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| sans sur-cease (I may have said this before but I'm sure you'll agree it's simply too good) |
This might be a strange thing to say about a third-place, seventeen-and-twenty-one team (and yet we are just a half-game out of a playoff spot! let us not lose sight of this weird but crucial fact!), but it would very much appear that we totally signed the right guys this offseason, doesn't it? You may recall the chatter about how badly the Blue Jays needed to add Kyle Tucker, or to re-sign Bo Bichette, or ideally to land both. It surprised everybody (probably me more than most!) when the first big free-agent signing of the offseason—not just for the Blue Jays, but in all of baseball—was Dylan Cease, and it was really no less surprising when the Blue Jays added Kazuma Okamoto not all that long thereafter. And yet, a quarter of the way into the season, Cease and Okamoto have put up a combined 2.4 bWAR, whereas Bichette and Tucker are at -0.1 (I wonder how that looks in fWAR, let's see: okay yeah it's 3.0 [fWAR loves the way Dylan Cease FIPS it up out there ["way to FIP it," they are heard to remark in their chatter] to 0.5 [fWAR is not as unkind go Bo's defense at third]). And, not to be vulgar in our materialism, it is perhaps worth noting that the bill for the combined services of Okamoto and Case this season amounts to less than the tab for just Bo, putting to one side entirely the even-way-more that Kyle Tucker signed for (glory to them all, of course; get that paper in exchange for your labour, my fellows).
I make mention of all this because Dylan Cease struck out ten and walked precisely none in his seven shut-out innings of five-hit baseball last night, and Kazuma Okamoto (of Kaz-Adilla fame) both knocked in George Springer with a much-needed single up the middle and also made some nifty plays at third, most notably starting a 5-4-3 double play on a ball ripped to his right by the rejuvenated Mike Trout that looked like extra bases for sure. Great job, guys! Our other run came on Vladdy's crafty and nimble hook slide around Sebastián Rivero (where's Logan O'Hoppe? I hope he is well!) on an Ernie Clement sacrifice fly. Did Jeff Hoffman look pretty good in the eighth? He sure did! And what about Louis Varland in the ninth? Even more so!
The only discordant note in the evening came when former Blue Jay Alek Manoah, clinging to what might be his last chance to stick in the majors, came in to pitch for the Angels in the eighth. It would probably be most accurate to call the crowd's reaction mixed, but it would also be fair to say that it was not the kind of friendly welcome extended to, say, Téoscar Hernandez during last year's World Series (which, as you may recall, was contested between the Toronto Blue Jays and the very fine Los Angeles Dodgers [it was a really good one! in almost all of the ways!]). That's probably not the best comparison to make, as Téo ranks highly among the most loved and welcomed former Blue Jays in all our fifty summers (a baffling route to a routine ball in right, a clutch three-run bomb, and a smile that somehow improves your day when you see it on television is the Téo hat trick). But all the same. Manoah, you may recall, did not report to Buffalo when assigned there following really any number of disasters, and argued that the Blue Jays were attempting to manipulate his service time (which, to be fair, is a reasonable suspicion to hold of any baseball team in any circumstance) rather than have him figure things out. It was an inglorious end to a short career in Toronto that had peaked (quite highly!) just about immediately. I do sincerely hope that things work out for him, starting just as soon as the Angels leave town.
KS
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