"'So you live to die another day . . . '—James Bond"—The 2025 Toronto Blue Jays

 

hey great job, Shane Bieber (also Kirky) 

Nathan Lukes is an interesting case, a guy who didn't really get a chance as a more-or-less everyday player until he was thirty-one, but then immediately turned out to be an exactly league-average hitter who plays a solid right field. He's a useful guy! Weird that it took so long for anybody to fully notice! And yet here we are now, very much enjoying both his RBI-single in the first, and his two-run homer in the fifth, which, together, proved entirely adequate, given the strength of Shane Bieber's five innings, and the quality bullpennery that followed. Did things get a little ticklish in the ninth? Was Jeff Hoffman bailed out by some truly remarkably helpful calls from a seemingly confused home-plate umpire? Well sure. But perhaps we need to simply accept this as Jeff Hoffman's method: despite these many recent ticklishnesses, Hoffman has allowed but one run in this whole nearly-done month of September, and literally everybody would sign up for that from their closer, right? As alarming as his saves can be—which is very!—I do not agree with those calling for a last-second switch to the noble Seranthony Dominguez in his closer-stead: Dominguez rules, and we are so lucky to have picked him up, but he has a real problem with lefties, and is best deployed in his current deployment (late-innings righty-mowing). I'm sure we all wish Yimi Garcia's arm hadn't exploded—I have been, and shall remain, a true Yimi Ultra—but the sad truth is that it is has, and the bullpen is what it is in his absence . . . which is actually pretty good! Wasn't it wild how seemingly all the contending teams went into a collective bullpen spiral right after they all added totally good guys at the deadline? Wasn't that weird? I thought it was! But it's mostly all sorted out now, with the partial exception of the Dodgers, I guess, whose bullpen guys, as I understand the matter, are still at least lightly "going through it." Not ours, though, as we secured our ninety-second win of the season Friday night to keep pace with (and stay tiebreakingly ahead of) the New York Yankees, who looked awfully good against a strong Baltimore starter in the first game of their series. Perhaps the Yankees will falter against the oft-perplexing Tomoyuki Sugano, who gave us fits not long ago? A light falter, even? A Yankees loss (Saturday afternoon) and a Blue Jays win (slightly later Saturday) afternoon would seal the deal on the AL East, and wouldn't that be a lovely way for it all to go? It sure feels like it's all going to come down to Sunday, though, and why shouldn't it, I suppose.

KS

Another Day (in first place [technically]), Another Hard Dollar (in first place [technically])

 

with a spring in his step (jauntwæve)

A six-run sixth—Daulton Varsho's grand slam, followed in due course by George Springer's dinger—and six literally perfect innings from a Varland-to-Lauer-to-Rodriguez bullpen day (three imperfect but still very welcome innings from four worthy others followed thereafter) were all it took to forestall doom (an exceedingly limited kind of doom, and yet a doom) for another day. Let's go! Still in first place over the Yankees, by dint of a tiebreaker, with three games left to play! It is not great that those three games are all against the Tampa Bay Rays, among our peskiest foes for the better part of two decades now, but we've got Shane Bieber going tonight ("Buck," Dan Shulman rightly noted during a recent Bieber outing, "I think moustaches are coming back"), and young fireballer Trey Yesavage tomorrow. Sunday remains, at present, a bit of a poser: if everything is settled by then (Blue Jays locked into first, or locked into fourth, both entirely possible), one might well run out Max Scherzer for what could be his final MLB start, a kind of valedictory outing for a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and appealingly weird guy; if things remain unsettled, meaning there is still a chance for the AL East title and a perfectly delicious bye into the second round, you've pretty much got to go with Kevin Gausman, right? Even though burning him on Sunday would mean he'd be unable to pitch on regular rest in the Wild Card series that would begin Tuesday if things did not work out in that Sunday start? It's really not obvious! I have been burned in situations just like this in the secondary (arguably tertiary) worlds of subcreation engendered by baseball simulation! Reflecting on this, I wonder how far up the "org chart" the consultations would go on a decision like this? With whom would John Schneider either literally need to clear this decision, or just feel that he should clear this decision, given that it is, or at least could turn out to be, super duper fraught? Even assuming the Yankees end up sweeping the Orioles—no easy task, as the Orioles are a decent team, with two good pitchers starting this weekend—the Blue Jays would I guess only need to win either tonight's or tomorrow's game, singular, to keep Sunday in play for the division title, right? And since all the games on Sunday start at-or-very-near(ly-at) the same time (a tremendous innovation in recent seasons), you've pretty much got to make that decision about Sunday as soon as either the Blue Jays win another game (tonight would be great!) or the Yankees lose one (tonight would also be great!), n'est-ce pas? 

There is, as you can see, much to consider—all of it pretty good, and also maybe a little tense.  

KS   

Hey: hey.

 

hey.

Hey. Hey. It's the final Thursday of the 2025 regular season—the very last one! for real! no more Thursdays!—and the Blue Jays are still in first place not just in the AL East, but in the whole great big American League itself (and it really is a lot of teams when you check). That the season, alas, stubbornly—some might say foolishly—runs through Sunday is, I grant you, a bit of a drag, given that this looks likely to the be last day of the Blue Jays' truly remarkable and super enjoyable run atop the division that began, you may well recall, with a four-game sweep at home over the Yankees that occurred both on and around Canada Day, and really a good chunk of that whole first week of July. Remember all that? George Springer's Canada Day grand slam? Wasn't that the greatest? Things have of course gone less great this last little bit, with just one win in our last seven (we won six in a row right before, so who knows man), and yet that one win, I'm sure you will also recall, was the Blue Jays ninetieth of the season (such a crucial number [in terms of my enjoyment, if nothing else]), the playoff-clinching 8-5 Sunday afternoon win in Kansas City, and so there is a very real limit to just how badly we can crash out of this thing over these final four games. Imagine being the Tigers, whose fifteen-and-a-half-game-lead over the Guardians has somehow proven insufficient (haha I can tell you "how"), and who may very well miss the playoffs entirely; or the Astros, recently overtaken by the AL West-clinching Mariners (first division title since the incredible 2001 team, Ichiro's first year), who currently sit a game behind those same sad Tigers heading into play today. It's looking very much like all three teams that led their AL divisions to start September are going to have to settle for wild card spots or worse (and the "worse" is of course much worse). It's been pretty brutal! Given that brutality, we're actually getting off fairly light(ly) here, I think, as the prospect of a slide from holding the best record in the league and the top playoff spot to having the second-best record in the league and the fourth playoff spot looms large(ly) over these final four games. It remains very much the case that if the Blue Jays "win out," they cannot be caught or surpassed or exceeded in any way, as we have winning records against both the Yankees and Red Sox, and so hold those tiebreakers, but that prospect seems . . . let's say unlikely? Things sure would feel a whole lot different had the Yankees, down to their last strike against the White Sox the other night, not tied the game on a wild pitch and walked the Sox off moments later; even just that one more game in the standings would be massive for us with so few remaining. It might make today's bullpen game—featuring Louis Varland as the opener!—seem a little less grim? But enough! I banish all such thoughts! And instead I will say simply: let's get through the weekend without anybody getting hurt; let's forget about running Kevin Gausman out there on the final day of the season trying to clinch anything; and let's just give him the ball on Tuesday and see if we can't win a Wild Card series. I continue to feel that it is totally possible that we can, and also that things are actually, on the whole, good?  "It feels like the sky is falling right now," John Schneider said after the game, "and it’s fucking not. We’ve got ninety wins, we’re in the playoffs, and if the season ended today, we’re winning the AL East." I like it when John Schneider and I are on the same page. I feel that we are stronger as an organization when that it is the case.   

