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 

Blue Jays 6, Orioles 4: Ernie Clement Day (Unofficially, No Giveaways, Do Not Line Up Early)

 

our most beloved position player, after Vladdy? arguably?
everybody sure loves George Springer and Alejandro Kirk,
too, though, so there is much to consider here 

A three-run homer, a triple, and one great play up the middle to go along with a couple of good ones is all Ernie Clement—your American League leader in both hits broadly (seventy-six) and also doubles specifically (nineteen)—managed on this lovely but unusually breezy day (you could see it in the home-plate umpire's pants immediately; they were just whipping around out there). Pretty good! Okamoto, Giménez and Sanchez all had a pair of hits each, and switch-hitting rookie-catcher Brandon Valenzuela (who has been just great!) had three, two of them doubles. It's a little weird, isn't it, that the Blue Jays' twelve hits only amounted to six runs? But that ended up being slightly more than we even needed, even, given how well things went generally on this Spencer-Miles-heavy bullpen day with Braydon Fisher as the opener, and, after Miles' stout four-and-a-third, Hoffman, Fluharty, Rogers, and finally Louis Varland, who has appeared in thirty of the Blue Jays' sixty-five games, and has so far allowed just the one (literally just one!) earned run this season, for an ERA of 0.27, which is, obviously, insane. That Mason Fluharty allowed a home run in his inning was surprising; that Jeff Hoffman did, too, was, alas not. The man remains a true puzzle: his swing-and-miss rate is in the top-ten-percent of the league, but, not only does our guy have a homer problem, but his BABIP continues to hover around .500, which is very close to impossible (over time these things tend to settle out to something within a standard deviation, give or take, of league-average BABIP, which this year is around .290), unless the homer problem and the BABIP problem are in fact the same problem, which, sadly, they very plainly are, and it is this: except for his (many) pitches that are producing whiffs (that's what makes this so complicated!), batters are squaring just about everything else up just about perfectly, and the result is straight rockets in all directions. I feel for the guy! It won't surprise you to learn that there are people being very tiresome about it all. There's no sense (there's none) paying attention to stray Fan590-call-in level comments one encounters on the boards, but one I scrolled past today while sighing lightly was something to the effect of, "We're never going to win anything with this guy," which is a wild thing to say coming off a year where we won the American League East, the ALDS over the Yankees (in Yankee Stadium on a bullpen day, no less, as my dear friend Harpo likes to point out to underscore the flex of it all), and the literal, honest-to-goodness American League pennant (I honestly still feel kind of bad for the Mariners). Guess who was striking guys out at the end of a whole bunch of those games! I know you know, gentle reader. I also know that you know that, right after the Miguel Rojas home run in Game Seven—and hey, I didn't care for it either! not one bit!—Hoffman got Ohtani next, and then caught (eventual WS-winning-home-runnist) Will Smith looking to end the inning, and give the Blue Jays every chance to walk it off in the bottom-half. That they did not is a genuine pity—there is nothing I could grant you more freely—but it is no grounds for revisionism: Hoffman pitched twelve innings over ten games in the 2025 postseason, and allowed two runs. Two. Jeff Hoffman pitched better in the 2025 postseason than Mariano Rivera pitched in the postseason for the 2000 New York Yankees (a Subway Series win over the Mets, ultimately) or the 2001 New York Yankees (when Luis Gonzalez walked Rivera and the Yankees off in their own Game Seven). "Say what you will about Baseball Feelings," I hope the people will say about our efforts here, when it's all said and done, "but they were never revisionist about Jeff Hoffman's 2025 postseason."  

KS

Orioles 13, Blue Jays 3: They Fooled Me (They Fooled Me [They Fooled Me])

 

let's go

I will admit to having thought, following Brandon Valenzuela's two-run homer to right-centre in the fifth, that we might be able to make the 3-1 lead hold up. Oops! Guess not! I did not expect Trey Yesavage to get dinged for five in the sixth, that's for darn sure, and actually, while that inning was unfolding, I figured he'd probably be out of the game after those first two runs. Ope! Nope! Wrong again! Shows what I know! By the end of it, we had back-up catcher Tyler Heineman on the bump to get the final out in the top of the ninth (and with that clean third-of-an-inning, he lowers his ERA to 13.50 on the season [which is actually excellent from an "I'm not even supposed to be here today" perspective]). Not a great way to open what feels like a pretty significant (in the baseball sense) nine-game homestand! But what can you do.

KS

Toronto 7, Atlanta 2: "Atlanta'll Tell You Bout My Run[s scored in excess of those scored by my opponent], Know What I'm Sayin'" (Drake Reference)

 

Yohendrick Piñango is for the people

Baseball being baseball, the Blue Jays' only win in Atlanta this time around came against future Hall-of-Famer Chris Sale, whilst we ran out to the mound (amongst others, certainly) Chad Dallas aka "The Dad Chalice" (if we all try real hard we can make this happen) in his major-league début. The Blue Jays actually managed sixteen hits on the night, which is a tonne, ten of them coming off of Chris Sale himself, beginning with a leadoff double from the still-struggling George Springer. He hasn't been good, George Springer, and although nobody expected him to follow his 2025 performance—in which he was arguably the third best hitter in baseball behind Judge and Ohtani, and fairly memorably hit a three-run homer of some import in Game Seven of the ALCS—with anything remotely comparable in this, his age thirty-six season, he is at an OPS of just .636 (OPS+ of 74, wRC+ of 80), and so has been significantly below league average, which is "a tough look" from one designated to hit. It's to the point where, were he not beloved veteran George Springer in the final year of his contract, I don't think he'd necessarily be seeing a whole lot of plate appearances against right-handed pitching at all, and those plate appearances would likely fall instead to young Yohendrick Piñango, whose left-handed bat has performed admirably, but whose fielding is akin to, though I acknowledge is not literally, terrorism. Hey, you know who had a good night, though, of all people, was Myles Straw, who knocked in three with a pair of hits, and Tyler Heineman, who did nearly as well (as well). If we're getting five runs off the bats of Straw and Heinemen, this team is unstoppable! Vladdy, for his part, went three-for-five with a double and a couple runs scored, notching his third hit of the night just as a small but discernible group of deplorables had switched their "U.S.A" chants (yes, it's true, the Toronto Blue Jays play largely in Canada; yes, Vladdy is a Montréal-born Dominicano, that's true) to "Overrated" (it depends on how you feel he's rated, I suppose, but a five-time All-Star with MVP votes in four seasons coming off of arguably the finest October in the history of baseball means you've got to rate him somewhere)—that they were not visibly "tomahawk chopping" at the time, though, is perhaps a minor, temporary win for human dignity (who can say?). Vladdy's batting average is back up to .300, with what we might call a "B+" OPS (conveniently, OPS scales almost perfectly not just with runs scored, but with post-secondary academic grades) of .782, split perfectly between a truly tasty OBP (or OBA, should you wish to keep with the old ways) of .391 and a Slugging mark (it isn't even remotely a percentage! it's range is 0 to 4! come on!) of that same .391, which you would definitely like to see come up a little. Perhaps on account of dingers? Against, perhaps, the Baltimore Orioles, who are up next? We're just a half-game out of the Wild Card spots! Despite winning just one of our last five! Everyone else is still a little bad, too! Let's go! 

