" (awful, awful name) days of Baseball Primer, in no small part because it serves as a stated, explicit refuge from the almost flat-earth levels of nonsense one encounters on team-specific boards ("take it to the team sub" is a devastating rejoinder one sometimes encounters there [it elicits a frisson]). Where else, I ask, might one encounter baseball news this cheering:

I am on the internet for stuff like that; that is the kind of thing I want to know about, and to share with you. On account of how it is neat.

Anyway, on to Boston! Looks like the Red Sox are sending Tolle, Bennett, and Sonny Gray to the mound against TBD, TBD, and TBD, who, in all honestly, have actually thrown some solid innings for us so far. Let's expect good things. 

KS

Yankees 3, Blue Jays 1: Right At The End There

 

Louis Varland, a sad man whose ERA has exploded to 0.96

Kevin Gausman, his splitter splitting tremendously (have I mentioned that old-timey baseball-looking-into has revealed to me that the split-finger pitch was first referred to as "the dry spitter," which somehow sounds wildly inappropriate in a nonspecific way?), allowed just one hit (and a couple walks [plus one guy reached on an early Ernie Clement error {we all love him, but Ernie is kicking it a little this year, isn't he? let us continue to believe in him all the same though}]) throughout the full seven innings of his finest start in this, our further-along-than-you-might-entirely-be-ready-for 2026 season. That that lone hit was also a long hit, as I have just now mistyped and then corrected but then also included because of how it is apt, is of course a shame. A home run to young Jasson Domínguez, of all people! A wonderful pitching performance, though. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays entered into the frustrating practice of "colleagues stranding colleagues," leaving basically a million guys on base, which is really tough to do unless you are also hitting into double plays, which of course they very much did also. Kazuma Okamoto homered for the second day in a row (one that barely scraped the wall this time, unlike Friday night's "utmost decker"), but that's all that could be managed. Further to what can be managed, managingly, by a manager: there will no doubt be some scrutiny visited upon John Schneider's call to have Ernie Clement attempt a sacrifice bunt with runners on first and second, nobody out, in the bottom of the eighth, but fundamentally I agree with the analysis of colour-guy Joe Siddell, who said that while it was perhaps an iffy move (Ernie should probably be up there hacking), once the call is made, it is really just incumbent upon the batter to get the bunt down; instead, in this instance, Ernie popped it straight up, and that was that (as far as that particular plate appearance went, at any rate—it was only the first out of that promising yet ultimately fruitless inning [of baseball]). Our rookie infielder Charles McAddoo (playing first, this time, in for Vladdy, whose back was visibly grabbing and bothering him even on the swing with which he double Friday night) had a couple of seemingly tasty chances with runners on in the late innings, but lined out on a great play to Jazz Chisholm Jr. the first time, and popped out quite harmlessly the other. Tyler Rogers got through another scoreless eighth, but a Cody Bellinger single and a (future Hall-of-Famer?) Paul Goldschmidt home run turned Louis Varland's aspect in the ninth fairly Charlie Brownish (they're both from Minnesota!), as pictured above (Varland still has a ways to go to match Tim Mayza on even Mayza's least Charlie Brown day, though). This was a very good baseball game on what appeared to be a lovely day in Toronto, though, and so despite the ninth-inning loss, I had a really nice time watching it as I went about some afternoon chores and honestly don't feel that bad about it.