KS 

A Six-Game Winning Streak to Maintain The 2025 AL East Lead, And, More Importantly, To Further Solidify Profound Long-Term Mediocrity

 

oh hey by the way, great job the other night
in your MLB début, Trey Yesavage 

Six wins in a row, and seven-of-eight (against Houston and Tampa Bay, with the Orioles snuggled right in between), would be welcomed by any team at any time, surely, but it seems especially nifty halfway through a September in which one is attempting to seal the deal on both the American League East title and, radder yet, the best record in the American League, full stop. The Blue Jays, up five games (effectively six, given tiebreaking realities) over the fairly contemptible New York Yankees in the East, and four (effectively five, for the same reason) over the noble Detroit Tigers in the American League broadly conceived, are in about as good a September position as they have ever been in their history. And believe me, I'd know! I've been around for almost all of it! Which brings me to my point, one that is at once both broader and narrower than this season's standings, and also a little silly, and it is this: after Tuesday night's 6-5 squeaker over the Rays, the Blue Jays' all-time regular-season record throughout their forty-nine summers now stands at a perfectly balanced—I am inclined to say exquisitely balanced—3850 wins and 3850 losses. This is the first time the Blue Jays have been perfectly .500 (to as many sig figs as you've got) since May 20, 1995, at which point their record stood at 1416 and 1416. It's been a minute, as they say! (It's also pretty wild that the Blue Jays had been above .500 cumulatively at all by that point, so early in their history, even allowing for the amazing ten seasons running 1984 through 1993 in which they had been the best team in baseball.) The Blue Jays now join the Houston Astros as the only expansion teams to be at (or above) .500 over their entire history, and you will recall that it has taken the Astros this last decade of true excellence after deeply strategic deep-tanking of a rebuild for them to get there. It is in this respect, though, that the Blue Jays and Astros (who are also alike in that they have both won two World Series titles [no expansion team has one three]), extremely part company to the max in recent years: while the Astros have been all about peaks (yay!) and valleys (oh no), the Blue Jays have chosen a different path, that of deep and abiding mediocrity, a mediocrity unsurpassed in the recent history of the game. And this is not only a subjective expression of what Werner Herzog might call an ecstatic truth, or, after Worsdsworth, a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; no, we've also got charts about it! Math charts!  

In a recent r/baseball post titled "The most consistently mediocre MLB teams from the last 25 years," user "No-Comfortable-9418" shared remarkably compelling evidence to this effect—the text at the bottom is pretty small, so I will note here that it reads "1999-2024, Formula: Percentage of Mediocre Seasons (0.45—0.55 winning %) x (1-Distance from 0.500 overall record.)" And look: 

We haven't just been mediocre; we have been mediocre with such intensity—with such ferocity, really—that we are outliers at being mediocre. "Makes sense," another redditor notes in that same post; "I remember the 2000's. Every year I was pretty confident we were going to go 83-79." Oh ho, not so fast, user "BillNeedleMailbag"! In my own personal favourite season of the 2000s—the ineffable 2003 season in which Roy Halladay won the Cy Young, and Carlos Delgado lost out on the AL MVP to the otherwise-deserving but admittedly enhanced Alex Rodriguez (I attended every home game on an $81 Toronto Star Season Pass, and have both the scorekeeping book and Vernon-Wells-autographed baseball to prove it)—the Blue Jays managed a stirring 86-76! (The Yankees won 101 that year, the Red Sox 95 to take the lone Wild Card.) Oh hey, let's note, too, that our now perfectly .500 baseball team, the one that has been far and away the most mediocre team of the last twenty-five years, has also, with its back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, won a perfectly average number of championships over its forty-nine seasons. Two titles is exactly what you'd expect of the average team in a league of this size over that much time! Isn't this wild? In a moderate sense?

In sum, I think this is just great. I would also like to say in closing that I am so, so, so stoked about the possibility of wrapping up both the AL East title and the AL itself should the next week-or-so go at all well—playing even just a little better than we did throughout the 1987 collapse would pretty much do it at this point. On the subject of injured shortstops (Tony Fernandez getting slid into was the instigating incident in 1987, you may recall), it is regrettable, certainly, that Bo Bichette's sprained knee is going to keep him out the remainder of the regular season, but Gimenez and Clement up the middle really is a real treat to watch, isn't it? If Bo could DH in the playoffs, that would put Springer in a corner outfield spot, but maybe offer a stronger overall team defense? Especially when you've got Myles Straw to plug into the outfield in the late innings? There is much to consider going forward. But as I am well and truly a guy of the regular season, the next eleven games honestly feel like a bigger deal to me personally than whatever happens in the wacky tournament that happens afterwards. I would also definitely like us to win that wacky tournament! Do not mistake me! And I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that mine is in any sense the enlightened view. But to play 162 games, and come out of it with the best record in the American League—with an outside shot, still, at the best overall record in either league, a feat we did not manage even in the never-to-be-repeated 1984-1993 run—is honestly enough for me, and far more than I expect from or even hope for in any season.