KS     

Atlanta 7, Toronto 3: "Outside [Of A Playoff Position] Is Back To What It Was" (Drake Reference)

 

he is, alas, in there

That all seven Atlanta runs on the night—all seven!—came with two outs felt less like bad luck as regards sequencing and more like the unfolding of some very specific low-key curse, a mild dark enchantment (inflict ill-timed runs [1d4]). True to form, Patrick Corbin did indeed give us five innings, but this time four runs alongside (or indeed within) them; the three-run home run Adam Macko surrendered to Ozzie Albies in the seventh was really the kicker, though. And what of our own dingers, those struck by first Nathan Lukes, and then Brandon Valenzuela? Solo shots, unfortunately. Less good. And so it is a series loss already against the best team in baseball—no shame in that, obviously—with one more still to go, a game in which we will run our bullpen out there (so far I know [I don't think I missed spot-starter news]) while Atlanta opts for Chris Sale, who has sneakily and on the sly crafted an entirely plausible Hall-of-Fame career whilst many of us were engaged in our own affairs and paid him little mind. This has been our folly, or at least an aspect of our folly. 

KS  

Atlanta 4, Toronto 3: "Ran to Atlanta" (Drake reference)

 

the light, in fairness, was lovely

This was a pretty good baseball game! Aside from how we slightly lost, I have no real complaints. Kevin Gausman has pitched better, surely, than four runs in six innings, but that's not a dreadful outing against the best team in baseball this year (even better than the Dodgers! sounds strange, but you can check yourself! it's totally true!). The two Atlanta runs in the first weren't great, but our pal Kazuma Okamoto tied it up a half-inning later on a fairly mighty two-run "oppo" wallop. Our third run came by way of a Nathan Lukes single, a truly ripped Vladdy double, and a Daulton Varsho sacrifice fly (all of these fine things occurred in a promising sixth whose promise was not fully realized [ah, but who among us {and yet, who are we kidding}]); alas that there was no fourth run to be had, though, in truth, I guess we would have needed five, eventually. It was an easy night, at least, for our well-used bullpen, asking just an inning of Braydon Fisher, two outs from Mason Fluharty, and just the one from Connor Seabold. That's one upside of losing a game on the road, I suppose: the bullpen gets an inning off right at the end there. Just think how fresh they'll be for Game Two! Which I believe is a Patrick Corbin start! And more importantly Game Three, which is for sure a bullpen day! We're saving it up.  

KS

Orioles 9, Blue Jays 5: And Yet It Was Never Even That Close

 

WORK YELLING

Two months into the season, Spencer Miles remains a very encouraging Rule-5-draftee of a guy—that is to say, someone who was added to our roster because he was not super duper wanted elsewhere, but who must remain on the roster all year lest he be returned from whence he came, or the rights to his contract otherwise negotiated. But yesterday, he was quite uncharacteristically shelled for six runs (each as earned as the last!) in just three innings, and, as the Orioles continued to pile it on against young (indeed jueng) Hayden Juenger, things got truly out of hand. The only Blue Jays bright spot on the day was the Yohendrick Piñango three-run shot to right that landed on Utah Street, between the stadium proper and the (incomparably æsthetic) warehouse behind it. Piñango had entered the game as a defensive replacement (words never uttered before, never to be uttered hence) after a (sur)passing(ly) strange incident in which a young fan in the right field stands, confused by the affable Jésus Sanchez's chompy-chompy motion in that general direction with his glove (the universal sign to indicate you are ready to play catch), really rifled one in there just as Sanchez was returning his attention towards home plate. The ball struck him strangely on the wrist, and though x-rays revealed no fractures, our man was contused, and left the game. It was all a misunderstanding, Sanchez explained afterwards, and it is a pity (though an understandable one) that the young fan was asked to leave the game. I feel bad for everyone involved. Perhaps the young fan had seen those enormously compelling clips of Aaron Judge and Mike Trout (and others, I'm sure) playing catch with fans during pitching changes and the like? It is a charming feature of the contemporary game (seemingly unthinkable to the baseball of my youth), and it would be very easy, I think, for a kid to get locked in on that idea. And, again, in that young fan's defense, even though video footage of the incident is distant and limited, Jésus' great big glove can clearly be seen to make the chompy-chompy motion, and gloves only do that when they are hungry for the ball. This is foundational to gloves.

