Hey Gang, It's Vladdy

Vladdy can finally afford a jacket that is sufficiently pink for his needs

Unless my recollection of this season's FanGraphs projections fails me—and I am reasonably sure that it does not!—the only two teams projected for ninety-or-more wins  this year were Atlanta (sounds about right) and the Dodgers (it would be very weird for them not to). So far, though, Atlanta has played really very poorly, which is just fine by me, since we had to play them three times just now. The series was bookended by Vladdy, who did the public-facing part of his reupping with the Blue Jays for fourteen more years (yay) on Monday, and who hit his long-awaited first home run of the season in Wednesday afternoon's getaway game (it was school day! you could really hear all the kids!). "It's about fucking time!" he could be heard to remark, cheerfully, in a hot-mic-in-the-dugout situation. Things are going pretty well! Mariners coming in for the weekend! And they haven't been great so far! Let's go!

KS

Middling Fun in Baltimore

 

still the perfect ballpark probably

Friday night, I felt fairly aggrieved when I clicked on Rogers Sportsnet and found no Blue Jays game, thinking Apple TV+ must have stolen away another one (for they are villains), but it turns out it was god himself who denied us Blue Jays baseball on this night by making it rainy. Saturday was not much better (other than that it was sunny), in that the Blue Jays hit into five double-plays—five! that's so many! the AL record is six!—though in fairness, one was a strange situation where Vladdy was said to have left first base early on a very heads-up tag-up play, when in fact he did not leave early at all (as revealed through Jomboy analysis), but nobody challenged (aside from Vladdy, in his heart, and also somewhat verbally). However! Sunday ruled! In that the Blue Jays kept kind of blowing it but clawing their way back in, helped by some bottom-of-the-order scrappiness plus also a key hit by Bo Bichette, who is the literal top of the order, so that part's different. But it was all very good. I will take the split. These young Orioles no longer seem quite the menace they once did, but they've for sure got some guys who are going to be a problem for us for like a decade.

KS

Blue Jays Win Nearly All the Games

 

whenever I see Bo these days my brain just kind of fills in the hair

After the Blue Jays took game two of this four-game series in Fenway, I texted one of the two pals with whom I text about Blue Jays baseball, boldly and almost correctly arguing that the Blue Jays, an unstoppable juggernaut comfortably on pace for a one-hundred-win season, were going to take all four, and that it wasn't even going to be all that hard. Wednesday's game, in which the Sox (lightly) touched up Nick Sandlin, made a fool of me, but Thursday's, in which Nick Sandlin got not only his revenge, but mine as well, left me feeling just great about the whole week, honestly.

KS

So As Not to Show Off, the Blue Jays are Swept in New York

 

in which Mr. Met gives in to astonishment

The Blue Jays dropping all three against the Mets is one thing—disappointing!—but a Saturday baseball game that starts at 7:10PM? Instead of in the afternoon? What are we even doing here, boys? Saturday baseball is to be contested in the afternoon, as a backdrop to ones chores or, through the radio broadcast, also possibly errands. It is not for Saturday evenings! Unless it is a west-coast road trip, in which case there is little to be done! But the biggest Blue Jays news coming out of the weekend, arguably, is the fourteen-year, $500-million-dollar extension that will see Vladimir Guerrero stay with the team until he is forty, and, just as importantly, until I am sixty. In addition to being an entirely sensible deal for both sides—about two-thirds of the Juan Soto deal? making Vladdy the ninth-highest paid player in the game as of this moment? that all sounds about right, doesn't it?—this is also just lovely, and makes me sad all over again about how the Blue Jays didn't so much as offer my favourite baseball player Carlos Delgado a contract after the 2004 season. This is a whole lot better than that! And as I saw someone point out on this very same internet through which we are speaking even now, this would seem to all but guarantee that Vladdy will end up as the most productive Blue Jays position player ever (could he maybe even take a run at Dave Stieb's fairly bananas 56.4 bWAR?). Vladdy's at 21.6 bWAR so far at age twenty-six, and here's the position player top ten:

  

Pretty interesting, isn't it? The wild thing about José Bautista coming out ahead of both Tony Fernandez and Carlos Delgado like that is that he wasn't even good for all that long, really; it's just that for those few years, he was like insanely good. It really was quite a time. 

And now it's Vladdy's! Go forth, young Vladdy! Why not prosper! A series in Fenway seems like a perfect opportunity for dingers! Let's get some! Of those! 

KS  

Why Wouldn't We Sweep the Nationals?

 

safe at home / safe as houses

At absolutely no risk of getting ahead of anything at all, I note eagerly (though not overly) that these five-and-two 2025 Blue Jays are on pace to surpass the 114-win 1998 Yankees and match the 116-win 2001 Mariners (a team that you may well recall for being the first one that had Ichiro Suzuki on it [hey he's going into the Hall of Fame this year, isn't he?]). I would note further that not even the gods themselves could prevent this from happening. 

KS   

Opening Weekend 2025: A Split! I'll Take it!

 

this is my new friend Andrés Giménez

After an Opening Day debacle that really couldn't have gone worse—aside from how we had hot dogs, root beers, and crinkle-cut fries—the Blue Jays' big Friday-night win came on an Apple TV+ game, making it worse than if it hadn't happened at all (a radical view, but one that I hold resolutely). Saturday afternoon, they'd just gone up 4-2 on Andrés Giménez's second home run of this our young season (he has also already made some very nice plays at second) when, like fools, we decided to go for a nice walk. When we returned, of course, all was blasted. How pleasing, then, to see the Blue Jays hold on to their 2-1 first-inning lead (I missed the first inning) throughout the long remainder of yesterday's game, tacking on a late run on a homer from Taylor Heineman, of literally all people (just his second in career that has seen him bounce in and out and around the majors since 2019 [he was stoked about it]). A season-opening split is fine! I have no problem with it! I don't know that the Orioles will be ninety-plus-wins good again this season, but they sure don't seem likely to be bad, so I'll take it without complaint (aside from those listed above). It is regrettable that Max Scherzer seems to be lightly hurt already, that Daulton Varsho continues to be unwell, and that we have already DFA'd our best-named relief pitcher (Richard Lovelady), but I am genuinely looking forward to this season of Blue Jays baseball, not in the sense that I have great hopes and aspirations of a remarkable outcome of any sort (I agree with FanGraphs projection of eighty-four wins!), but more that I am just very into the idea of it being, like around. Let us endeavour to discuss it here! Lightly! A little! Things definitely trailed off around these parts last season, but so too did the Blue Jays themselves, you may well recall, so I only (baseball)feel(ing[s]) a little bad about it. Anyway, the Nats are in next! I have no ideas of any kind about them! Let's see!

KS