KS  

We'll Still Be In First Place Through Sunday

 

Kevin Gausman, seen here dealin' 

After Monday's tremendous late-inning comeback (Vladdy's throw to third in the tenth: best Vladdy throw ever?), Tuesday's late-inning-comeback-later-thwarted (alas, Jeff Hoffman), and Wednesday afternoon's two-hit, one-walk, Kevin Gausman complete-game shutout (oh boy!), the Houston Astros, probable AL West winners, are behind us. Good! They're pesky! The Yankees' middling performance at home against the Detroit Tigers this week (they dropped two laughers before laughing back just this one time right at the end) has the Blue Jays again leading by three games (functionally four, as the tiebreaker remains deliciously ours), thus assuring us at least one more weekend atop the AL East. The Orioles, who are in town this weekend, are very much at the bottom of that same division, but they've also won eight of their last ten, and have played the Blue Jays reasonably tough(ly) in recent years, so I take little for granted, other than that I will have a nice time watching baseball, or at the very least having it on in the background whilst I pursue complementary pursuits. The Yankees and Red Sox play this weekend—each other, I mean—which means each Blue Jays in the coming days will expand our lead against one or the other. A cheering thought! We're deep enough into all of this that, if the Blue Jays can wrap their final sixteen games at a perfectly .500 eight-and-eight, the Yankees would have to end their season on a twelve-and-four tear, or the Red Sox at twelve-and-three (those tiebreakers are huge). Eighty-four wins is really a very fine place to be with two-weeks-and-a-bit left in the season, and it would be a real shame to make anything less than the most of it, I feel. 

KS

Another 83 310 Loonie Dogs Last Night, if The Auxiliary Scoreboard in Right Field Can Be Trusted

 

bring it on in, Tyler Heineman; bring it on in 

It was easy to feel relatively okay heading into last weekend's series in Yankee Stadium, given that there was no possible result in that three-game set that could see the Blue Jays unseated as AL East leaders heading into the season's final weeks. And yet! It sure would have been a drag to just get dragged, would it not? Have been? How fortuitous, then, that we could set even that possibility aside with so thorough a 7-1 Friday night drubbing that, in that very drubbing, the Blue Jays chased young Yankees starter Cam Schlittler (Buck Martinez's pronunciations did not disappoint) in just the second inning. That the Blue Jays dropped the next two closely contested close contests was no great matter, even if the two-game lead with which they departed New York was not, strictly speaking, enormous. The greater loss, for sure, is that of Bo Bichette, who, correctly sent home on a fly ball to right just ahead of a looming and obvious rain delay Saturday afternoon, slid awkwardly into the catcher's shin guard, and sliced and sprained his whole deal down there. What a rough couple of seasons it has been for Bo Bichette's poor knees: it is no wonder that his once exquisite baserunning has fallen off a cliff (he is a little slower than Vladdy now, which I did not see coming) and his range at short has been hampered. But his bat will be sorely missed, I'm sure, over this stint on the ten-day IL. Maybe he will benefit from just the general rest, this far into the long season? And then rake all October? (On the field of play, is my hope, rather than the field of his yard.)

Last night's game, though, was really something. Before my commitments with regard to the exquisite art of 講道館 柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō took me away after the top of the first, I did manage to both see and lament the two-run shot the Astros' Carlos Correa visited upon Shane Bieber; I lamented further when I put the game on the radio after the gym and learned that, aside from a lone Springer dinger in the sixth, there was really nothing doing, 3-1 Astros late. At least the Tigers had gone up big in New York, I consoled myself, and every day that we can just hold fast brings us one day closer to the AL East title, I could be heard to remark (internally). Imagine, then, my delight, when the Blue Jays put together a Kirk walk, Clement single, Schneider walk, IKF two-run single (IKF! he's back!) bottom of the ninth to send it to extras, whereupon Vladdy made a throw across the diamond to nail Altuve (in his rôle as Manfred Man) with a throw I'm convinced no other first baseman in the league even attempts, let alone makes, before he himself—that self-same Vladdy!—legged out an infield hit in the bottom of the tenth ahead of Tyler Heineman's walk-off fielder's-choice grounder towards a helpless and hapless Christian Walker ten feet off first. Heineman ran through the bag, exultant, and instead of maybe heading towards home plate, where Myles Straw had slid in just ahead of the throw, went straight to Vladdy at second (he had been running on the pitch!) for just a great big hug of a great big hug. I'm not sure by what process Heineman was unshirted before he got to Hazel Mae for the postgame interview alongside Isiah Kiner-Falefa, but in the end he was as shirtless as anyone has ever been; it was a shirtlessness so profound that one could not but ponder on it. 

So here we are, three games up on both New York and Boston—functionally four, in each case, having won the season series against both—with now eighteen to go, and things seem as plausible as ever, or at least as plausible as they've seemed at any point in these last ten years. This has all been, and continues to be, just wonderful. Lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, I will note, too, that even with the top non-playoff team, the Texas Rangers, low-key surging, the Blue Jays should still be safe for at least the final Wild Card spot with literally two or three more wins this season, literally two or three out of the eighteen games that remain. In the spring, I would have totally signed up for an eighty-six-win, final-wild-card-spot 2025 season, and even now I would welcome it, even amidst the sheer madness of the kind of collapse it would take the rest of the way for us to end up with only that. I actually think I may have just talked myself into wondering pretty hard what that would be like? Almost to the point of wanting it to happen, a little? I will push those strange thoughts to the side, though, and stay focused on the task at hand. We've all got to do our part down the stretch, guys.      

KS

. . . And Just Like That, We're The Top Team in The AL Again

 

what like that's hard?

