Tigers 6, Blue Jays 5: What About My Heart, Though

 

tell me about it, José Soriano; tell me about it

After putting two runs on the board in the first (an Alejandro Kirk RBI single, then a wild pitch to bring George Springer scurrying home), the Blue Jays loaded the bases in both the second and the third, but failed to add to their early lead. But no matter! Because, would you look at that, José Soriano has a perfect game going through five! And a no-hitter going through six! Anyone who has watched a significant amount of baseball will recognize the dark phenomenon which unfolded before us in that seventh, though, in which a no-hitter becomes a multiple-run several-hitter in alarmingly quick fashion. It's no fun when that happens! By the time we got through that doomed top-half of the seventh, we were on the wrong end of a four-two score and yet it was no great matter on account of a characteristically towering three-run home run from the hot-as-the-super-hottest-fire Kazuma Okamoto (his thirty-third of the year, which is really something) to put us up late! And our bullpen rules! So we're good! And yet we were not: Joe Mantiply, who has given us no trouble at all this season, got touched up in the eighth such that the call for a five-out save fell upon Louis Varland, our stoutest of stalwarts (and most stalwart of stout guys), who just could not, on the whole, get it done Monday night: most troublingly, in the ninth, he was charged with a straight-up-whiffing-on-the-ball error on a nice throw from Vladdy on a tough play at first; Louis turned his head to look towards the base just an instant ahead of when he should have, and *whoop* there goes the ball, trickling away as the soon-to-be-winning run scampers in. Weighty though all this felt (the crowd was awesome), it was only Varland's second blown save (le sabotage!) of the season, and he has been so great (exceeding even the loftiest expectations) all you could do was accept it all as a true "pobody's nerfect" moment. The White Sox, thankfully, handled the Guardians in the first meeting of their three-game series that is sort-of-possibly for the AL Central title, and so we remain just a game back (and a half-game ahead of the lurking Rangers) with now eleven games to go. Just eleven! I see that Braydon Fisher is the scheduled starter tonight, which no doubt means he is "opening" more than starting, and one would assume a good deal of Spencer Miles (as much as we can get!) behind him? Had a bullpen day not been in the cards for the Tuesday game, one wonders if Spencer Miles might have appeared Monday? But there's no use worrying at it: Sewald to Mantiply to Varland was obviously not a bad plan at all after Soriano; it just didn't work out. That's baseball, Suzyn, as the late John Sterling would famously say (to Suzyn, primarily, but its wisdom exceeds those bounds, too).

KS