Red Sox 7, Blue Jays 0: Not Max Scherzer's Fault, Though

 

we have had these seats, more or less (they're nice!)

For seven innings or so, this was a much better game than you'd guess from the admittedly somewhat lopsided final score: Max Scherzer—who, in his four starts since his return from injury, has posted a 2.37 ERA in nineteen innings— allowed a run in the first, and that was all anybody managed until the Red Sox broke out somewhat in the eighth (four runs) and again in the ninth (a further two).  Regrettably, engaging Red Sox lefty Payton Tolle allowed just two hits (one to Vladdy, the other to Nathan Lukes) in his eight excellent innings, and that was about the size of it. Nevertheless! Who among us at the outset would have found the slightest fault with a three-one series win over the much-better-than-us Boston Red Sox? I sure wouldn't! Have! And so why quibble now, I say. We find ourselves, at the end of it, two games behind the Tigers, it is now (R.I.P. to the Texas Rangers I guess), for the final Wild Card spot, as we embark on the worst possible nine-game stretch that could be visited upon us: three with the Yankees (the second-best team in the AL), three with the Rays (the best), then three more with the Yankees (still second-best, as per our previous report). That's bad! What would we find satisfying over this stretch—shall we say four wins? Could we find it in our hearts to mind four wins in such a circumstance? I don't know that I could. Either way, there'll be thirty games left once we're on the other side of it, a good portion of which will be against the teams with whom we are all muddled up in the middle of these AL standings, which provides more than enough opportunity for us to make a run, should things break, not even "our way," but just not in a way that is in full-on diametrical opposition to our happiness and prosperity. Something that does stand in full, unrelenting opposition to my personal happiness (not prosperity, I guess, but I do still mind it) is that tonight's game is on Apple TV, rather than Sportsnet (with our dear friend Dan Shulman), and although it is easy enough to find a stream of it On The Internet, the downside of doing so, in my experience, is that it still means you're watching the Apple TV feed, even if for free (monetarily). Looks like a Fan590 night! Break out your slim radios, or set your mobile devices to slim-radio mode.

KS