Two crushing bullpen collapses against the scrappy and likeable Milwaukee Brewers were forgiven, though not forgotten, after a super pleasant 8-4 sunny Sunday afternoon semi-romp against those very same Brewers. But then all at once it was off to Cincinnati, to watch ninth-inning homers from Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho drift away on the summer breeze, both in the sense that they lofted their way out of the park quite sweetly, and also that they proved super ephemeral, as the bullpen once again got torched. However! Our time in Cincinnati was on the whole a great boon, as what followed were two truly wild wins—the first 12-9 after leading 8-1; the second 13-9 after trailing 5-0 (Dan Shulman rightly noted that Shane Bieber weirdly put together one the best 5-0 outings you're likely to see)—that are perhaps best understood as living manifestations of the immutable R.B.I. Baseball ethos. It really has been quite a time! With the Blue Jays off today, but the Yankees playing the last of their set in Houston, our AL East lead will sit at either three games or four as the big series gets going in Yankee Stadium on Friday, and I would much prefer the four games to the three, I'll say that much! Though it is true that the Blue Jays hold the tiebreaker by dint (or at least by partial dint) of their unreal four-game sweep of the Yankees in and around Canada Day—and so even a tie at the end of the weekend would still be a Blue Jays lead, of a kind—that would be altogether too ticklish for my liking. So long as the Blue Jays go unswept this weekend (hopefully not too much to ask), we will remain very much in business headed into these final weeks, as far as the AL East is concerned. Setting aside that rightly coveted divisional title for a moment, I would note, finally, that the Blue Jays remain nine-and-a-half ahead of the first AL team that is not in a playoff position, which, with just twenty-two games to go, really makes October baseball very nearly a certainty, for good or ill (I find that it can be . . . a little tense?). 

KS 

Here Come the Brewers

 

George Springer: gets stoked; stays stoked

After a stirring series at home against the Twins—a win over the very fine Joe Ryan in game one; a thorough and crushing bullpen collapse in game two; and a bananas 9-8 win in the series finale (in which my preferred Twin, Byron Buxton, homered twice, but so too Davis Schneider; so too Davis Schneider)—the American League-leading Toronto Blue Jays are set to host the National League-leading Milwaukee Brewers at the SkyDome this final weekend of August and I, for one, am about as stoked about it as a late-innings George Springer who has only recently slid home with a go-ahead run (pictured above, really very stoked). It's going to be a tough set, no doubt, and, on the whole, the Blue Jays' schedule is not an easy one down the stretch. Sadly, neither the Red Sox nor the Yankees seem to be going anywhere, but every day in first place (in one's own division, let alone la ligue entier) is a good day; let us savor this one, and the next, and maybe one and a half of them after that, too (we are three-and-a-half games up, you see). As I have been texting to my baseball pals for a while now, if we can play out the season at a .500 clip—literally fourteen up and fourteen down the rest of our narrow way—that would put us at an absolutely classic ninety-two wins (a number of wins that is truly "show"), and require some fairly remarkable play from either Boston or New York (against both of whom we hold tie-breakers! which could matter!) to catch up. Should you find yourself habitually inclined towards thoughts of doom (not something that can be helped, even if you wanted help), you might note, too, that in order to be left out of the postseason entirely, the Blue Jays would have to be overtaken by the Kansas City Royals (ancient foes of 1985, slightly-less-ancient-but-still-getting-there foes of 2015), who currently sit nine games back; this would require a Blue Jays collapse of 1987 levels (please, no questions; it's still too soon). But man! Wouldn't it be nice! To be tops in the whole league! And skip a whole three-game-coin-toss of a round entirely! And for sure play games at home! But first, these games at home, against the ever-likeable Milwaukee Brewers, accompanied this year by the friendly ghost of the great Bob Uecker ("if they ever turn this park around, I'll be corporeal!"). Shane Bieber and Freddy Peralta on the bump for game one! Let's go!  

KS

Baseball Simulators Are Baseball Feelings Simulators PART TWO

 

available then, certainly

Hello friends! Recently, inspired in part by the reportage of the journaliste John Pollock, who, amidst and among his daily doings, noted that he had been playing a good deal of Baseball Mogul of late ("Oh John," his interlocuter Wai Ting was heard to reply, "not Baseball Mogul again . . ."), I too, have returned to the world of baseball simulation in earnest, taking the 1985 Blue Jays of the secondary world of subcreation all the way to the seventh game of the World Series against the New York Mets (that particular game cut me to the quick, I do not mind revealing to you in all candor), and continuing on merrily beyond. This renewed enthusiasm for baseball simulation (and simulacra!) led me to search through my abandoned Twitter account to find what it was that I had to say, exactly, when I first gave the more-widely-played-than-Baseball-Mogul-but-not-by-me Out of the Park (also a great game!) a solid try a few years ago, and I found that I quite liked what I happened upon in that thread ("Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat. / I made this, I have forgotten / And remember," as Eliot said one time), and wanted to make a record of it here at Baseball Feelings, as a follow-up, of sorts, to the 2022 post "Baseball Simulators: Are Baseball Feelings Simulators," in which I shared a different baseball-simulator Twitter-thread, a 2021 one that chronicled "a long and peculiar Baseball Mogul game (saved as 'Carlos Delgado 2001 til the end'), whose premise had been "what if when I moved to Toronto exactly twenty years ago it was not to go to grad school but instead to run the Toronto Blue Jays and, crucially, be friends with Carlos Delgado." Revisiting that one, the Carlos Delgado one, I can see that things got lightly out of hand, but at the same time, how can you not be romantic about simulated baseball, as a simulated Billy Beane once nearly said to an even more simulated Paul DePodesta-esque simulation?   

The Out of the Park thread that I have dug up, and that I share with you now, actually predates all of that Carlos Delgado-centered Baseball MogulISM, I am somewhat surprised to see. The particular version of the game I was playing at the time was OOTP21, before the game was sold to a mobile game company (I wonder if that helped or hurt the pay-to-play microtransaction stuff I already found lightly gross about it!), and before 日本野球機構 Nippon Yakyū Kikō / Nippon Professional Baseball / NPB was abruptly ripped out of later iterations of the game by a universally despised forced-download patch on Steam (hey sorry guys, we got a mean email from Konami, and now your game that you already paid for has to be worse). Anyway! Away we go! I should note that if you have never played a baseball simulator for computers (I am sure you have played a regular baseball video game at some point, and those are great too of course!), I really cannot recommend the pursuit highly enough, whichever one you choose to turn a portion of your intellectual and emotional life over too. There are others, certainly, but Out of the Park and Baseball Mogul are the ones I know well enough to say anything about. Out of the Park goes deeply deeply deeply on sale in the off-season (or at least it used to? under previous ownership? maybe still does?), and the mobile version is really quite inexpensive at all times (though I feel like, when it first came out, it was literally free, and then you could buy the particular season you wanted to start from? because I am pretty sure I had it on my phone for a time? but now do not?); Baseball Mogul, too, is nearly always discounted, it seems, from its already totally fair price, but its designer Clay Dreslough also makes every edition of the game free after a few years (why not snag Baseball Mogul 2021 for literally zero dollars here, if you have not previously?).    

