Rays 4, Blue Jays 2; Rays 5, Blue Jays 1; Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 5: So That's Four Losses in a Row For Your Last-Place Toronto Blue Jays

whooooooooooooof

Well the Blue Jays have been terrible but at least Jose Reyes is on the DL! 

Also, Ricky Romero, who as you will perhaps recall was once a boss, has been quietly released by the Blue Jays after having everything utterly fall apart completely and forever (professionally, I mean; I know nothing of his inner world). This is a saddening reminder of the fleeting nature of all earthly glory. I will label this post with all of the Ricky Romero tags that have accompanied Ricky Romero baseball feelings lo these many intermittent years of them.

R.I.P. The Blue Jays Tenure of Ricky Romero Who Had A Nice Curve Ball For A While That We All Liked 

forever young

KS

Red Sox 5, Blue Jays 1; Red Sox 10, Blue Jays 4: I totally got sneak-day-gamed today

what's up, sad guys?

I am an almost preternaturally with-it and together guy so imagine my surprised when I learned that a day game happened without my knowing about it even faintly. What did I miss? Ricky Romero getting absolutely pounded for only his second loss of the year, for starters. He has been less than himself for a while now so this is not shocking, but he really did get lit up, and lasted a few. However! E5 belted his twenty-second, and Jose Bautista his majors-leading twenty-fifth. Bautista, who is still only hitting .237, is now hovering around the AL top ten in OPS, because he is still walking a ton and yeah those homers but he is hitting like no doubles, which is really weird: he's at nine, and no triples, actually. So it is like, here is a dude with an OPS made up almost entirely of walks and home runs. The dream of the nineties!


Oh yeah the previous night the Blue Jays lost unremarkably by a score of 5-1, and I have no idea who is pitching any of the games until it's Romero again, honestly.


KS

Blue Jays 12, Marlins 4; Blue Jays 7, Marlins 1: lol the Marlins suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck right now

you're that is totally sad john buck back there

The scores here would suggest that these similar kinds of games, but really they weren't at all. Friday night, Ricky Romero continued to not pitch all that bossly, while Bautista et al. wilded out on that ridiculous(ly awesome) new ballpark in Miami. Today's game, despite the score, was a full-on pitcher's duel most of the way, featuring, for the Blue Jays' part, this new version of Brett Cecil who is not all that bad but about whom you cannot help but have continued concerns re: velocity. The game's duelishness outlasted the starters, and carried right into the ninth, where an E5 solo home run looked as though it might well be enough to win it but then the Marlins totally kicked it around literally balked and before you know it we are looking at a 7-1 fiasco after a Colby Rasmus grand slam rather than the 2-1 nailbiter it had seemed only moments ago. Also notable: Darren Oliver being his bad self throwing breaking balls for strikes even when he's behind because he can. 


KS

Blue Jays 3, Phillies 0; Blue Jays 6, Phillies 5 (F/10): Oh Man What Is Even Going On Here

sorry skip my arm exploded

So, because of baseball I totally get that clustering is a feature of randomness, and also that random clusterfucks are a feature of baseball, but Jesus Christ what is going on here is a feeling I definitely felt following yet another Blue Jays starter -- this time young Drew Hutchinson -- going down with an injury after basically no pitches and further dooming us. Mike Wilner, who I on the whole do not enjoy, tweeted something to the effect that after the trainer had been talking to the freshly injured Hutchison, he sat down on the bench for a minute and had a few words with Ricky Romero, who then proceeded to bury his head in his hands (like a boss?). After the Phillies (specifically Mike Fontenot) threw that game away Friday night, it was Ricky Ro himself who took the mound Saturday afternoon, and he wasn't all that good. But a J. P. Arencibia tied it late! And Rajai hit the walkoff double in the tenth! But we still don't have any pitchers! What will become of us!


KS 

Blue Jays 9, White Sox 5: You Got Lucky, Colby Rasmus

you've won this round, rasmus

You have no idea how ready I was to denounce Colby Rasmus for whiffing on another totally catchable ball in centre, but then he went 5-5 with a double and a home run, and the anger just melted away, man, that is all it took. The takeaway here is that I am not made of stone. Let it also be noted that while Ricky Romero is now 7-1, he is still not as bosslike as he or you or I would want and expect him to be, and I am not yet ready to say that it is troubling, but it isn't awesome. It isn't that. 


Anyway, how is this for a wacky lineup? E5 got the day off, and they went like this: Lawrie, Rasmus, Bautista, Johson, Escobar, Cooper, Arencibia, Vizquel, Davis. Weird!


KS

Blue Jays 8, Orioles 6: This Really Is How This Should Be Going

cool snag bro

Yeah, right? Brett Lawrie with a nice night, Ricky Romero, if not yet in touch with his truest/bossest self at least not walking everybody, and that's all you need to beat the Orioles, because they are totally still the Orioles. That is all they are. 


