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Quite a night for the new guys! José Soriano, newly arrived from the Angels, looked sharp, allowing two runs in his nearly five innings of work, with only one of them earned, as, Jésus Sanchez, god love him, is coming up with entirely new ways of misplaying balls in left field (seen from a certain perspective, it's really quite breathtaking). Brett Batemen, a reputedly zero-power centre-fiedling prospect who came over from the Cubs as part of the Kevin Gausman deal, ripped the first pitch he saw in his major-league début—off of the great Zack Wheeler no less! (also Wheeler got pretty mad when Blue Jays hitting coach David Popkins complained-to-the-point-of-ejection about Wheeler not actually standing on the rubber when pitching from the windup [in the aftermath, Myles Straw is said to have uttered a swear])—all the way, narrowly missing a home run, and walked twice. Josh Smith, heretofore a Ranger (he came over for Adam Macko), had three hits (including a home run! on his birthday!) whilst playing a sharp third base. And Matt Waldron, a relatively hard-throwing knuckleballer (it's in the low eighties, and that's pretty hard for a knuckleball) we picked up off of waivers from the Padres, pitched a scoreless eighth (Alejandro Kirk used one of Vladdy's first-baseman's mitts to catch the knuckler, which was neat). All good stuff from the new guys! Throw in some nice outings from some of the more familiar faces—Nathan Lukes' two hits, including one that came at the end of a fifteen-pitch at-bat; a homer from the sneaky-strong Andrés Giménez; and good, or good enough, relief work from Mason Fluharty, Lazaro Estrada, and Brandon Little—and you'd figure we're probably all set headed into the ninth with a 5-2 lead, right? Kind of not so, though! In that things got hairy as all heck! The ninth inning fell to the underhanded (in the non-duplicitous sense) Tyler Rogers, who has been about as steady as they come over a period of several years now, but last night, less so: walks to both Bryson Stott and Justin Crawford to open the inning were followed by a catcher's interference call on Alejandro Kirk (who had a weird night, with a couple of uncharacteristically poor misses on ABS challenges) to put Kyle Schwarber on and load the bases with nobody out; a Trea Turner grounder brought in a run at the cost of an out; Bryce Harper "singled" past/through Ernie Clement at second but Ernie sure thought he should have had it (no real argument here, as Ernie's up-and-down year with the glove mysteriously continues) to bring in another; then another walk (Louis Arraez this time); a ground ball to second that saw Ernie cut down the run at the plate (attaboy, Ernie); and finally a truly bizarre groundball to second that saw Okamoto (in at first again with Vladdy troubled by a hammy, his back, and who knows what else) lurch momentarily to his right, making it difficult for him to get back to first base to receive Ernie's throw before the hard-charging Brandon Marsh got to the bag, but all of a sudden Okamoto hit the deck just as Tyler Rogers burst onto the scene as though he were dashing through the Emerald Hill Zone (perhaps Emerald Hill Zone Act 2) to snag the throw and, upon review, yes, end the game. What the heck, man.
All told, a pleasure! I will note that it was a long game by modern standards, though, at three-hours-twenty minutes (what an era, honestly, that that's all of a sudden a long game again), and didn't start until pretty late, following quite a rain delay. All of this despite retractable-roof stadiums (excuse me, stadia [pardon me, stadipodes]) being a totally known thing for more than thirty-five years. It seems as though something could be done.
KS
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