Tigers 3, Blue Jays 2: If This Feels Trying For Us, Imagine What It Feels Like For Jeff Hoffman

 

I find this ballpark just about ideal

Jeff Hoffman is no longer the closer (a demotion he accepted graciously), but there he was out there anyway in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth, as Fisher had already been used (Rogers hadn't, though, it occurs to me now), and we were going to need at least one more inning after the ninth (that would be Varland's inning, one would think), even if the ninth went perfectly—which it did not! After Hoffman got Riley Greene on a swinging strike three, Matt Vierling singled to centre, but then Hoffman got Gage Workman swinging, too, before a bad stolen base (Hoffman does not hold runners well, especially of late), an intentional walk to Zach McKinstry, and a two-out, walk-off single from Spencer Torkelson. What can be gleaned from this, other than that the noble Detroit Tigers seem to be assembling a roster comprised almost exclusively of Name Guys? Very little, I'm afraid, other than that it is still probably not that much fun to be Jeff Hoffman whilst actually pitching (the rest of his life, I'm sure, is rewarding in all kinds of ways). When you have a look at his Statcast numbers on his Baseball Savant page, you see a good amount of red on his underlying things (that's good!) but a whole bunch of blue as far as his actual results (that's bad!). What is to be done about this gulf? Might it prove unbridgeable? How about fording? Could we ford it otherwise? I am out of my depth, but I feel for the guy.

Of this actually pretty snappy game, despite its unkind ending, what else might we say? That Andrés Giménez ripped a two-run double, contributing once more to his weirdly high RBI total (twenty-five so far!) for a guy whose OPS is below .700? That Trey Yesavage (two runs on four hits over six innings) is proving himself a capable starter even when he does not have his best stuff? We could, sure. It would all be true. To this, I would add only that I like that the Blue Jays and Tigers play each other on what MLB has positioned as "Rivalry Weekend" in recent years—the Cubs play the White Sox, the Yankees play the Mets, etc.—as it panders to those of us who came to baseball awareness specifically in the 1980s, when the Blue Jays' first great rival (as they became contenders) were the great Tigers teams of that era. It was always pleasant, but a little strange, when the Blue Jays and Expos would play an interleague series, once those started up, and the premise seemed to be that they were natural rivals, but I didn't feel that way about it at all, and I don't remember other fans of either team feeling particularly strongly about it either? It was more like, as Canadian baseball enthusiasts, we had a team in each league, let's enjoy some baseball? I may be misremembering.   

KS