KS

Rays 8, Blue Jays 5; Rays 5, Blue Jays 4 (F/11): Shucks

dang

This really didn't go as well as I'd hoped it might. Especially yesterday, even though it was the closer and better game: Ricky Romero was not at all his usual bosslike self, which is distressing to me. Jose Bautista has maybe turned the corner a little, though, as he was 5-9 with a dinger over the last two days, and if we are going to hang in this thing over the long haul and we are totally going to hang in this over the long haul right guys then we need Bautista to be drop megaton bombs more faster than you blink.


KS  

Twins 4, Blue Jays 3: Ask Me How Good I Feel about Adam Lind as A Pinch Hitter with The Tying Run at Second

tears of a boss (note the absence of tears)

Seriously, ask me.


KS

Athletics 7, Blue Jays 3: I Am Glad I Went to Bed

Perfect Strangersesque

Instead of staying up for this one, I watched the Game of Thrones where Ned Stark gets played to the death and then I went to bed furious and saddened at that injustice and it really is better that I did not tune in for Francisco Cordero's complete collapse that made a hash out of Ricky Romero's imperfect but credible quality start and delighted the nine people in attendance in Oakland but that would have caused me to consider a life of complete emotional detachment from all things had I been witness to it as it unfolded.


KS

Mariners 9, Blue Jays 5 (F/10): I Renounce the Blue Jays Bullpen

guess which of these two guys just gave up a game-winning grand slam. seriously, guess.

Gosh, man. I don't even know. This was a pretty excellent game, in a way, but not a way that I am completely into right now. I could kind of appreciate Ichiro throwing J. P. Arencibia out at the plate in the late going, even though it was a play that obviously did not serve my overall interest here, because Ichiro is neat and good for him, I guess. But this Michael Saunders business, this home run in the ninth inning (and all the horseshit that followed for the tie) and then a grand slam to win it in the tenth, I am not doing as well with that. Romero pitched pretty OK-ly and would have left with the lead were it not for an early unearned run (in an inning he would have gotten out of anyway had he been quicker on a double play ball, so whatever). But the bullpen, man. The bullpen.


KS 

Blue Jays 7, Indians 4 (F/16): Blue Jays Open Their 2012 Championship Season with the Longest Opening Day Game in Major League History

maybe baseball is impossibly beautiful, big deal

It began as all epic journeys begin: with dudes like, quick, Poseidon isn't around, let's get this shit going before he gets back and is mad. In fact it was nothing like that at all, but it ended up being really great! I will not fault Ricky Romero for being far less than his best on this day, as it was really cold and windy in Cleveland, and I am not at my best under those conditions either. For the longest time, what we were looking at here was a 4-1 game in which Romero had been tagged for a three-run shot, and Blue Jay bats had been stifled except for the unstoppably amazingly great Jose Bautista who is the best and who homered. 


But then a rad top of the ninth pretty much fell out of the sky: Yunel Escobar singled, Kelly Johnson did likewise, and a Bautista shot to centre was knocked down by the wind and ended up a sac fly rather than his second round tripper of the day. Adam Lind was up next, and I pretty much lost it (in my brain) when he looked at a fastball for a strike on a 3-1 pitch, like, I was thinking thoughts like "3-1 and a chance to tie it in the ninth you've got to be swinging like a big dog Adam Lind like a big dog" and I don't know what that means exactly but I really felt it. But he walked!  And was sensibly pinch-run for, because say what you will about Rajai Davis, but that guy can run fast. He had occasion to pretty much right away, too, as E5 got a hold of one, doubling off the wall on another one knocked down by the wind (Edwin came out of the box like yep there it is, a dinger but in the end it was not). 


And then it was 4-4 pretty much forever. The coolest thing that happened during all of the scorelessness that followed was definitely when John Farrell turned into Mike Scosia for a minute and brought sure-handed forty-four-year-old Omar Vizquel into the game as a fifth infielder and the Blue Jays turned a double play to get out of a seriously sticky spot in the twelfth. (One time the Angels did that in Toronto! Chone Figgins got a different glove!) My vote for the least cool thing to happen during of all of that scorelesness was when Rajai Davis bunted terribly and then froze in the batter's box instead of running and made me so mad that I don't even know man. 


But then! J. P. Arencibia -- who way, way earlier in the game did a cool thing where he scrambled after a pitch in the dirt and dove to tag out Shin Soo "Big League" Choo at the plate -- hit a three-run home run in the top of the sixteenth after attempting to bunt on the previous pitch. Had he not bunted that first one foul, who can say? Who can know? Also, while we are asking questions: how must it have felt to have sat out in the cold in Cleveland for sixteen innings to watch your side lose like that?


Anyway, what a great way to start the season, if you are either the Toronto Blue Jays or me. I would like to tip my hat (I am not wearing a hat, but I have been enjoying watermelon Big League Chew, which is in my view a greater act of baseball fandom) to the Toronto bullpen, because eleven innings of shut-out baseball is awesome even if it is only Cleveland. Let's hear it, too, at least a little, for Colby Rasmus, who made a terrific diving grab in centre early on (he just straight up missed one for an error later, but let's not dwell). And while J. P. Arencibia is totally the home run hero on the day, let us note, finally, that Jose "@JoeyBatts19" Bautista went 3-4 with a HR, 2 BB, and a sacrifice fly. Because he is the best hitter.


Yours in baseball,


KS

it sure was!