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| tagged him right up like *boop* |
"I hope I don't go anywhere—I don't want to go anywhere," were Kevin Gausman's words after perhaps his last start as a Toronto Blue Jay. We got off light, really, given the reports that followed what figured to probably be his last start in Toronto proper last week: Gausman's wife Taylor, who he'd thought was at home in Louisiana, surprised him at the SkyDome after that last one, announcing her arrival by texting him a photograph of his first pitch as a Blue Jay that she'd taken from the stands in 2022 (I think the family section is in the really nice part of the 200s? I only sat in that general area of the 200s once, when a friend got tickets from the bank she worked for, and let me tell you, it was fancy, and this was decades ago [I don't imagine they've made it less fancy in the intervening years]). Before they left the ballpark, Taylor convinced him to sit with her for a little while on the field, backs to the wall about halfway down the third base line, and talk for a bit about the whole situation, reflecting on how lucky they were to have been in one place so long that they’d be sad to leave. He said to reporters later, "I would love to finish here, but at the same time, I'd love to have another opportunity. But at the same time, it wouldn't mean as much as it meant last year, you know?" Oh, we know! One's thoughts turn to Max Scherzer—and if his start tomorrow is a strong one, he might be off as well (though he has complete say over any potential trade, as you would expect in a Max Scherzer contract)—who told us through tears last year, "I'm forty-one years old; I never thought I could love baseball this much." It was never going to be any fun to watch further members of the Power-of-Friendship 2025 Blue Jays move along (Bo was the first; Vladdy will be the last), but this year's middling-to-worse performance is really very likely to hasten things along. Since Gausman joined the team in 2022, he has actually been the team's most valuable player, if you go to FanGraphs at all (note Max Scherzer at the far left in that historically significant Daniel Murphy video), more than Vladdy or Bo or Springer or Kirk (who are the other four in that laudable top five [if Vladdy's monster 2021 was in the mix, the result would be different, but even so]). Remember how the choice after 2021 was to try to re-sign our literal Cy Young winner Robbie Ray (he of the insanely tight pants and max-effort grunting, along with all the excellence), or take a chance on the late-blooming Gausman, best known to Blue Jays fans as an Oriole you could get to, rather than a Giant who seemed to have figured it all out? And that Kevin Gausman really did feel like the risker proposition, the gutsier move? Gausman, as it turned out, performed at a twenty-plus fWAR-level over the seasons since, while Robbie Ray has fallen on hard times, coming in sub-five (which honestly surprised me a little when I checked it just now despite my general sense of things not having gone well). Good call, Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins! Everything turned out so enjoyably!
Not that there was all that much danger of it actually happening once things got underway this afternoon (not our day!), but would you believe we'd have been just four-and-a-half back of Cleveland if we'd won? Wild, right? But the bats were all but silent, so despite Gausman's six fine innings (three runs on five hits and a walk, six strikeouts), that's a series loss to the still-hot Boston Red Sox (is that twenty-two wins in their last twenty-six?). On to Washington, then, where we nearly never play, and it'll be Scherzer against his old team (one of them, anyway) in the opener, then Bieber and Yesavage. It occurs to me that we can only really be confident that one of those three will be with us by the end of the road trip. But who knows, maybe all three will make it back home for the series against the Cardinals next weekend, as the actual deadline isn't until the Monday? If it's going to happen, I wouldn't mind if it happened early, though. Long goodbyes are tough.
KS
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