Blue Jays 6, Red Sox 1: The Boys Were Somewhat Boppin'!

 

oh it's a dinger all right

Three home runs! That's such a good amount of them! And all of them crushed, really: Davis Schneider wacked his over the green monster; Andrés Giménez deposited his into that weirdly deep triangle in right-centre (he's got sneaky pop! even though he's very a regular-sized guy!); and the three-hundredth home run of George Springer's very fine career was a no-doubter up and over everything in left and seemingly out of the ballpark entirely (although I did see a photograph later of Springer holding the ball smilingly, so maybe it was retrieved from the netting?). What a lot of fun! Dylan Cease pitched five scoreless, despite getting into at least a little bit of trouble in each of those five innings, but in the Hoffman-to-Rogers-to-Nance-to-Varland bullpennery (bullpenury? maybe that's only when it goes poorly?) that followed, only Tommy Nance got into any pickles or jams (either can be "jarring," haha), and Louis Varland struck out three in his four-out save to alleviate any trouble there, so no harm done, really. Just a delightful game in a beautiful ballpark against a team that is just straight-up struggling. I think I saw that the Red Sox' record this season in games in which they have trailed by three runs at any point in the game—at any point—is oh-and-thirty, which is just a miserable state of affairs (for them [I'm fine]). Still with misery, for a sec: Max Scherzer, each of whose starts these days feels like it might be the last Max Scherzer start ever, will not make any such starts in Boston, or indeed in the Chicago series that follows, as he has been placed on the Injured List with back spasms that, honestly, might as well be just about anything at this point; I'm sure there's any number of reasons in his right shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, thumb, or fingers that would merit a trip to the fifteen-day IL at this point, but back spasms is what we're going with here, and I'm sure those are legitimately no fun. And so, returning to the big-league roster in his stead, we have Chad Dallas (aka The Dad Chalice), whose honest-to-goodness full name is (you are not going to believe this but I swear to you this is true) John Chadwell Dallas. Incredible, right? A bullpen game tonight, then, but it turns out we love those. Perhaps we'll bop our way through it?        

KS