But enough preamble! Here then, after all of that, is an old thread from a Twitter account I no longer post at, addressing a computer game I played for a bit. 

-------------------------------------------

Oct 29, 2020: "out of the park baseball" is on sale for v. little money rn so I got the most recent one (having not played in years) and my first impression is man idk about this

Oct 29, 2020: I got it not cuz I weary of baseball mogul (of which the weariest will never weary [if the weariest are me]) but cuz of how: 

you can do NPB/KBO leagues which sounds sikk

p. much everybody says it has gotten way better than baseball mogul

it is 75% off for hallowe'en (ok!)

Oct 29, 2020: it is a little disheartening that right after you buy the game & install it (for several thousand hours) it invites you to play PERFECT TEAM mode which seems to be like a freemium game (except you already bought a thing) where you buy packs of cards like hearthstone or something

Oct 29, 2020: I started an 87 Blue Jays game and skipped into the play-by-play mode p. quickly cuz I heard it was 3d now (it def wasn't last time I played one of these!) and it is "of an ass" like why would it be like this

Oct 29, 2020: it's weird cuz all the menus and the overlays on the field are super fancy and modern looking (mb too much so tbh) and then the terrible player models are like bleep bloop blort but in a way that is kind of shit (rather than kind of shitty, and thus possibly neat, if you see)

Oct 29, 2020: I was again a little disheartened BUT in no time at all I had another game started with 北海道日本ハムファイターズ Hokkaidō Nippon-Hamu Faitāzu as Hakodate is, as you know, sister city to Halifax

Oct 29, 2020: there we were at KLEENEX STADIUM MIYAGI (クリネックススタジアム宮城, Kurinekkusu Sutajiamu Miyagi) against the Gōruden Īgurusu! this might still be neat! 

(I will let you know)

Oct 29, 2020: gonna consult "An absolute beginner’s guide to the game of OOTP Baseball: Come, let us be baseball video game dinguses together" (Kate Preusser/Grant Bronsdon) cuz I think I am so baseball mogul-conditioned that idek where to look for things (link here)

Oct 30, 2020: UPDATE I AM THE GREATEST OOTP PLAYER WHO HAS EVER LIVED as my 1987 Blue Jays are 17-3 after a month but also when I finished simming this same month I had like 40 emails to read as though this were in fact an email simulator

Oct 30, 2020: mb this is something ppl really like but ootp is kind of a having-an-actual-job simulator with all these fvkkn emails & also *specific* things your boss wants you to do and it's nothing sikk like "employ willie upshaw in perpetuity" or else you get fired from yr computer game

Oct 30, 2020: a thing I find goofy with modern video games (or ones from like twelve years ago, the last ones I have) is all the ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! stuff which is unfortunately here too like ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! LLOYD MOSEBY HIT STREAK! like dude "the shaker" would never say that

Oct 30, 2020: now I am 37-10 with 91 emails

I was gonna say it would be weird to be simming like 19th century stuff and getting all these emails but I guess it's pretty anachronistic to be getting them in 1987 too (should be payphone calls from scouts with bad marriages imo)

Oct 30, 2020: unless you are method man sending me messages on my motorola sidekick in def jam fight for new york I do not want to get emails in computer games I don't think

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! TONY FERNANDEZ HAS A 26-GAME HITTING STREAK may christ welcome him

I am 56-19 with 194 emails

Oct 30, 2020: idk if it's every time but when I open up the game it is v. insistent you go and CONSUME CONTENT OF VARIOUS KINDS AT SOME WEBSITES uhhhhh sorry dude I am here to unlock achievements and check my emailz

Oct 30, 2020: it is July 1st and Tim Raines is hitting .420 (not for me but I am happy for the Expos) and four players have 70+ RBI (George Bell at 76!) wtfffff

Oct 30, 2020: 59-20 (ten games up on the Tigers!) with 163 unchecked emails in my inbox when the simulation stops to show me an especially important email from my owner that says I still haven't upgraded at second base like he asked DUDE I AM 39 GAMES OVER .500 WITH MANNY LEE YOU MUST CHILL

Oct 30, 2020: OOTP 1987 Blue Jays are now 70-26 and had seven players selected to the AL All-Star Team (Jimmy Key, Steib, Henke, Ernie Whitt [5.5 WAR!], Tony Fernandez, George Bell, Lloyd Moseby)

it stopped my simulation for roster issues not of my making but I fixed it

I have 204 emails

Oct 30, 2020: you get these emails from your scouts that revise their assessments of players which makes sense but it is weird to get a message that revises someone's speed, like yeah the first time I saw him he was fast but now he isn't I guess, sorry that's on me

Oct 30, 2020: getting a bunch of these

Oct 30, 2020: THE 1987 BLUE JAYS SEASON HAS COME TO AN END w/ 103 wins but alas lost a one-game playoff to Detroit but the important thing is that everybody played hard & the computer kept stopping to say there were players somewhere in the organization w/o roster spots

I have 367 emails 

Oct 30, 2020: YOU HAVE UNLOCKED THE FOLLOWING ACHIEVEMENT: SEASON OVER -- GREAT JOB

lol idk about any of this

also the Mets have won the World Series

I have 389 emails

Oct 30, 2020: I do appreciate the encouragement tho

Oct 30, 2020: you have to hire all the staff which is mb a little much especially when you get rebuffed by your heroes so unceremoniously 

(also they got his date of birth wrong)

Oct 30, 2020: oh SHIT though I upped the offer and he's in

next up: mr. belvedere

Oct 30, 2020: to take my 103-win OTTP 1987 Blue Jays to the next level I am gonna have to trade for Bo Jackson

Oct 30, 2020: lol it turns out that if you set it up to use historical roster and lineups but do so inexpertly (that's me!) it disable both trades and the draft lol

Oct 30, 2020: here I am playing baseball simulators for computer in my nice green sweater

