Reds 5, Blue Jays 1: Honestly A Little Sloppy

 

the undeniable Elly de la Cruz, ladies and gentleman

Statistically, the Blue Jays have been, on the whole, an above-average defensive team this season, which is undeniable in the aggregate, but it sure hasn't been evenly distributed, has it? Vladdy has been really good at first; Valenzuela and Kirk have been even better at the plate; Giménez remains one of the top infielders in the game; and young voltigeur Brett Bateman has impressed already. But outside of that, it's been tricky: left field, in particular, has been a sore spot all year (and think of how many balls get hit to left field! it's so many!), of course, but its the strange plight of Ernie Clement that has proven the most troubling. He still makes the occasional semi-spectacular play (a nice dive to his left after an able scurry on a groundball in the eighth Saturday, for instance), but he's made a hash out of far more routine (or nearly routine) plays this year than you'd ever have expected. That drag of a fact, coupled with Ernie's sad decline at the dish in the second half (he is among the worst hitters to receive regular playing time since the break), makes one wonder if a return to a utility role (rather than an everyday second baseman) may be in his future? I say all this, but neither of the Blue Jays' two errors yesterday (not that errors necessarily tell the whole tale of course [they did not on this day]) in a fairly flat 5-1 loss were Ernie's, but rather one was charged to young first baseman Sean Keys, and the other to the not-just-gold-but-indeed-platinum-gloved Andrés Giménez. But both in Saturday's game, and the season more broadly, the defensive troubles, such as they were (again: still above average! believe it or not!), would be much easier to ignore were the Blue Jays anything other than the lowest scoring team in baseball (six-hundred-forty-three runs sounds like a lot until you divide [usually division is fun, but in this instance, it is not]). But we sure are! And that, even putting aside the truly insane number of injuries sustained by our starting rotation, goes pretty far in explaining why we enter Sunday's final game of the season already assured of last place in the AL East (the Orioles hold the tiebreaker on account of their recent sweep [you may, alas, recall it!]), rather than last year, where Alejandro Kirk's first-inning grand slam against the Rays in game one-sixty-two helped us clinch the division with a ninety-four win season. We all agree that was better; there's no reason to belabour the point.  

KS