White Sox 12, Blue Jays 4: Look, Nobody Is Saying This Is Ideal

 

"tfw" you have allowed a five-run second inning and, 
as you are also Spencer Miles, you are unaccustomed to "tf"

First off, how was your break? Mine was pretty good! Did you enjoy the actual All-Star Game (aka All-Star Game Actual)? It was weird for there to be no Shohei Ohtani, no Aaron Judge, no Vladdy—there were lots of excellent baseball players, obviously, but injuries (low-grade and otherwise) kept some key "stars" away, and the game of course felt smaller for it—but I think I have enjoyed every MLB All-Star Game I have ever watched, at least a little (my favourite was definitely 1990 in Wrigley Field, not because the game itself was really any great shakes, but because I was eleven, yet allowed to stay up, and though I fell asleep on the basement couch sometime before the rain delay, I woke up just as it ended, and there I was, up super late at night watching baseball like an incredibly powerful adult). I was of course pleased that Dylan Cease struck out Schwarber, Soto, and Abrams in his inning (that he walked Freddie Freeman is okay, as Freddie Freeman has always seemed nice); I liked that Louis Varland's inning went really well, too. Ernie Clement, true to form, swung on the first pitch of each of his two at-bats, and that both were groundouts is just fine. He definitely had the play-of-the-night in the field; you should have a look if you haven't! His homies all pointing at him and stuff! That's what you want to see! You may have noted in that clip that the National League player from whom Ernie Clement is "stealing" that hit is smooth-fielding Los Angeles Dodger Andy Pages, who likewise "stole" a hit from Ernie Clement last November (I was about to say "October" somewhat generically, but haha nope! it was actually November, in that it was in Game Seven!) in a way that the Dodgers—as is their right; please do not mistake me—have chosen to immortalize in a surprisingly hurtful bobblehead (words I did not expect to utter, but feelings I did not expect a bobblehead to engender, and so here we are):

somehow more damaging than
the actual photograph upon which it is based

But why dwell, as I always say and obviously also definitely feel about the 2025 World Series (what good could come of it?). Instead, let us stride forth boldly into this second half of the 2026 season! And what better way to start it with a full-on drubbing at home at the hands of the surprisingly delightful Chicago White Sox in a game we couldn't even watch on Sportsnet on account of how it was an Apple TV game! I am actually kidding you, in that that was honestly kind of a drag of a way to start it, honestly. In a sense, though, and selfishly, it might as well have been a radio-only game for me (as it was, although our actual over-the-air radio station that carried the games was recently shuttered, but the Fan590 remains available to me through my telephone that is also a small mobile computer), as I was unwell, and Ben Shulman and Chris Leroux were good company as I drifted into and out of awareness as to just who, precisely, was getting lit up (turns out Miles, Macko, Corbin, and Fisher, although CJ Van Eyk got through two innings pretty clean [also I am much improved today; please do not worry]). That the Blue Jays hit three solo home runs—by Urías, Springer, and Valenzuela—is to be admired, but it would have been a whole lot cooler with a couple guys on base on ahead of them, wouldn't it? Ah, well; next time, surely.

An inauspicious start to the late-middle part of the season upon which so much hinges! (In terms of whether or not you trade for additional guys and such.) A kind-of-miraculous three-and-a-half games back despite being seven games under .500, though not yet definitive, is not entirely where you'd want to be at this point, but what can you do? Just "ballparking" things (haha!), I would imagine eighty-five wins would be enough to get one of those three wildcard spots this year, right? And so we'd need to win exactly forty of our remaining sixty-five? That sounds really hard to do when you say it that way (or go so far as to divide forty by sixty-five [I would say don't; it is bad news]), but if you say it like "if we can just get back to .500, and grab even just a few games beyond that, we're probably good to go" I think you'll find that it is simplicity itself. 

KS