Oct 30, 2020: THE DATE IS FRIDAY JULY 1, 1988 and the Toronto Blue Jays lead the AL East w/ a p. tasty record of 52-27; my key off-season additions of Bo Jackson (-0.2WAR) and Alfredo Griffin (0.0WAR) have yet to settle in but they probably will because of how I like them

I have 637 emails

Oct 30, 2020: that you hire staff is on the whole a needlessly tedious element of the game imo but when somebody proposes a trade and a note on your screen says "Assistant GM Bob Uecker says, 'This is not too bad!'" it is kind of a big deal for me emotionally 

Oct 30, 2020: WELL WELL WELL LOOK WHO'S COMING AROUND ON MANNY LEE

I do not like the owner at all and also why am I dealing with him and not Paul Beeston? this is nonsensical

Oct 30, 2020: I have accepted the Expos offer of Dennis Martinez in exchange for youngsters Todd Stottlemyre and Pat Borders against the advice of Assistant GM Bob Uecker but I value his counsel more than he could ever know

I am going to win the fvkkn World Series

I have 671 emails 

Oct 30, 2020: an email from my scouting director has informed me that Alfredo Griffin, at the age of thirty, has suddenly gotten faster

and tbh in this case I believe it

Oct 30, 2020: AL East champs (102-59)

Rance Mulliniks stepped up after the Kelly Gruber trade (for Bo [who is still figuring it out])

do not be fooled by Alfredo Griffin's 100 OPS+ (it is because he apparently appeared in no games lol oops I let the computer decide)

Tony Fernandez forever

Oct 30, 2020: oh wait there was one day left: 103-59

lololololol Rance Mulliniks had 225 hits and won the AL batting title (.348) this game is frivolous TO MY ADVANTAGE

Oct 30, 2020: the 1988 ALCS shall be contested between the late-Exhibition-Stadium-era Toronto Blue Jays and the Oakland Athletics . . . of the Bash Brothers (fast lovers)

Oct 30, 2020: play by play mode in this game is imo awful (more on that later) which is actually better than if it was just kind of bad in which case you would slog through it but in this case you just sim and read summaries OF YOUR CECIL FIELDER WALK OFF 1-0 DAVE STEIB FOUR-HITTER ALCS GAME 1

Oct 30, 2020: eight-inning of shut out from Jimmy Key and a three-run bomb from RANCE MULLINIKS is all you need for ALCS Game 2

Oct 30, 2020: seven scoreless innings from Dennis Martinez (I do not and could never hold this against Bob Uecker) and a 10th-inning Rance Mulliniks (lol wtf) double cashed in by MANNY LEE THIS IS UNCANNY oh shit more like unmanny

Oct 30, 2020: LLOYD MOSEBY CASHES IN ERNIE WHITT IN THE 10th OFF DENNIS ECKERSLY FOR THE SWEEP 

WE ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES AGAINST THE CINCINATTI REDS (r.i.p. to the pirates in six)

PROBABLY TOMORROW BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY LATE AND I HAVE GROCERY STORE SUSHI

ALSO I HAVE 853 EMAILS

Oct 31, 2020: it is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the 1988 OOTP Toronto Blue Jays have fallen to the Cincinnati Reds as Chris Sabo came across in a two-run bottom of the tenth in a game that saw Dennis Martinez himself knock in a run (lol the NL is wild man) 

I have 865 emails

Oct 31, 2020: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED well let's see

it is sometimes cautioned that ootp is too complex, but you can let the computer do almost all the things you don't want to except get emails

imo it is not that it is too complex so much as the interface is cumbersome yeah I said it cumbersome

Oct 31, 2020: it is sometimes said that ootp is hard to get good results in but I have def never won 103 games in consecutive seasons in baseball mogul so how true can that be (lol I will prob lose 100 games if I let it go another season though); plz remember that I am not good at these games

Oct 31, 2020: in terms of æsthetics ootp does not really succeed for me in that the menus (& the game is naught but them) are all wearingly supersaturated and of a style that is like idk like you were gonna play MLB 10: The Show (perhaps other ones also but I don't have those) but just in menus

Oct 31, 2020: the modern look of everything seems to be what many ppl like of it but imo it just looks like everything else and why would you want baseball to look modern in any way

it is undeniably decorous with like how topps 2020 cards look though (no diss I have a set of these) so whatevz

Oct 31, 2020: one might well contrast ootp's deliberate supersaturated glare of ultramodernity with the soothingly haphazard windows 3.1 vapourwæve lethargy of baseball mogul æsthetics and then real quick guess which one I like better lol

Oct 31, 2020: a couple of other ways baseball mogul is better I think aside from its low-key unlicensed/jostenswæve vibez are first that it is a tiny and super fast program that makes no demands on your computer (it is p. much a spreadsheet lol) whereas ootp is a bit of a hog for what it is

Oct 31, 2020: and secondly baseball mogul totally has play-by-play mode figured out and has for like at least ten years; all of the several ootp play-by-play views, even the one that copies the mogul one, range from awful to make me seasick lol (I have read that this gets other ppl too)

Oct 31, 2020: if all you ever do is sim games in bunches this wouldn't matter at all but I really like play-by-play mode! it is how you really *connect* with alfredo griffin running heedlessly into ruinous outs

Oct 31, 2020: I think the ideal baseball simulator TO ME would be baseball mogul with NPB, KBO, and Minor League mods but nobody seems to be modding baseball mogul anymore (the humble baseball card mod remains the greatest of all mods imo) so I get it, ootp is v. good too 

Oct 31, 2020: ootp's advantages are imo mainly that 1) it has all kinds of non-MLB leagues (with iffy rosters in NPB right? idk about the KBO ones) and 2) (probably more important for lots of ppl) you can change *everything* whereas baseball mogul just does mlb (but imo does so v. pleasingly)

Oct 31, 2020: ootp's disadvantages are that it is garish and complicit with power

Oct 31, 2020: that plus play-by-play mode

Oct 31, 2020: IN SUMMATION ootp is still like no money cuz of the hallowe'en sale and baseball moguls up to/including the 2017 one are utterly free (they charge money for the new ones they make) and Each Holds Its Place in the Divine Economy imo

ty for yr attn to these matters

more later mb!