KS    

Blue Jays 8, Yankees 5: The Utmost Deck

 

look up; look way up

Alejandro Kirk finally returned to the lineup after missing sixty-odd games with a broken thumb, and went three-for-three with an RBI double and a walk after successfully challenging the umpire's call of a ball on Trey Yesavage's very first pitch of the game. Our guy was dialed in, start to finish. George Springer homered, and, perhaps more impressively for a man of his vintage, later scored from first on an Ernie Clement double. Fluharty, Fisher, Rogers, and Varland were all stout as you could ever hope in relief behind Yesavage's start, in which he battled through "command issues" that saw him walk six, regrettably. And yet none of these notable and/or worthy things (and/or guys) made quite the same impression as Kazuma Okamoto, who hit one clear into the 500s, which, I do not need to tell you, does not happen all that often. Indeed, it happens rarely enough that there is a page devoted to the feat in the Blue Jays' media guide, which has been circulate in the aftermath of Okamoto's mighty wallop:

Quite a list! In my mind, it is a feat I associate most closely with peak-juice José Canseco, which I suppose adds up, as he is the first to have done it in the SkyDome's first year, and it happened in the American League Championship Series when I was ten; these things have a way of sticking with you (that he did it two other times, once as a Blue Jay, I could not have told you). Having consulted my extensive records (several volumes of scorekeeping I keep very much at hand), the only one I was personally in attendance for was Raul Mondesi's, struck 4/17/02 off of Darren Oliver. It really is a fun list to peruse, I think! It's nice to be reminded that Carlos Delgado did it; it's strange to think Josh Phelps, of all people, did it twice; and it is pitiable indeed to recall that poor Trent Thornton gave up 500-level home runs to Austin Meadows and Brandon Lowe not only in the same game, but in the same inning (or maybe that's the wrong way to think about it: if it's going to happen twice, maybe it's better to get it all over with as quickly as possible [make it back-to-back, even]). 

Twenty-four times in all, then, but just the once with Vladdy's hands on his head in disbelief as the frappeur circled the bases all low-key like nothing much had happened. A little later, they showed Vladdy catching Okamoto's attention, pointing to his biceps, and then making a spoony-spoony gesture to signify eating, as though they were playing charades and the word had been "gains." It might well have been! Good stuff, Kazuma Okamoto! And everybody else, too! A super fun win.

KS 

Phillies 7, Blue Jays 4: I Don't Know Sometimes, Max Scherzer

 

you know what? safe, actually (good job, George Springer)

Max Scherzer opened his first start in really quite some time by striking out old teammates Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner for the 3500th and 3501st Ks of his first-ballot Hall-of-Fame career that everyone likes. It was a lovely (pair of) moment(s)! Only ten players have ever struck out further guys, and next up on the list is the famed Walter Johnson, who, depending on the source, struck out either 3508 or 3509 (who is to say?). It would seem like a mere formality that Scherzer would get there, except that, by the time he left in the fourth inning with the Blue Jays down 5-0, it really did seem like any one of these starts could be his last (true of everybody always, of course, but especially so in this instance). Getting Scherzer back from the IL, the hope was, of course, to take some pressure off the bullpen, which has been busy as bees (thy creatures), but we ended up running out six guys—six of them! of guys!—in relief last night. That's still a bullpen day, man. I grant you that it was the game before an off-day, so you do not sweat that sort of usage in the say way, but it was still not super encouraging in this regard. The Blue Jays' bats were largely quiet until a three-run seventh that seemed to hold the promise of being even runnier (two hard hit balls with runners aplenty were caught, leading to more-or-less orderly sacrifice flies rather than a hurried rounding of several bases all at a go) and a ninth that saw a couple hits but an ill-timed Vladdy double-play groundout. The crowd really got back into this one, for all that a game that's five-nothing through five innings can be a bit deflating. But that's a series loss to the Phillies, with the (temporarily Judgeless [stress fracture to a rib! yikes!]) Yankees coming in for the weekend. Would you believe, though, that even though we remain not totally all that great (yet!), we sit but a single game out of the final Wild Card position? You would? On account of how the American League remains weird? Oh you would, okay, good; I don't have to belabour the point. I would like to close with a nice picture of Max Scherzer waving to the crowd, because of how I am a little sad about it.

that's Max Scherzer sort of in the middle there
(Vladdy, to his right [our left], is clapping)

Thank you.

