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| I really like our middle infield (let's turn two, boys) |
It took José Soriano a tonne of pitches to get nearly-but-not-quite-all-the-way through five innings this afternoon: it was four-and-two-thirds, when all was said and done, over which he was charged with three. Not the end of the world, but for a man of his talents, it was understandable that Soriano looked a little frustrated with either himself or maybe just with the way things had gone generally, but I hope he took at least a little comfort in the four runs the Blue Jays had cobbled together in the top half of that same inning: walks from both Ernie Clement and Brandon Valenzuela (each of whom won an ABS challenge en route to their "free pass"); an attempted sacrifice bunt that turned into an infield hit for Brett Bateman, our fleet young gamer of a centre fielder (who has performed much better than Kevin Gausman since the trade, believe it or not [not that we wish anything but good things for Gausman, but it's notable]); a two-run double from Nathan Lukes; a deep sac fly from Vladdy to score another; and a Jésus Sanchez single just off the mitt of hard-charging centre fielder Steven Kwan, who is admired by all (also his father's name is Ray; I feel like we need to remind ourselves of this tremendous fact at every opportunity) to bring in the fourth. Josh Smith's late homer was very welcome, as were the familiar sights of Tyler Rogers soft-tossing his way through the eighth, and Louis Varland touching one-oh-two on the radar gun in the ninth to win what honestly really felt like a playoff series (for us; I don't know how the smattering of Cleveland fans in attendance felt about it [it was a day game on a school day, so I get it, but let's get out there and support the team!]).
This one was so much fun! And it brings us to just a half-game behind the Guards for the final playoff spot, which is also really quite fun. We're just a game under .500! It has kind of been a while! We're still on the outside looking in, and the odds are not expressly in our favour, but actually checking in on those odds at FanGraphs real quick, they've gone from 4.3% (August 6th, five games out) to 32.1% (literally right now, a half-game out, as you will recall from a proximate utterance). Nothing is certain, obviously (that's part of the fun!), but I think you will agree that things that have a one-in-three chance kind of happen all the time, right? Think of your favourite single-season performance in which a guy of whom you are fond got a hit in about a third of his plate appearances—it felt like he was getting a hit just about every time up there, didn't it! You couldn't keep him off the bases! Actually, I have just now checked Ichiro's rookie season, in which he put up an absurd 242 hits in his 738 plate appearances (that's also really a lot), which is to say he was hitting safely in 32.7% of his times at "the dish" (his batting average that season was .350, as walks and sacrifices are taken away from the denominator in batting average, as you may well recall). What I am suggesting, then, is that having faith in these 2026 Toronto Blue Jays making the playoffs requires no greater leap of it (faith, that is) than it takes to believe that 2001 Ichiro would get a base hit. I think we can all have at least that much faith without even having to work all that hard at it, probably.
KS
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