Oct 31, 2020: oh dang my ootp season score is 921 which the computer describes as "phenomenal" and characterizes me as "a genius" lol I must warn you young lady I am susceptible . . . to flattery

Oct 31, 2020: there is no way alfredo griffin would *ever* dm this to me, this is a major AI failure

Oct 31, 2020: 3rd AL East title in a row, this game is EASY (87-75 this year though, huge decline) and Tony Fernandez (8.9WAR) is "op" as fvkk *but I like that* 

ken griffey jr. has arrived and he hit like .360 as part of his like 1.000 ops or something

once again I will ALCS w/ tha A'zzzzz

Oct 31, 2020: AND SO ENDS OUR TIME TOGETHER ON THIS PARTICULAR OOTP SAVE I BELIEVE as I thank you once more for your time and note in closing that I have 908 emails even though hundreds seemed to have deleted once they were a year old

what a game

Nov 1, 2020: just when I thought I was "out" (of the park baseball 21) they pull me back in haha as I was offered both orel hersheiser and kirby puckett for not that much (yes plz) and 97-65 and a FOURTH consecutive AL East title & yet also this to deal with, what the hekk (plz see attached)

Nov 1, 2020: IRL Tony Fernandez had seasons of 5.5 and 5.6 WAR at his best; here's OOTP Tony Fernandez in the five seasons of this sim in which I am an AL East juggernaut: 7.9 8.0 8.1 8.1 10.5 

TEN POINT FIVE WAR, this game is frivolous / Tony Fernandez fielding smooth, like an exquisite fish

Nov 1, 2020: my ALCS rotation of Orel Hersheiser, Juan Guzman, Dave Steib, and Jimmy Key has proven too much for the Chicago White Sox especially since John Olerud hit like .500 in the seriesssssssss look out Cincinnati Reds 

I wonder if in this sim Marge Schott is still racist

Nov 1, 2020: in case you are too yung to know: "She [Schott] was banned from managing the team by MLB from 1996 through 1998 due to statements in support of German domestic policies of Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler; shortly afterwards, she sold the majority of her share in the team."

Nov 1, 2020: Harpo notes: "She referred to Eric Davis and Dave Parker was 'million dollar n-words who aren't worth a damn.' and she didn't understand why people were mad."

fully reprehensible also imagine being so blinded by hatred that you couldn't even tell that those specific guys rule

Nov 1, 2020: you know who is great in these simulation games? Greg Myers, which is sikk because 2003 Greg Myers is for sure my all-time fav season by a Blue Jays catcher

(they were calling him "Crash" at that point which I think happens to p. much all old catchers but I bet they all like it)

Nov 1, 2020: DAMN IT lost to the Reds in six games and got WKRPwned 11-3 in the clincher 

as a "Blue Jays choke in every season prior to 1992" simulator OOTP21 is so far flawless

Nov 1, 2020: 90 wins was not enough for the 1992 Blue Jays to finish any better than third but Tony Fernandez has led the league with 10.2 WAR and even more importantly with 15 triplzzzzz

irl tony fernandez is one of the thirty best SS ever by WAR

ootp tony fernandez is gonna break top ten

Nov 1, 2020: 1993: 92 wins (another 8.8 WAR for Tony Fernandez!) and the team owner is threatening to fire me

and now we see the violence inherent in the system

Nov 1, 2020: THE 1993 MONTREAL EXPOS ARE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS and to such an extent, like you wouldn't believe the year Larry Walker had

Nov 1, 2020: while the expos GM is unthrilled with my attempts to secure both marquis grissom and randy johnson without giving up all that much, my spirits are bolstered, as ever, by assistant GM bob uecker

Nov 1, 2020: once you know which buttons to press when your simulation gets stopped over some deep-dive orginizational roster tedium that seems like a chore, the problem of there being way too much to do in OOTP completely disappears, you just let the AI take care of things like . . .

Nov 1, 2020: that said I win like 90 games a year with Tony Fernandez headed to the HOF on the first FRIKKIN ballot easy but it looks like I'm gonna get fired so it's a mixed bag

current inbox status: 892 emailz

Nov 1, 2020: 1995: another AL East title; another 6.2 WAR for Tony Fernandez whose 79.0 career WAR has him the fifth best shortstop in the history of baseball (I'M *SAYIN*); another 784 emails that contain demonstrably unnecessary information

playoffs bb let's gooooooooo

Nov 1, 2020: far enough along in the timeline now that other GMs are like hey how about these several baseball players you do not love in exchange for yung Carlos Delgado whom you do and Assistant GM Bob Uecker is like "I don't know about this one, boss" and I am like you said it Uke

Nov 1, 2020: Orioles in three, Brewers in seven, now the Mets in the World Series and look at this beautiful lineup I have assembled thru no guile but instead feelingz (my big three starters are Juan Guzman, Orel Hersheiser, Jimmy Key, assembled similarly)  

note MANNY LEE 

# l o y a l t y

Nov 1, 2020: omg it happened

Nov 1, 2020: Orel Hersheiser (whose model Louisville glove I have had since like '91) pitched a game seven two-hitter at Shea Stadium and that's it, these 1995 OOTP Toronto Blue Jays join the 1985 Baseball Mogul Toronto Blue Jays as the only simulated baseball teams I won with/did not ruin

Nov 1, 2020: I would like to thank you all very much for joining me on this extraordinary journey thru pretendball (dj brilliant's important term) and huginn (thought) and muninn (memory) and 心 kokoro/shin (mind/heart/spirit) 

I have 803 emails

Nov 1, 2020: imagine if you dare how ripped Assistant GM Bob Uecker is gonna get tonight

Nov 2, 2020: and so this OOTP save has run its course with the retirement of Tony Fernandez with a career WAR of 90.2 making him the third best shortstop ever (Honus Wagner, Cal Ripken Jr.) and a better career than, like, Ken Griffey Jr.

-------------------------------------------

And that would seem to be where we left things! I may well start up another OOTP game, I am now thinking, once my current Baseball Mogul exercise at last attains whatever final form awaits it in the fullness of time (maybe pretty good? a pretty good form? not too bad a one? still way too early to tell). 