KS

Blue Jays 3, Phillies 2: サヨナラ安打! / Sayonara Anda! / Walk-off Hit!

 

guys its too much

Jésus Sanchez's game-tying solo shot off Zack Wheeler in the sixth more or less marked the end of the pitchers' duel portion of last night's programme, with Dylan Cease already in the clubhouse (metaphorically [literally he was mostly in the dugout]) having allowed just the one run on a pair of doubles in the Phillies' first and striking out eleven in his first start back from the IL (hammy reasons). Or I suppose that was the end of the starters' portion of the pitchers' duel, as we had excellent sevenths and eighths turned in from the Phillies' Kerkering and Alvarado, and from our own Fluharty and Hoffman. On Hoffman, whose BABIP woes we have addressed previously, FanGraphs just ran a piece by Davy Andrews titled "Jeff Hoffman and the Worst BABIP of All Time" (subtitle: "Holster your pitchforks, people"), and that really is the BABIP territory we're in here. Much of this is attributable to how he is giving up rockets and/or laser beams, as we have discussed very recently indeed, but some of it really is just weirdly persistent bad luck, like last night, when the only baserunner he allowed grounded pretty much directly to smooth-fielding Andrés Gimenez, whose internal clock just glitched for like three-tenths of a second or something, and whose throw thus arrived slightly late to first for no discernible reason at all. Giménez makes that play, what, forty-nine times out of fifty? Ninety-nine out of a hundred? But last night, in the seventh, he didn't, and it was Hoffman on the mound, so up ticks the BABIP. How high can it go? I am morbidly curious! This Hoffman situation really does illustrate just how widely/wildly bWAR and fWAR can differ for pitchers, as bWAR is focused quite squarely on the "what happened" of runs allowed, whereas fWAR exists in the long shadow of Voros McCraken, and takes as its central input the "what probably ought to have happened / what is demonstrably more likely to happen going forward"  fielding-independent FIP, focusing primarily on the "three true outcomes" pitchers most directly control (strikeouts, walks, home runs). (I have been thinking about FIP more than usual lately as I have been pen-and-paper-and-calculatoring a little FIP myself for some card-and-dice baseball simming I have been up to and which I will obviously share with the class in due time, but let us not digress too hard at present.) In extreme cases—and Jeff Hoffman's is about extreme as cases get—the difference can be startling and stark (starkling? [like a thrush?]). Are we to react with horror at the lived reality of Jeff Hoffman's -0.7 bWAR thus far, or are we to draw some measure of comfort and consolation from what Jeff Hoffman's 0.5 fWAR might portend? I choose to do both, I guess. 

Anyway, everybody pitched wonderfully until the closers arrived, and Louis Varland, like a fool of some kind, allowed his second earned run of the season (way out of line, Louis Varland; way out of line), putting the Blue Jays down a run headed into the bottom of the ninth to face Jhoan Duran, who, while not quite enjoying the perfectly absurd results Louis Varland has so far this season, is nevertheless an outstanding reliever who rules. Or does he? He does, yes, but he had a rough inning al the same: Sanchez singled and was replaced by pinch-runner Myles Straw; Pinango singled Straw to third and was replaced by pinch-runner Daulton Varsho, who promptly stole second; Varsho scampered to third and Straw to home with the tying run on a wild pitch; and young Brandon Valenzuela knocked a single to left to bring Varsho home and end it. A stirring win! And one that puts the Blue Jays back in a playoff position! Somehow! Before you know it we will have won as many games as we have lost, maybe! Max Scherzer on the hill tonight! I'm a little worried!

KS

Phillies 5, Blue Jays 2: Not Actually Mindable

 

pretty nice!

