Blue Jays 3, White Sox 2: Well, that's it.

You would think 162 games would be enough, but I am not convinced.

Last night was maybe the single best night of regular season baseball I can remember, with four games with serious playoff implications going on at the same time, all easily followed through the glory of baseball on the internet. (Bill covers all of this superbly in the post just below mine, but I got about halfway through this earlier today, saved it, and am returning to it now, hours later, and I think it would be wrong of me to deny you my, you know, word bounty, so here it all is. Inevitably, we cover some of the same ground, but get used to it: everyone is writing about last night, and I would be stunned if there were not at least one 28 September 2011 book on the shelves this time next year. So here we go.) 


The Cardinals got out ahead of the Astros early with a five-run first, and Chris Carpenter allowed only two hits all night, so the pressure was on the Braves to stay alive against the Phillies, which they very much did not, losing in thirteen in a straight-up hell of a game. "Braves Cap Collapse," the headline says, and yeah, they sure did. I don't want to diminish the severity of that collapse, or the agony of the Braves fans who endured it, but the Red Sox implosion has been far more vivid to me, a streak of incompetence so wide and so deep that it began to look like self-abnegation. Last night, when Papelbon threw the last of his fifteen pitches in twelve minutes -- the one that ended up lined into and then out of Carl Crawford's glove in left, allowing the winning Baltimore run to come across in the bottom of the ninth -- it was the perfect ending to a seven-win, twenty-loss month, a fitting bookend to Boston's equally improbable two-and-ten start to the season. 


Meanwhile, the Rays, with a total payroll that exceeds the combined salaries of Papelbon and Crawford but not by as much as you might think, clawed themselves back from a seven-run deficit through seven-and-a-half innings, with Evan Longoria's three-run shot in the home half of the eighth bringing them to within a run. When pinch hitter Dan Johnson, who came into the game batting .108, and who I had literally never heard of, homered to tie it in the ninth, it was ludicrous, even more so than Longoria's walk-off shot in the twelfth, I think. According to FanGraphs, the only player in either leagues with worse production in at least ninety plate appearances this season is Roy Halladay. Just amazing stuff. Too bad they couldn't even put thirty thousand in the seats for it, but that's baseball in St. Pete, I guess.


Despite all of that amazingness last night, in all honesty my attention was much more firmly focused on a perfectly meaningless afternoon game between the Blue Jays and the White Sox. A game of utterly no playoff consequence, it was played entirely for the benefit of a bunch of people with nothing better to do on a pretty nice fall afternoon, people like:


(i) An old man with a scorecard.

(ii) A man with a helmet full of nachos.

(iii) A couple of Frank Thomas fans.

(iv) A lady with a beer.

(v) A kid with a rally cap behind the bullpen and his brother.

(vi) A young couple messing around with their phones but in a way that looks fun and shared and not alienating.

(vii) Seventh-inning stretchers.

(vii) And this guy.

So the usual, basically. 


What they saw was, from their perspective, I'm sure, kind of a debacle. With the White Sox up 2-1 in the top of the ninth after perfectly OK outings from both starters (Humber for the Sox, Morrow for the Blue Jays), Chris Sale just pretty much blew it: double, single, sac bunt, intentional walk, run-scoring walk, run-scoring walk, and then, inevitably, the hook. That Frank Francisco managed to seal the deal in the bottom of the ninth was both a relief and a pleasure. (After an absolutely abysmal first couple months, Francisco has actually kind of almost salvaged his season, and so good for him, I guess, but the hurt remains, a little.) I was entirely satisfied with the slightly strange way this one ended, but I've got to think White Sox fans felt it the worst bullshit ever. 


The win on this last day of the season brought the Blue Jays back to .500 for the thirty-third time this season. I don't know if Mike Wilner was entirely accurate when he called the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays the five-hundredest team to ever five hundred, probably not, but it has definitely felt that way: no great streaks one way or the other, no real can-you-even-believe-this runs of elation or let's-trade-everybody stretches of incompetence and despair. Things have been even-steven. I will have more, much more, senselessly more, to say about the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays in the coming weeks and months, but for now I'm just like, "Well, that's it. Last game of the season. I am, as always, genuinely sad to see it end." That is what I am like for now. But I had fun! 