Anyway, so ends the Blue Jays' fairly arduous stretch of seventeen games in as many days. That's tough on the bullpen! Especially when you're down a couple starters! And yet, on the whole, just about everybody did a really good job, and the Blue Jays went ten-and-seven over the course of these two-and-a-bit weeks, which might not sound like any great shakes, but that's actually .588 baseball, which over a full season would be a ninety-five-win pace, or one win better than our AL East Championship total last season (the margins in baseball are nuts, both on the micro and macro levels). It was a rare 2026 pleasure to be back at .500 after Friday's game (the first time this season since we were four-and-four!), and though it is a minor drag to be two games under after Saturday's implosion and Sunday's shellacking (two of the main kinds of losses, I suppose), we enter June—very much a baseballing month—in sole possession of the third and final Wild Card spot. All things considered (or also actually none of them considered even passingly) this is a really good place to be! If we follow Billy Beane's maxim that the first two months of the season are to find out what you've got, the next two are to try to improve it, and the final two are to see if it worked (tenets by which I organize my own baseball simming [both intellectually and emotionally]), we are entering the second of those phases with a good deal of internal improvement to be reasonably expected, setting aside any hope of external improvement through canny trades: surely (if I may call you that) some combination of Max Scherzer, Shane Bieber, and Dylan Cease will be back in the rotation soon? It doesn't even have to be all three! I would gladly take two! Or even one, if it's Dylan Cease! And as good as Brandon Valenzuela has been in his first look (a league-average bat at catcher will extremely play), wouldn't it be something to have Alejandro Kirk back? I have less riding on Addison Barger's return, I suppose, not because I do not wish him good health, but because we are getting credible production already from our other left-handed-batting corner outfielders (Piñango, Sanchez, and Lukes [the best defender of those three by about a squillion miles, of course]), and the upgrade there might be more about flexibility (in that Barger can play third, too) than overall production. But nevertheless! On to June! Let us say "white rabbit" (or indeed "rabbit rabbit") to welcome the new month! Here we go! It is a shame we're in Atlanta after the off day in that that is where the best team in baseball this season plays! But what can you do!  

KS 

Orioles 6, Blue Jays 5: About As Much Fun As You Will Have Watching Baseball On A Saturday Afternoon Until Right At The End There, Probably

 

would that these Yards were a Time Yards

It is a minor miracle that Trey Yesavage managed to work around seven walks—seven of them!—to allow just the one run in five innings of work in which he simply did not have it (in which "it" could be read as either his command, generally, or his splitter at all, specifically). But he did! Three double-plays on groundballs in three innings (one of them on an exceedingly nifty 5-3 play started by Kazuma Okamoto) is by no means the kind of thing anyone can ever count on, but sometimes the fates are kind. Other times, they are unremittingly cruel, as when Jeff Hoffman, given the ninth after Louis Varland had been called in for the eighth against a tougher portion of the Orioles lineup, got absolutely cooked for five runs to lose the game in walk-off fashion. Never mind that it was Connor Seabold who came on for the final batters (a walk to Rutchman, the single to big Pete Alonso); those were all very much Hoffman's runners, and all five of those runs entirely his. It was just the worst! And there had been so much fun before that, too, as the Blue Jays built their four-run lead, in no small part owing to Vladdy's four-for-five day (with a double and two runs scored), which brings his average back up to .305, and his OBA (I am considering becoming fussy about calling things percentages when they are not expressed as percentages, and "OBA" is a longstanding alternative appellation!) to a robust-as-all-heck .400, and his OPS just a tick below the A- mark at .794. Just a real stinker of an ending to this one, you'd have to say! And yet, in a sense, fair enough, given the way things went for the Orioles the night before. If we win tomorrow, that's three-and-one in Baltimore, and you'd take that every time. The split would sting a little after today, though, I think. I guess we'll just see.   

KS

Blue Jays 6, Orioles 5: About As Much Fun As You Will Have Watching Baseball On A Friday Night Probably

 

Charles McAdoo in his Charles McAdébut

It certainly seemed as though our wild run of luck on bullpen days had finally come to an end, as poor Anthony Voth (I say "poor" in that he was DFA'd almost immediately after the game [baseball is just brutal]) got tagged for five runs in the three-and-a-third with which he was tasked after Adam Macko had quite finely opened. From there, though, everybody else just totally locked it down: Connor Seabold, Mason Fluharty, Braydon Fisher—all great! You will note, I'm sure, the absence of such names as Jeff Hoffman, Tyler Rogers, and Louis Varland, our seventh, eighth, and ninth-inning guys (more or less [though not quite] respectively), and that is because all three were unavailable due to having pitched in consecutive games previously (safety first, everybody). As for the bats, they really batted, in the fullness of time: a four-run seventh saw two-run shots from both Kazuma Okamoto and young Charles McAdoo (his first big league hit really was an especially good one), and the Blue Jays added two more in the eighth on an insanely clutch two-run double from a fired-up Vladdy (two for four on the night!). I would also like to note that Daulton Varsho not only doubled but also tripled (the best kind of hit there is, æsthetically), and made two lovely grabs in centre, getting much better jumps than he has in recent weeks. And there is an explanation! In order to turn and start more quickly towards balls hit over either shoulder, Varsho has taken to getting set before each pitch with his feet turned slightly outwards, kind of like a duck, as Dan Shulman reports Varsho to explained have it, which I absolutely love first as a coach who, like all other coaches in all times and places, has to talk to his athletes about opening their hips like pretty much all the time, but also, and much, much more importantly, as a detail that pulls the primary world of our experience closer to that utopia (literally the eutópos, "the no place") envisioned by and set forth in ソフトボール天国 Softobōru Tengoku (literally Softball Heaven [if you even dare dream it]—box art here, game footage here, both courtesy of the noble Nate Edwards and his essential 30-30 Club [watch his fairly recent presentation to the SABR Games and Simulation Committee here]). Thank you for this gift, Daulton Varsho.

KS

Blue Jays 2, Orioles 1: I Will Take All The 2-1 Wins You've Got; Literally All of Them

 

Big Oak is getting hit by so many pitches
(please stop throwing them like that; it hurts him)

The last time we saw our old friend Chris Bassitt, he was pitching in Game Seven of the 2025 World Series (in case you missed it, the 2025 World Series was really quite good—the very old Bob Costas and Tim Kurkjian [they are both older than me!] called it the best one ever; I think you'd enjoy at least parts of it), allowing the only run of his utterly nails eight appearances out of the bullpen throughout October (and even slightly into November [weird, right?]), a stretch that solidified his position as A Guy We Are So Glad Signed To Pitch Here For Three Years. And yet time marches on, and just a few months later, having not super duper been offered a spot in the Blue Jays' starting rotation, yet very much being offered one by the Orioles, here we find him, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (first and best of the "retro" parks, twenty-four years old now), having kind of a rough start to the season. He was totally good last night, though: the only run he allowed amidst four hits and a walk through six strong innings came on an Andrés Giménez solo shot in the third (Giménez had a big night with the glove, too). The only other Blue Jays run came on a pinch-hit, bases-loaded walk from Yohendrick Piñango, who is just all over every game these days, even the ones he doesn't start. Blue Jays pitching was, quite frankly, incredible once again. The able reporter Ben Nicholson-Smith mentioned the other day that he wrote in his notes during Patrick Corbin's previous start, "Is Patrick Corbin good?", and that is indeed a question we are all being forced to confront. It is indisputable that, so far this season, Patrick Corbin has been good; there is quite simply no denying it (a 3.65 ERA [nearly a full run below his career number] in forty-nine-and-a-third innings). But is he good? I almost hope we never know. Let's embrace the mystery of it. The bullpen, for its part, continues to be among the best in baseball, this time going Fisher to Hoffman (who is throwing a thousand sliders for a thousand whiffs in each recent appearance) to Rogers to the pretty much incomparable Louis Varland for a four-out save. (That the first of those four outs came on a Brandon Valenzuela back-pick play to Vladdy at first to catch loveable doofus Pete Alonso taking too bold a secondary lead to end the eighth does not diminish the four-outness of this Varland outing, in my view, but rather heightens it, through its inherent radness.) Following a recent scoring revision, Louis Varland's season now stands at just one earned run through thirty innings for a tidy ERA of just 0.30, which is bananas.