 KS

This Continues To Be Great

 

first of many

After the Blue Jays swept the poorlier and poorlier Colorado Rockies—scoring forty-five runs on sixty-three hits along their exceedingly merry way—there were two lightly disappointing losses last weekend against the mighty and largely unmindable Dodgers. I say only lightly disappointing, in that one's baseball happiness cannot really be permitted to hinge on whether or not you beat the Dodgers, or else there will be precious little baseball happiness to be had at all, right? But right after that, like even before the Blue Jays left Los Angeles even, there came what was, I'm pretty sure, their best win of the year so far, a 5-4 Sunday afternoon comeback win on the strength of late home runs from Vladdy, Barger, and finally Ernie Clement. After Jeff Hoffman almost incomprehensibly walked five batters in just two-thirds of an inning of work (a new one to me, I think), the peerlessly-named and well-sweepered Mason Fluharty struck out Shohei Ohtani and got a groundout from Mookie Betts (both of these occurrences occurrencing with the bases loaded, mind you) to end just a tremendous back-and-forth game. It really was quite a thrill! From there, two-out-of-three at home against the very fine Chicago Cubs in front of huge crowds (even on Thursday afternoon!), in which Hoffman got right back on the horse and, whilst ahorse, struck out all kinds of guys. And then! And then! Guys guys guys it happened! Just last night! It really happened! By which I mean: Alejandro Kirk stole a base! For the first time ever! And almost certainly the last! It was seemingly a broken hit-and-run, runners on first and third, in which Myles Straw swung through strike three, and nobody really covered second base, so there you go; that's literally all it takes. It is notable too, I suppose, that Kirk had previously homered in the seventh to bring the Blue Jays back into a game that Jacob De Grom had made pretty difficult for them up to that point, and that, in the eighth, Kirk also knocked in Vladdy and Bo to put the Blue Jays ahead for the first time in the game (and permanently, because Hoffman is rolling now), but the main thing is that Alejandro Kirk now has the literally highest possible career stolen base percentage, surpassing by far, for example, say, Lou Brock, or Rickey Henderson. To mark this lofty feat, Vladdy snagged the actual literal physical base at the earliest opportunity, like immediately after the final out, and presented it to Kirk, who had already been standingly-ovated over this delightful turn of events. What a fun time! Everybody loved it! And then just this afternoon and early evening, in fact at this the very hour of our composition, Myles Straw, of all people (eight career home runs in his nearly seven-hundred games played headed into today) homered twice as the Blue Jays beat the Rangers 14-2. They keep coming up with fun new stuff, these 2025 Toronto Blue Jays, and it's really great! Long may it remain more or less so!

KS  

And Just Like That, The Blue Jays Have The Best Record in Baseball

 

How can we know the flipper from the flip?

I was already perfectly content with how things had gone, and how they were continuing to go, when the Blue Jays picked up their fifty-ninth win of the season in their hundredth game, a feat they have never managed previously. I was even more content when, after sweeping the San Francisco Giants and taking two-out-of-three from the defensively-woeful Yankees (I feel no woe about that personally, of course), the Blue Jays trounced the sliding Detroit Tigers to overtake Houston for the top spot in the American League broadly (please note that the Astros will forever be a National League team to me and nothing can change this). But after last night's additional Tigers-drubbing, my heart grew contentlier still, as the Blue Jays now hold—however fleetingly—the best overall record in baseball (sixty-two wins against forty-two losses) for the first time time since August 2nd, 1992, a season I remember as vividly as baseball from thirty-three years ago can be remembered (which is actually super vividly, in several key regards). This season has been, and continues to be, a marvel, and one of the particular ways I have been marveling at it is to consider how much it feels to me like 1992, in particular, in that the 1992 Blue Jays, on paper, did not present all that differently, in terms of what you'd expect from them, from any team since about 1987 (I am setting aside our best-ever 1985 squad, a missed opportunity forever to be mourned), which is to say: the 1992 team looked like a solid contender, just as they had for the better part of a decade, but there were several other solid contenders against which they must inevitably contend, and who can say what might arise out of that contention? But then they won, and you look back at it, and maybe even run a little Baseball Mogul or Out of the Park (who among us has not at least dabbled?), and it is like, yeah, an excellent baseball team, but what made that team the one that finally won? Happenstance, as much as anything, I suppose. About the 1993 team, there is of course no mystery: having spent all of the money that has ever existed, the only time the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays were not on base is when they were jogging back to the dugout from home plate having recently scored. It would have been insane for them not to have won. And so they did. 

This is in no way a prediction, of course, or an expectation that I have, but the 2025 team gives me the 1992 feeling, in that they are a team that, despite last year's obvious disaster, has been contending with the same core for five years, made a few little tweaks but nothing remarkable headed into this year, and yet here we are atop the league, somehow. And yet, here's how we're doing it: leading the league(s) in batting average, on-base percentage, and on-base-plus-slugging, all of which feels heavily 1993-coded. They aren't slugging like one might have hoped or expected, but they are putting the ball in play at an improbable rate (not by historical standards, but by contemporary ones), and BABIPping their way to glory and renown. The starting rotation has been good but not great; the bullpen has been good but not great; and people are still complaining about Vladdy (perhaps the only player in the league who could go two-for-four with a single, a double, and a walk, and it'll be like "man what's wrong with Vladdy?"). And yet here we are. Oh, and of course the fielding: it has been excellent once again; we are truly spoiled for fielding, and having watched the Yankees kick the ball around the other night for four errors (a gross tally that, even in its grossness, does not capture the extent of their misplay), dude I am so grateful for all the fielding (great job guys!).  

With just a few days to go before the trade deadline, the Blue Jays are expected to be as "all in" as is realistically possible given who is available (it's not going to be a huge year for anybody, looks like), but maybe the biggest improvements are to found internally? As soon as Daulton Varsho returns, our already-excellent defense improves, and we'll be getting more out of his bat than we're getting out of Myles Straw's (no diss, Myles Straw; love your hustle out there bro); can Anthony Santander offer at least the possibility of a power bat off the bench, once he is able to resume "baseball activities" (a phrase of which I am very fond)? What if Alek Manoah, continuing his long rehab, is able to offer even minimal service down the stretch, to lighten the load on the bullpen if nothing else? That last one is probably a stretch. The boldest move, and the one that appeals to me the most, would be to truly follow the example of the 1992 season, and trade for David Cone. But nobody listens.

KS