Blue Jays 5, Yankees 2 (which is to say, Blue Jays 3, Yankees 1)

 

 a glad band

"What a flex," a dear old friend noted in a chat after the Blue Jays 5-2 win Wednesday night, "to eliminate the Yankees with a bullpen game." Objectively, this is undoubtedly true, but it was honestly not a thought that had occurred to me, at least not in that particular spirit, even once at any point during this deeply improbable yet highly rad eight-reliever outing, for sure the finest bullpen performance in the history of the team (what could surpass it? I mean ever?). Headed into this series, I don't think many observers would have argued that the Blue Jays' bullpen was among the team's greatest strengths; indeed, insofar as you can say that a ninety-four-win season had any problems of any real significance at all (in my view, you kind of can not), there was a several-week period in which things got a little dicey in relief, you may recall, and Jeff Hoffman outings had been at times (though have not been lately) a bit of a wild ride. But there he was, Hoffman I mean, good for the final four outs, striking out Cody Bellinger to seal the deal. What a parade of guys it was: we had Louis Varland, not twenty-four hours removed from giving up homers to both Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr., good for the first four outs of the game as the opener; Mason Fluharty gave us the next three, but allowed a Ryan McMahon solo shot to the short porch in right along the way; our guy Seranthony Dominguez came in much earlier than I would have expected, but with great success, allowing just a walk against his five outs; the stalwart Eric Lauer did just the same (though left-handedly);  Yariel Rodriguez, who I would have guessed would be one of our multi-inning guys for sure, got just the one out to end the sixth; Brendan Little got us three outs ahead of rookie Braydon Fisher, who got into a little trouble in the eighth that the aforementioned Hoffman sorted out before returning to the mound to handle the whole ninth with nobody up in the pen behind him, allowing Judge to knock in a Trent Grisham double along the way for the Yankees second run, but this was not a run anyone could mind even a little. A few times throughout an evening I spent largely in and around our cozily-lit kitchen, as I marveled at just how well this all was going, I paused to take stock of what a success here would look like; this is to say, how many runs would be a good result from this bullpen day? Obviously the realest answer is an n-1 type of deal, but beyond that, what would you say, four runs, maybe? You'd have to call that pretty good, right? So maybe if the Blue Jays' bats could somehow put up five, I figured, we'd be okay? Well they sure did! Cam Schlittler's last start, against the Red Sox, had been remarkable, but his last start against us saw him chased in the second inning. Wednesday's game was more like the former than the latter, but all the same, there was Vladdy knocking in a George Springer double to get the Jays on the board in the top of the first, and away we went: Springer's sac fly in the fifth brought home the unstoppable Ernie Clement (what a series!); Nathan Lukes had the crucial knock in the seventh to bring home Clement and Gimenez after Jazz Chisholm had booted a grounder that was just extraordinarily suited to an inning-ending double-play just a couple batters before (oops!); and light-hitting-yet-right-hitting Myles Straw brought home Alejandro Kirk (who had doubled and then also tagged up on a fly to deep right, way to go, Kirky!) to give us the five runs that would have beaten the four runs I had for whatever reason settled on in my mind as being a solid result from l'enclos des releveurs, not that we ended up needing all of them. I guess it really was quite a flex, then? Even more so, I suppose, once John Schneider revealed that he had only sent Trey Yesavage sauntering out to the bullpen mid-game, like he did, to mess with the Yankees, so far as he was able, as he had no actual intention of using him in game four (he did not say the same about about Gausman, who I assume he really would have put in under certain circumstances).  

What a wonderful, joyous round of baseball it was, absolutely as much fun as you're ever going to have in a postseason series: two all-time romps in front of the eager home crowd, then a road loss on account of a freaky home run by the best right-handed hitter in at least a generation (and you can make a reasonable case for "ever," too) followed by a taught-though-never-quite-fraught total-team series-clinching win to eliminate the Yankees in front of their own frustrated, booing, and weirdly depleted home crowd (many headed for the gates after the Yankees left the bases loaded in the eighth, which is wild to me as someone who has stayed right to the end of some enormously hopeless and insignificant baseball games in my lightly-misspent youth). Vladdy already feels like a legend at twenty-six. Trey Yesavage only pitched once, but did so whilst utterly Juan-Guzman-maxing. Daulton Varsho had a totally unreasonable number of extra-base hits in those first two games at home. Ernie Clement was on base constantly. All of our guys who we have enjoyed so much all summer long just totally did a great job, and none of this could have been any more fun.

And now the Mariners, after Seattle's fifteen-inning win over the Tigers last night, in a game I perhaps foolishly stayed up for (I am not even convinced it was actually a good baseball game). I'm not entirely sure which team I'd really have rathered the Blue Jays face: probably the Tigers, I guess, but we've won the season series against both, and the Tigers, despite their late-season slide, pulled it together admirably against the scrappy Guardians, played the Mariners tough(ly), and had the best pitcher left in the tournament in Tarik Skubal. Unlike the Mariners' Cal Raleigh, you can't avoid Skubal by just walking him, right? So I don't know. They're both beatable teams in a seven-game series, as are the Blue Jays themselves, of course. With the Brewers and Dodgers NLCS now official, this may be the least objectionable postseason final four of my lifetime, and I will endeavour to appreciate it as such regardless of the results the rest of the way (though clearly I have preferences). Something that has perhaps occurred to you is that this ALCS will be the first postseason meeting of these 1977 expansion cousins, which is a worthy thing to note, but have you yet reflected on how this Mariners/Blue Jays match-up is also the first postseason proxy encounter between FanGraphs dramaturgical dyad Dave Cameron and Carson Cistulli? Isn't that weird, that this is a thing that not only could happen, but that is demonstrably about to? I think it is okay to give in to astonishment in the face of this reality. Consider, too, that the Blue Jays are only eight wins away from getting this man a ring:

Let it fuel you, Vladdy; let it fuel you.

KS