With the win, the Blue Jays are now just a single game below .500 at twenty-eight and twenty-nine, and, because the American League continues to be profoundly mediocre (not a complaint!), that's good enough for sole possession of the third and final Wild Card position for now. That our juggernaut status is thus confirmed is, I believe, self-evident, but I really would like us to pause for a moment, if we could, to note just how great the pitching has been to keep us even somewhat afloat during this stretch of offensive underperformance. That a good chunk of this offensive underperformance can be attributed to injury (Kirk, Barger, Lukes for a couple stretches, Springer for a while, etc.) is of course true, but the pitching staff has been pretty banged up too: José Berrios and Bowden Francis are both gone for over a year with elbow surgeries; Cody Ponce is out for the year following a knee explosion; Max Scherzer is on the IL for who knows how long on account of trying to pitch in his forties; Shane Bieber's rehab is coming along but he's still not that close; Tommy Nance and Joe Mantiply are down; Yimi Garcia (of whom I remain an ultra) is having just a bear of a time trying to get back; Dylan Cease is gone for at least a couple starts; and let's not forget Eric Lauer who, though, uninjured, pitched his way to a DFA. It has been in that sense a mess! And yet the bullpen has been just about as good as anybody's, and the starters have not been far off that pace. And it really is the pitching part of the whole run prevention half of the game that has been coming through, because our several seasons of having top-of-the-league defensive play appear to be extremely over, just absolutely insanely over all of a sudden. But perhaps that is a topic for another day.

Go Jays, though!  

KS

Blue Jays 2, Marlins 1: A Low-Key Marvel Of A Game

Myles Straw apologized to Hazel immediately following this
Kazuma Okamoto soaking (Kazuma Soakamoto?)

One might well wonder how the Marlins could have scored but one lone run on eleven hits and plus also two walks (not that that's at all a lot of walks, but the issue here is an accumulation of guys). Well, I'll tell you: it's because of how they got thrown out basically an infinity of times. You'd have to have seen it to believe it, probably, but the Marlins had nine stolen base attempts (in the broad, scorekeeping sense) on the day—of which five were successful, as they are a speedy and fun young team for sure—but they were thrown out or picked off four times, which is so many times in one game. What's worse (for them, not me [I was, and remain, thrilled about it]), all four times came in the sixth-through-eighth innings of what was then, and will now remain till doomsday (or dómsdagr, if you prefer the Old Norse), a one-run game. All of this delighted the assembled tiny masses on a getaway day that had thousands of kids on class trips in attendance, kids who, as Dan Shulman noted, did not need to be told twice once it said MAKE NOISE on the scoreboard; they just straight up made it. Kevin Gausman pitched his way into but also very much out of trouble; Fluharty and Hoffman combined for two fine innings; Louis Varland came in in the eighth to face a tough part of the order, leaving the ninth for Tyler Rogers (a nitpick: it is very strange that knowledgeable baseball people so often say "bullpen by committee" when they plainly mean "closer by committee," because a bullpen is by definition a committee of bulls that you have out there in the pen; there is literally no other way to go about it than by committee). The Blue Jays' runs came in the fifth, as Nathan Lukes doubled home Tyler Heineman's walk, and the sixth, as Kazumo Okamoto neatly deposited his team-best eleventh home run over the wall in right (oppo on a changeup!). I would note, too, that Vladdy, back in the lineup after two days of presumably breathing in through his teeth on account of how sore his elbow was, went two-for-three with a walk and a stolen base of his own (take that, Marlins!), and came up to Drake's "Janice STFU," a song he could be heard singing in the tunnel after the game (I found it charming, but I will admit to being perhaps uncommonly open to being charmed by this). A series win! A .500 record is coming into sight! As is a postseason position (I grant you it is still May)! On to Baltimore for four with the Orioles, who have been nearly as middling as we ourselves have been thus far! Let's go!  

KS   

Blue Jays 8, Marlins 1: Thank You, Come Back Tomorrow

 

this is actually the least you are likely to see Jésus Sanchez smile

A crowd of 42 815 might seem out of proportion for a Tuesday night in May against the Marlins, but the roof was open on what looked to be a beautiful evening, the Blue Jays are just a hot ticket these days generally, and there is also the not wholly inconsiderable consideration of Loonie Dogs. Perhaps the strategic interest engendered by a scheduled bullpen day was also a draw? To at least some? Sickos, I mean? No, probably not? I guess you're right, but I maintain that it was pretty neat how it went Fisher to Miles to Macko to Rodriguez (okay, Yariel! let's keep on trying our best!) to ancient rookie Tanner Andrews (drafted eleven years ago, I believe—good for him) all for just one run (scored amidst the four-and-a-third innings pitched by able "bulk guy" Spencer Miles). The Jésus Sanchez grand slam—that came in an inning in which the Marlins were a strike away from really no great trouble at all—was for sure the highlight, along with his postgame earnestness (when asked by Hazel what it meant to play in front such of a huge crowd, he said it was amazing, and asked everyone to come back tomorrow), but let us note, too, the dingers dung by both Ernie Clement and Yohendrick Piñango amidst Marlins' starter Sandy Alcantara (a former Cy Young winner fallen on hard times) tying a major-league record hitting four batters (all breaking balls; nobody was mad, just a little surprised, guys). Just a super fun night of baseball! I did not catch the Loonie Dog total but will report back if I do OH WAIT, BREAKING: two guys who dress up in excellent hot dog costumes and go to the games maintain a social media presence in which they monitor such things, and they report a total of 93 202 loonie dogs from last night's game, and though this is an unofficial figure that I have not been able to confirm through additional sourcing, I have no reason to doubt it. A little under two dogs per attendee is super easy to believe.

