 |
| yes sir, there she goes (let's admire that one) |
I would ask that we set aside not just Dylan Cease's twelve further strikeouts, rad though they were, but also the strong relief pitchings of Braydon Fisher (nice inning!), Louis Varland (who blew a fastball by Mike Trout to finish his four-out appearance), Tyler Rogers (just the two batters), and Jeff Hoffman (back on the horse!), and even, too, the bottom-of-the-order "manufactured" runs that made the difference as things wore on, and instead focus our attention almost exclusively on Vladdy's two-run homer in the top of third. Not long after that mighty dinger was dung, a Reddit poster commented, "Very nice! Hopefully a positive sign Vladdy is getting his grove back." I do like to think that a man of Vladdy's means would count at least one grove amongst his many holdings, but beyond any merriment we might find in typographical error (hey: we've all made 'em), is this not a wild sentiment? And yet really very coomon! A subsequent poster noted, as the entirety of their comment, "He's hitting .350," which was of course true at the time, but by the end of the game, Vladdy was actually up to a league-leading .354, making up a healthy portion of his .442 OBP (I appreciate that batting average and on-base percentage [which is rarely expressed as a "percentage," is it? remember when people used to say "on-base average"? no? nobody but me remembers this admitted triviality?] have slightly different denominators, but this is all close enough for jazz, as a wonderful music teacher would kindly joke as we tuned). And so we see again the perils of being Vladdy: hit forty-eight home runs when you're twenty-two (the most struck by anyone that young ever), put up an all-time great round in one All-Star Home-Run Derby and win another one tidily, then mash eight (eight!) home runs in as great a month of postseason baseball as anyone has ever managed, and all of a sudden nobody is satisfied unless you're "going yard" (people don't say that one as much as they used to, do they? not sure I ever liked it, honestly). Never mind the 161 OPS+, or 166 wRC+ if that is your preference; even his wOBA (linear weights! let's go!), despite just the two homers, is at .413, just a tick below the .416 of the fairly monstrous 2021 season that seems to have, in the expected-homers sense, lightly cursed him. I have said this many times (I am sorry), and I'm sure I will say it many more (please forgive me), but if Vladdy is to become a true Hall of Fame guy, it will not be as a five-hundred homerist, but rather as un frappeur de trois-mille coups sûrs (arguably the purest Hall of Fame credential). And on that front, Vladdy has just passed José Bautista for sixth place on the list of Blue Jays all-time hit leaders with 1106. Let's have a look at the top ten, actually, just out of general interest (it's actually a fairly specific interest, I suppose):
First of all, what a great list of great guys, obviously, right? But beyond that, let us ponder a minute on how, barring significant injury, Vladdy will probably have more hits than any other Blue Jay by the end of his age-thirty season (it might take him until thirty-one), and then he'll still have ten-or-so seasons toss another fourteen-or-fifteen-hundred more on top of that. Won't that be something!
KS
No comments:
Post a Comment