Blue Jays 2, Marlins 1: A Low-Key Marvel Of A Game

Myles Straw apologized to Hazel immediately following this
Kazuma Okamoto soaking (Kazuma Soakamoto?)

One might well wonder how the Marlins could have scored but one lone run on eleven hits and plus also two walks (not that that's at all a lot of walks, but the issue here is an accumulation of guys). Well, I'll tell you: it's because of how they got thrown out basically an infinity of times. You'd have to have seen it to believe it, probably, but the Marlins had nine stolen base attempts (in the broad, scorekeeping sense) on the day—of which five were successful, as they are a speedy and fun young team for sure—but they were thrown out or picked off four times, which is so many times in one game. What's worse (for them, not me [I was, and remain, thrilled about it]), all four times came in the sixth-through-eighth innings of what was then, and will now remain till doomsday (or dómsdagr, if you prefer the Old Norse), a one-run game. All of this delighted the assembled tiny masses on a getaway day that had thousands of kids on class trips in attendance, kids who, as Dan Shulman noted, did not need to be told twice once it said MAKE NOISE on the scoreboard; they just straight up made it. Kevin Gausman pitched his way into but also very much out of trouble; Fluharty and Hoffman combined for two fine innings; Louis Varland came in in the eighth to face a tough part of the order, leaving the ninth for Tyler Rogers (a nitpick: it is very strange that knowledgeable baseball people so often say "bullpen by committee" when they plainly mean "closer by committee," because a bullpen is by definition a committee of bulls that you have out there in the pen; there is literally no other way to go about it than by committee). The Blue Jays' runs came in the fifth, as Nathan Lukes doubled home Tyler Heineman's walk, and the sixth, as Kazumo Okamoto neatly deposited his team-best eleventh home run over the wall in right (oppo on a changeup!). I would note, too, that Vladdy, back in the lineup after two days of presumably breathing in through his teeth on account of how sore his elbow was, went two-for-three with a walk and a stolen base of his own (take that, Marlins!), and came up to Drake's "Janice STFU," a song he could be heard singing in the tunnel after the game (I found it charming, but I will admit to being perhaps uncommonly open to being charmed by this). A series win! A .500 record is coming into sight! As is a postseason position (I grant you it is still May)! On to Baltimore for four with the Orioles, who have been nearly as middling as we ourselves have been thus far! Let's go!  

KS