KS  

Marlins 8, Blue Jays 2: Kind Of A Dud!

 

well said, Trey Yesavage; well said

On a day that saw Dylan Cease sent to the fifteen-day Injured List, Vladdy out of the lineup for a day as a precautionary measure, the desperately slumping Davis Schneider sadly sent to Buffalo to make room for Nathan Lukes' return (from a first-pitch World Series Game Five home run to this [a brutal game, this]), and eleven-year minor-leaguer Tanner Andrews added to the bullpen (he pitched an inning, too! good for him!), the Blue Jays managed plenty of traffic but somehow just the one run against generally underperforming lefty junk-baller (you're not going to believe this) Janson Junk in his five innings of several-hit baseball. Sure, Ernie Clement added a solo homer in the bottom of the sixth, but this followed the three runs (I initially mistyped this as "funs," but they weren't fun at all) directly attributable to two distinct Yohendrick Piñango misplays in the top of that same inning (the first one was way worse than the second, but the second felt worse than it was on account of the first!). The roof was open for the first time this season (kind of late! strange spring!), and that usually goes a long way towards pleasantness, but there are limits to what can be achieved along that specific pleasantness path. Onwards, I suppose! Tomorrow looks like a bullpen day, but I say that with neither dread nor resignation, but rather with anticipation, in that I think they are neat.  

KS

Pirates 4, Blue Jays 1: Oh Dear

 

"It is not, nor it cannot come to good," as Hamlet said about it

Vladdy—who had scored the Blue Jays' only run, sliding home ahead of the throw to the plate on an Ernie Clement single through the left side in the fourth inning—left the game immediately after being hit by a 92MPH sinker very much to the right elbow in the fifth. And when I say immediately, I do mean immédiatement: Vladdy exclaimed, and, without uttering so much as a minor oath, turned and walked not just directly to the dugout, but directly into the tunnel towards the clubhouse. That Vladdy, who is essentially impossible to keep out of any game all season for any reason real or precautionary, responded thus is cause not just for regular concern, but for super duper concern, in my view. This was not long after Dylan Cease, who had settled in and was truly dealing after allowing two monstrous bean tanks earlier in the game (including earliest in the game [on the very first pitch of the game to our old friend Spencer Horowitz]), was pulled mid-inning with what looked like, and hopefully is only, minor but persistent cramping (banana! stat!). None of it good! After Chase Lee gave up a two run home run to Esmerlyn Valdez (his first career hit, and so good for Esmerlyn [I am not made of stone]), the Blue Jays had some action in the home half of the seventh, but right where you'd have wanted Vladdy, it was instead his replacement Lenyn Sosa at the dish grounding out on a three-one pitch to end the inning with two runners in scoring position. Both Springer and Varsho batted with a couple runners on in the bottom of the ninth, but no.  

A series win, then, but no sweep, and concerns about the health of our two best players. Mixed bag! The Marlins are in for three starting tomorrow night. 

KS

Blue Jays 5, Pirates 2: Patrick Corbin Outduels Paul Skenes, As Everyone Foresaw

 

should anyone sin, they have an advocate with the father
(it is Jésus who is the advocate)

"My god, Saturday's matchup has to be the all time biggest disparity in stuff in history," perfectly-fine baseball writer Mike Petriello understandably opined ahead of Saturday's game. After soft-tossing lefty journeyman Patrick Corbin (6.0 IP, 1R, 5H, 0BB, 7K) objectively bested finest-young-pitcher-of-our-time Paul Skenes (5.0 IP, 4R, 9H [a career high!], 1BB, 2K), Petriello followed up with cheek: "I said what I said, you all made an assumption about which direction." Haha, good stuff, Mike Petriello! I often enjoy your work! I also enjoyed this game about as much as any game so far this season, I would have to say. We love doubles, don't we—just love 'em!—and there were plenty: from George Springer, Jésus Sanchez (a pair of them!), and Yohendrick Piñango, who at this point I can't imagine gets sent down even when any number of guys come off the IL. And a homer for Tyler Heineman, of all people! (I don't mean to be unduly grim, but at Heineman's age, and the way he's been hitting this year, one wonders if Alejandro Kirk's looming return, combined with the emergence of young Brandon Valenzuela, will soon spell the end of not just Heineman's time in Toronto, but perhaps in the big leagues; so let us savour each success a little more than usual on his behalf, maybe?). Yariel Rodriguez looked a little shaky in relief again, but Fisher and Adam Macko did not at all, and with Louis Varland down after a two-inning save the other night, Jeff Hoffman struck out the side in as tidy a ninth as you'll ever see! Good for him! And indeed for us all! Amidst all this enjoyment, much was made (both on the broadcast, and on The Baseball Internet soon after) of the extent to which Livvy Dunne, Paul Skenes' high-profile beloved, unenjoyed the leadoff Springer Dinger, but comparatively less was made of how it was the sixty-fifth such dinger of George's career, and while Rickey Henderson's all-time MLB record of eighty-one still feels out of reach, might Springer not make a run at Henderson's AL record of seventy-three? It's not that far off! Either way, it won't be anything that happens this season, and who knows where Springer might be next year (or thereafter), but it is neat to think about, as that particular Rickey Henderson record, like so many of the others, has felt unbreakable ("If you could somehow split him in two," as Bill James once wrote, "you’d have two Hall of Famers"). I really like that Alfonso Soriano is in third place on the list, though, and I think it is extremely neat that Ichiro had thirty-seven such dingers, which feels high, but he always batted leadoff, and played until he was a thousand years old, so I guess it adds up! And would you believe Korean legend Shin-Soo "Big League" Choo is right behind him at thirty-six? Wild! A genuinely wild list! 