Two runs is, admittedly, not a lot of runs. And yet it is the most that Cristopher Sánchez—having recently concluded a stretch of fifty-and-two-thirds scoreless innings (the fifth-longest such stretch in MLB history, and the longest by a lefty)—has allowed in a start since April. I remind you that we are well into June! He's been almost impossibly good, and, in keeping with that, he struck out ten in his seven innings last night, allowing just four hits and a lone walk. It's tough to be too upset about it. And on the other side of things, Patrick Corbin finally had a less-than-impressive start (five runs in three innings), which, if we are being honest with each other (and with ourselves), is the only kind of start any of us expected from when we embarked upon this strange (and strangely fruitful) path. Following Corbin, we had four fine innings from the recently-claimed (from the Twins) Simeon Woods-Richardson, who had been dealt from the Blue Jays to the Twins as part of the José Berrios deal back in 2021, having joined the Blue Jays organization as part of the Marcus Stroman trade two years before that. He looked really good! And is somehow only twenty-five years old. Maybe he'll stick around? Or maybe he'll be shuffled about as Cease and Scherzer come off the IL? Who knows! But it was neat that he made his Blue Jays début after all these years, and pitched well. 

Dylan Cease against Zach Wheeler tonight! Sounds great! Let's see about it!  

KS

Blue Jays 6, Orioles 4: Just Like You'd Draw It Up

 

Ace is right

Kevin Gausman cruised through the first four innings (yay!), before the Orioles went homer (Colton Cowser), triple (Jackson Holliday), double (Blaze Alexander [I appreciate that these keep sounding faker]), homer (Taylor Ward [okay that one's just regular]) in a four-run fifth (oh no). Most concerning of all, in my view, was the triple, which was initially (and probably not unfairly) scored as a double with an error charged to Myles Straw to account for Holliday's extra base; this, of course, jeopardized (if only temporarily) Myles Straw's status as the greatest defensive outfielder in baseball history as measured by fielding percentage, which I wouldn't think anyone takes even a little bit seriously, but which is nevertheless neat (Daulton Varsho is just outside the all-time top ten!). The Blue Jays, though, quite cleverly opted for a five-run sixth in response, and I could scarcely have been happier about the way it unfolded: Yohendrick Piñango extremely homered to right; Jésus Sanchez doubled after Vladdy, sadly, had grounded out (our guy is scuffling; please spare a thought for his scuffles); Ernie Clement reached first safely on a true clank of a fielding error by shortstop Gunnar Henderson and advanced to second on a fielder's choice groundout whilst evading the tag in a way that, while entirely in keeping with the rules (the baseline is an objective fact; the basepath arises out of the interaction between a baserunner and the position of any fielder actively attempting a tag on that runner) made everybody so mad (except me!); Okamoto singled home a run; and Giménez doubled home another before himself scurrying right in from second on an infield single, mind you, as Nathan Lukes ripped one that pinballed off the pitcher and over to the already-aggrieved Jackson Holliday at second (he did not enjoy the Ernie Clement play earlier in the inning), whose efforts to get the out at first allowed the aforementioned Giménez-scurrying. This was all outstanding, as much or more of a 2025 Blue Jays inning than any put together by the actual 2025 Blue Jays whom you may recall from actual 2025 (were we ever so young?). With Gausman only going five innings, and some of our higher leverage types in the bullpen lightly down on account of, well, let's call it "over" use, necessarily, but "use" for sure, things went to Macko and Seabold on their way to Rogers and Varland to lock it down, which they of course extremely did.

And so a great win on a fine day! To steal the series! And to sit just a half-game out of the postseason spots despite still being a couple games under .500! Tough times ahead, possibly, with the Phillies and Yankees still to come this homestand, but apparently we're getting both Cease and Scherzer back this time through the rotation. Dylan Cease, of course, I assume will just go right back to being great, no trouble at all, but I admit that I remain at least lightly skeptical about Scherzer, mostly because I am apprehensive about the 2026 pitching prowess of anyone born the same year Voltron came out. Max Scherzer, like Voltron, is an awesome guy, but 1984, I think both would have to concede, was not yesterday.  

KS