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| 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