And so a series win against the surprisingly good Pittsburgh Pirates, with a chance for the sweep Sunday afternoon with circa-2010 hipster Dylan Cease on the bump. It is lightly uncanny, is it not, that for all our early-season troubles (we really do have so many hurt guys), the 2026 Toronto Blue Jays through fifty-two games hold the exact same twenty-five-win, twenty-seven-loss record the 2025 Blue Jays held at that (this) same point? Given how last season ended, it is easy enough to forget how it started. So who knows! Finally, might we conclude that, after a week of hitting .333 with a homer and a bunch of walks, Vladdy is out of his slump? I feel that this is the case. I do not think this is merely wishful thinking on my part, though I do admit that I do tend towards that kind of thinking when the object of that thinking is Vladdy.  

KS

Blue Jays 6, Pirates 2: You Know What Though The Pirates Are Pretty Good Now Actually

 

6 2/3 IP, 6H, 1R, 1BB, 8K, which you will take literally every time ever 

Of the several excellent half-innings from last night's game to consider—the Blue Jays' three-run third or three-run eighth, say, or Louis Varland's top of the eighth and/or ninth en route to his six-out save like it was no big deal (his league-best ERA of 0.65 right now rules)—the one that I think I liked the most was maybe actually the top of the seventh. It began with the Pirates' Jhostynxon Garcia (they call him "Password" [his brother, minor-league catcher, Johanfran, they call "Username" {I swear both these unlikely things to be true}]) singling to left to Yohendrick Piñango (Name Guy to Name Guy); Garcia then moved to third on an Endy Rodriguez groundball single up the middle. First and third! Nobody out! That's no good! Better bring the infield in on the corners, at least! And it worked out exactly like you'd hope: Vladdy scooped up an Esmerlyn Valdez (another eighty-grade name in an inning replete with them) grounder, and looked the runner at third back while making the out at first; he did precisely the same thing on the Jake Mangum grounder that followed. After a lengthy conversation on the mound, John Schneider brought Mason Fluharty in to face toolsy lefty O'Neil Cruz as the batting order turned over, and got an easy popup to Piñango to end the inning. It was an intensely baseball inning of baseball, in an understated way (that I have perhaps overstated here). And just like that, our third win in a row has us just a half-game behind the Mariners for the final AL Wild Card spot, because this league simply does not have it together at this point. May that continue! Indefinitely! What if even some of our injured guys return and do even okay[ly]? Sky's the limit.      

KS 

Blue Jays 2, Yankees 0: George Springer Turnt? (What Else?)

 

unc: still got it? not yet chopped? 

"Here we goooooo," George Springer could be heard to remark as he made his way down the tunnel from the dugout to the clubhouse not that long after his seventh-inning solo home run gave the Blue Jays what felt like at the time, and indeed proved to be, a nice little cushion (how pleasant!). "Put 'Janice' on," he continued. "Put it on!" And why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't we? (Outside is, after all, back to what it was.) Hey the Blue Jays won in the Bronx on a bullpen day! You may recall that the last time that happened, it was pretty cool! This time the stakes were a little lower—a four-game split in May, rather than an ALDS clincher in October—but there were similar pleasures to be found all the same. This time, the Blue Jays pitching staff combined for a three-hit, three-walk shutout, visiting the golden sombrero (four strikeouts in a single game, an ignoble feat) upon Jazz Chisholm Jr. a night after that same dark plight had been visited upon no less stalwart a figure than Aaron Judge (quite possibly the greatest right-handed hitter there has ever been, by the numbers [the numbers are weighted-runs-created-plus]). The Blue Jays' runs came early (a first-inning double from the streaking Daulton Varsho, scoring Vladdy [who had stolen a base! let's go!]) and late (George Springer's aforementioned seventh-inning dinger), and in between we didn't really have all that much going, I suppose, aside from Ernie Clement's three doubles (each of them quite strange, in their own way). Vladdy is possibly breaking out of it, a little? Two walks, a hit, a run scored, a stolen base? I feel like he is two-homers-in-the-same-series away from just totally putting this behind him, but unfortunately it is pretty hard to hit any homers at all, even for Vladdy sometimes. Back home to face the Pirates, next! That never happens! Pittsburgh's Paul Skenes day (Saturday) lines up with our Patrick Corbin day (also Saturday, the astute reader will already have determined), and weirdly, I am into it; this is a dare-to-be-great moment for Patrick Corbin and his five innings (like it or not). 

KS

Blue Jays 2, Yankees 1: Chain Chain Chain (Chain Chain Chain) Chain of Dudes

 

which of the chains would you say *mostly* did it, though

Aside from the loveable Jésus Sanchez lightly injuring himself uponst one of his several chains whilst attempting a thoroughly unsuccessful diving catch (when I raised my admittedly speculative chain-based diagnosis on r/baseball—a diagnosis later literally confirmed by no less an authority than manager John Schneider himself—I was downvoted, if you can believe it), this game held nothing but delight for the Blue Jays enthusiast. It's odd that the first run of this true young-lions pitcher's duel (Trey Yesavage [ERA 1.07] on our side, Cam Schlittler [ERA 1.80] on the Yankees') would come in on a seventh-inning bases-loaded walk, but Andrés Giménez really outdid himself with an eleven-pitch plate-appearance of quality and veteran wile (he plays older than twenty-seven, wouldn't you agree?) to work the RBI BB. Vladdy sac-flied Brandon Valenzuela home that selfsame inning, and though Louis Varland very uncharacteristically allowed a run in the ninth (probably surprised him as much as it did us), he allowed none further, and so the Fluharty to Hoffman (there you go! there you go!) to Rogers to Varland suite of relievers can only be said to have done A Really Good job. Another one-run game! This Yankee Stadium series has been extra good so far. We really should do this more often. 

KS

Yankees 5, Blue Jays 4: Save Some One-Run Losses to the Yankees for The Rest of the League, Guys, Jeez!

 

seemed like a nice enough night though

Monday night, it was Vladdy making the final out, leaving Jésus Sanchez lingering at second as the would-be tying run; Tuesday night, it was Kazuma Okamoto, with Ernie Clement as the tying run at third. Of the two, I found Tuesday night's ninth inning for sure the more bothersome, on account of how Ernie Clement probably should have taken third on the Vladdy sac fly that had scored Giménez, and, had he done so, he'd have scored easily on Varsho's subsequent weird single to second that drew the first baseman so far off the bag that nobody was there for the throw at first (should it have been the pitcher? is that who should have probably covered first? arguably; arguably). In fairness to Ernie, though, he had entered the game as pinch hitter mere moments before, and really should have been rested the whole evening, as he has strep throat, and is no doubt legit tuckered. Take a couple days, Ernie! Grab a blanket and get set up on the couch, guy! But he did not. Or at least he has not yet. Dylan Cease got touched up for five runs in four innings, which you're never going to feel good about, but all the damage came on really just two swings from a lineup replete with sluggers and their sluggings, and he struck out nine, so while it was a two-homer game (not great!) it wasn't a total disaster, and he'll no doubt be fine (indeed, he will almost certainly be excellent). Let's hear it for the bullpen, though, as Adam Macko, Chase Lee (welcome aboard!), Mason Fluharty, and Louis Varland allowed just two hits betweenst them (good job, guys).

