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 

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