Diamondbacks 6, Blue Jays 3: Mistakes Were Made

 

friends since small times, these two here

I have been simulating a good deal of early twentieth-century baseball in recent months, and one of the initial shocks of so doing is the legitimately stunning number of errors that the computer is required to commit on your behalf in order for vraisemblance to be maintained (vraisemblance aside, don't even get me started on verisimilitude). Slowly, and not without fleeting moments of slight impatience (that bordered, here and there, on low-key exasperation, I will admit to you here amidst the peace and safety of Baseball Feelings), I have become at least lightly accustomed to what might be, in any other baseball-historical context, madly bananas numbers of errors. I was interested to learn, though, that this newfound sense of things did not seem to influence in any discernible direction my experience of Friday night's game, in which the Blue Jays committed three errors—a perfectly quotidian happening in the earlier years of our previous century, but one which, in the year of our lord 2026, still, it would seem, has the capacity to unsettle, to disquiet. I didn't like it one bit! Worst of all, one of these several errors was charged (not unduly; please do not mistake me) to Vladdy, and that is the surest way to see that guy sad: Vladdy loves to field; he absolutely loves it, and when it does not go his way, the mark of it is borne not just in the official scorer's pencily little records, but in his heart, too, for at least for a while. Ours too, probably. And so not a great start to the series. I was a little surprised to hear Eric Lauer mention after the game that he really doesn't like pitching behind an opener, and to voice these preferences in fairly strong language for a guy with an earned-run average over seven for a team that keeps on losing. Read the room, my brother! I'm not too worried about it as like a long-term thing, but it was an unusually discordant note from the Blue Jays clubhouse. I'm going to keep a weather-eye on that Eric Lauer for at least a spell.  

KS