Another really good, close game. Nobody likes to drop the first two of a four-game set in Yankee Stadium, but the split is still in play; let us pursue it? Tonight, it's Trey Yesavage, who has been very good so far, and Cam Schlittler, who has been even better, and whose name, to me, is inseparable from the various pronunciations the great Buck Martinez visited upon it (and upon us) in what turned out to be his final season in the broadcast booth. I miss Buck, and I hope he's having a nice spring. 

KS 

Yankees 7, Blue Jays 6: I Will Begrudgingly Grant That This Was An Excellent Baseball Game

 

Slovakia's own Adam Macko (left), who was congratulated
after his fine début inning by the most serious, straight-up
Vladdy you're ever likely to see

A return to the Bronx! Our first time back since eliminating the Yankees in the ALDS on a bullpen day to end a series that honestly I think I enjoyed a good deal more than the ALCS against the Mariners, somehow? (Vladdy's game-two grand slam turns out to be my favourite home run in Blue Jays history [I have seen all the big ones, of course, and an endless amount of the regular ones {also good}]). As to whether or not those heady games against the Yankees were preferable to the actual World Series that followed not all that long thereafter, that's actually an enormously complex topic, isn't it, one that certainly exceeds the bounds of our present endeavour, which is merely to talk about how last night's series-opener really was thoroughly entertaining baseball, even if it did not entirely go our way right at the end there (not entirely unlike the 2025 World Series, I suppose [no you're not over it]). Patrick Corbin gave us four innings, settling in somewhat after the earliest possible jitter (a first-pitch leadoff homerun struck by the veteran Paul Goldschmidt, who continues to very quietly assemble an enormously plausible Hall of Fame case), but did, in the final analysis allow three over the fullness of those four. Not to worry though! On account of Ernie Clement's three-run homer! And George Springer's solo shot! Among other excellent happenings (including Springer's 1500th career hit)! But after solid work by first Braydon Fisher and then the débuting Slovakian/Irish/Canadian WBC legend (in that he got big outs against Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Aaron judge in that context earlier this spring) Adam Macko, the seventh inning fell to our old friend Yariel Rodriguez, or I should say the final out of the seventh inning fell to our old friend Yariel Rodriguez, and to his credit he did secure it! Alas that the Yankees put up four runs during Yariel's quest for it, though. Just as rough as rough gets, as far as third-of-an-inning outings go. Let us note, though, a fine eighth from Jeff Hoffman, and a spirited little rally in the top of the ninth to bring Vladdy to the plate with a chance to tie it up (which, in this instance, he did not). Tonight though! You'll see! They'll all see! I bet!

KS

Blue Jays 4, Detroit 1: A Charlie Montoyo Sweep ("Two out of three? It doesn't get any better than that.")

 

much, much more like it

Vladdy got one! And what a one: a line drive over the shortstop's head, essentially, that just kept on going until it was over the wall in left (a launch angle of but sixteen degrees, I am told, which is really very low [the lowest of any home run hit this season]). John Schneider moved Vladdy up from his usual number three spot in the lineup to number two, hitting behind Yohendrick Piñango (a day off for George Springer); I remember that in the earliest years of our present century there was a SABRmetric (I choose the old appellation here deliberately) consensus that having your best guy bat second is optimal, but that the difference between having him bat second, rather than the conventional third (Vladdy's customary place) is profoundly marginal. But what if, instead of making scarcely any difference at all, it was the secret to unlocking maximal Vladdy? I choose to believe this to be the case at present. He also singled, you will recall! Daulton Varsho had a great day behind him, too, with both a double and a tidy triple into the Comerica Park's enormous outfield. Kevin Gausman, surprising no one, pitched six more excellent innings, and though the bullpen behind him made things a little more interesting than one might prefer, it really was just the one run total, in the end, out of a combination of our old friend Yariel Rodriguez, Joe Mantiply and Tyler Rogers. A series win! As we inch ever closer to a Wild Card spot! Or, more daringly still, a .500 record! Bring on the Yankees!

Just before we leave Detroit, though, I wanted to note the extraordinary Name Guy quality of the Tigers' Sunday afternoon starting nine. It really was something, taken all in all:

1. Kevin McGonigle SS

2. Dillon Dingler C

3. Colt Keith 3B

4. Riley Greene LF

5. Matt Vierling CF

6. Gage Workman 3B

7. Zach McKinstry 2B

8. Spencer Torkelson 1B

9. Wenceel Pérez RF

This is with Parker Meadows on the IL, too! And while the starting pitcher was the rather ordinarily named (no diss) Jack Flaherty, he was relieved by Burch Smith, which is deeply dead-ball-era-coded. Really just a whole lot to like here.

Finally, I did want to say that, whenever the Blue Jays play the Tigers, but especially when it happens in Detroit, my thoughts always turn to our old friend Neil (formerly of these pages, and endless pages elsewhere), who loved the Tigers, and who is missed. 

KS 

Blue Jays 2, Tigers 1 (F/10): On A Bullpen Day, No Less

 

yes sir, let's admire that one

Yohendrick Piñango's first career home run came in the seventh, Daulton Varsho singled home Vladdy (as the Manfred Man) in the tenth, and Louis Varland and his fantastically ludicrous 0.38 ERA gave us two innings to close out just a heck of a bullpen day, just an absolute heck of one. Great stuff! A true bullpen day that ends up in a win for your team is really one of the great pleasures of contemporary baseball, it seems to me. This one went Mason Fluharty as "the opener" (1 1/3 innings), to Rule-5 Draft legend Spencer Miles as "the bulk guy" (3 2/3 innings), and then Fisher, Nance (placed on the IL soon thereafter), Rogers, and Varland the rest of the way. Just five hits on the day for the Blue Jays ("Oh my sweet Jesus," Tyler Heineman could be heard to exclaim as he popped out to the right side on a true meatball), and none of them, alas, came from Vladdy, mired in the worst month and the worst slump of his career. You will recall, I'm sure (because I won't stop saying it), that last October (and ever-so-slightly into November), Vladdy went .397/.494/.745 for an OPS of 1.289 with eight home runs, which is to say, he hit about as well as anyone ever has in postseason baseball history. In the WBC earlier this year, though the profoundly wonderful Dominican team sadly came up a little short, Vladdy's OPS was 1.421. In April, to start this season, Vladdy hit .351 and walked a tonne despite an early-season lack of power (just the two homers). But his May so far has been unaccountably grim: .128/.236/.128. Again, maybe the upcoming trip to Yankee Stadiuum will do him good? As he seems fueled by an uncannily focused animus and enmity there? It would be the funniest thing, certainly, were he to follow the worst several weeks of his career with a typical Yankee Stadium Vlad performance of moonshots and doubles spurted everywhere. I say give it a try!

Let us note, finally, that with Saturday's win, and everybody else in the American League continuing to really just not be very good at all yet (much like ourselves!), the Blue Jays now stand but a single game out of the final Wild Card position! Just three games out of the second one, too. They're six-and-a-half back of the Yankees for the top Wild Card, which is a taller task, I grant you, but it's a four-game series that's coming up in New York, and Vladdy, as we discussed only a moment ago, is at least lightly due.    

KS

Tigers 3, Blue Jays 2: If This Feels Trying For Us, Imagine What It Feels Like For Jeff Hoffman

 

I find this ballpark just about ideal

Jeff Hoffman is no longer the closer (a demotion he accepted graciously), but there he was out there anyway in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth, as Fisher had already been used (Rogers hadn't, though, it occurs to me now), and we were going to need at least one more inning after the ninth (that would be Varland's inning, one would think), even if the ninth went perfectly—which it did not! After Hoffman got Riley Greene on a swinging strike three, Matt Vierling singled to centre, but then Hoffman got Gage Workman swinging, too, before a bad stolen base (Hoffman does not hold runners well, especially of late), an intentional walk to Zach McKinstry, and a two-out, walk-off single from Spencer Torkelson. What can be gleaned from this, other than that the noble Detroit Tigers seem to be assembling a roster comprised almost exclusively of Name Guys? Very little, I'm afraid, other than that it is still probably not that much fun to be Jeff Hoffman whilst actually pitching (the rest of his life, I'm sure, is rewarding in all kinds of ways). When you have a look at his Statcast numbers on his Baseball Savant page, you see a good amount of red on his underlying things (that's good!) but a whole bunch of blue as far as his actual results (that's bad!). What is to be done about this gulf? Might it prove unbridgeable? How about fording? Could we ford it otherwise? I am out of my depth, but I feel for the guy.

Of this actually pretty snappy game, despite its unkind ending, what else might we say? That Andrés Giménez ripped a two-run double, contributing once more to his weirdly high RBI total (twenty-five so far!) for a guy whose OPS is below .700? That Trey Yesavage (two runs on four hits over six innings) is proving himself a capable starter even when he does not have his best stuff? We could, sure. It would all be true. To this, I would add only that I like that the Blue Jays and Tigers play each other on what MLB has positioned as "Rivalry Weekend" in recent years—the Cubs play the White Sox, the Yankees play the Mets, etc.—as it panders to those of us who came to baseball awareness specifically in the 1980s, when the Blue Jays' first great rival (as they became contenders) were the great Tigers teams of that era. It was always pleasant, but a little strange, when the Blue Jays and Expos would play an interleague series, once those started up, and the premise seemed to be that they were natural rivals, but I didn't feel that way about it at all, and I don't remember other fans of either team feeling particularly strongly about it either? It was more like, as Canadian baseball enthusiasts, we had a team in each league, let's enjoy some baseball? I may be misremembering.   

KS   

Blue Jays 5, Rays 3 (F/10): An Apposite-Field Home Run

 

it was also an opposite-field one

After tenth-innings walks "were issued" (I have always liked that phrasing) to both Vladdy and Okamoto (George Springer was already aboard as The Manfred Man), Daulton Varsho (facing poor Aaron Brooks, appearing in the majors for the first time in kind of a while) hit just the fifth walk-off grand slam in Toronto Blue Jays history. I say "just," but how many would you really expect, I guess? Here's video of all five, conveniently assembled: 1987 American League MVP George Bell (9/4/88 [off of Mitch Williams, of all people]); the fully regrettable Gregg Zaun (9/6/08); 2018 World Series MVP (alas, not for us) Steve Pearce, who did it twice in four days (7/27/17 and 7/30/17), which is just wild beyond belief; and finally Daulton Varsho, just last night (5/13/26). Neat! 

And fairly needed, too! Jeff Hoffman had allowed a pair in the top of the tenth (Varland, Rogers, and Fluharty had all already pitched), and imagine being that guy, saddled with another tough loss, even after he'd been moved out of the closer role (excuse me: rôle). It would have been a real shame for AL-strikeout-leader Dylan Cease's nine-K, one-run seven innings to have been for naught, too, and, more broadly, nobody likes being swept by the Rays twice in as many weeks. It wears on one.       

Also wearing: Vladdy's slump (on Vladdy, I mean; I'm okay). Dan Shulman mentioned that when he (Dan) arrived in the booth at about quarter after two in the afternoon to do some prep work (filling out your scorekeeping book ahead of time, as soon as starting lineups are posted, really is enormously helpful in my experience), Vladdy was already on the field hitting off a tee before batting practice proper, and he apparently did this for forty-five minutes, which is a fairly enormous amount of time to spend hitting off a tee. Then, after launching one final, nice big homer off some regular BP pitching, Vladdy circled the bases in a his full home-run trot with a big smile on his face just to keep things light for the fellows. There was footage of all of this. I found it fairly moving. Maybe this next road trip will help him snap out of it: not the Detroit part, necessarily (though why not?), but the four games in New York that follow. For whatever reason, Vladdy hits at Yankee Stadium like few others, and honestly just wrecks the Yankees generally, regardless of venue (you may remember several such delicious instances from last October). I feel like maybe we're just a couple homers on the road trip away from putting this all behind us?

KS