To return, finally, to the dramatic stuff from last night, I've got a few things I'd like to share with you, the first a .gif that shows pretty clearly that Dan Johnson's game-tying solo blast totally bag tagged some guy. Here you go:

Next, here's a graph from FanGraphs (where else?) of AL wild card probabilities throughout the evening (click here for more):

Here are Harold Reynolds and Dan Plesac of MLB Network losing their minds, a little:

And finally, here's a pretty terrific video timeline that MLB put together, definitely worth ten minutes of your time on this, a night without any baseball:






Enjoy!


KS

Blue Jays 11, Red Sox 10: This Game was Bananas

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

With the Red Sox up 8-4 through five innings, and Tim Wakefield in line for the two-hundredth win of his insanely long career, it looked to me like the story of the game was going to be the contrast between Brandon Morrow, a young guy with all the stuff in the world who has yet to truly figure it all out, and Wakefield, a guy with no arm and basically one pitch but who is, you know, the awesomest. But then everything got crazy, leaving the clear-cut narratives that seemed to have been developing in this contest obscure and, in the end, undiscernible. But that's probably OK.  


Actually, it was kind of weird from the first, really. Morrow scuffled from the outset, and it's not like Wakefield was exactly rolling, either: Thames came in on an E5 sac fly in the first; J. P. Arencibia set the Blue Jays mark for home runs by a catcher with his twenty-first in the second; and Bautista doubled in Thames in the third. But the first real sign of the madness that was to follow came when Brett Lawrie and Jose Bautista pulled off the double steal of second and home, with Bautista beating Marco Scuturo's pretty dang errant throw to the plate. The usual Red Sox bludgeoning followed, with home runs by Ortiz and Ellsbury, setting the stage for the Blue Jays' eighth, possibly my favourite inning all year. I mean, just look at it:

Bottom 8 (Daniel Bard pitching)

• 
  

  1.Brett Lawrie hit by pitch.




• 
  

  2.Adam Loewen singles on a ground ball to right fielder Josh Reddick. Brett Lawrie to 3rd.




• 
  

  3.J. P. Arencibia walks. Adam Loewen to 2nd.




• 
  

  4.Dewayne Wise strikes out swinging.




• 
  

  5.Yunel Escobar called out on strikes.




• 
  

  6.Eric Thames walks. Brett Lawrie scores. Adam Loewen to 3rd. J. P. Arencibia to 2nd.




• 
  

  Offensive Substitution: Pinch runner Chris Woodward replaces J. Arencibia.




• 
  

  Coaching visit to mound.




• 
  

  7.Jose Bautista walks. Adam Loewen scores. Chris Woodward to 3rd. Eric Thames to 2nd.




• 
  

  Pitcher Change: Matt Albers replaces Daniel Bard.




• 
  

  Coaching visit to mound.




• 
  

  8.Edwin Encarnacion doubles (34) on a line drive to center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury. Chris Woodward scores. Eric Thames scores. Jose Bautista scores.




• 
  

  9.Kelly Johnson strikes out swinging.

  
  

To the above I would add only that E5's double to the wall came on a 3-2 pitch, making it all the better (runners on the move!). Even Frank Francisco's insistence on allowing two runs in the ninth did not dampen my spirits, especially since the game ended on Jose Molina's throw to second, catching Mike Aviles stealing, an awesome way to end a baseball game, I trust you will agree.


I hope Tim Wakefield gets his 200th before the end of the year, because at forty-five years old, there's every reason to believe he won't be back. Like literally everyone else, I have a soft spot for knuckleballers. Maybe it would get old if he actually pitched for your team, and you had to listen to all the same old knuckleballer stories every five days instead of a couple of times a season, but in small doses it seems like the best of things. Alan Ashby, who caught Joe Niekro (presumably in the Niekro Leagues), had plenty to say on the radio last night. Jerry Howarth, totally enamoured with the knuckleball, eventually asked Ashby why so few players throw it. "I think it's because, for the time being, anyway, sanity prevails on the planet earth," was Ashby's reply. 


Kind of, but not really, because last night was crazy, man, it was crazy.


KS

Indians 5, Toronto 4: What Can You Even Say

Blargh.

Were I to focus on the positives from last night, I would have to say that by golly, we sure are getting a lot more out of Carlos Villanueva than anybody could have ever expected, and how about another home run from Jose Bautista! Rzepcynski and Frasor sure pitched well out of the pen! But of course the real story here is the Indians' five-run bottom of the ninth. Yes, it was Luis Perez who gave up the Asdrubel Cabrera RBI single and Travis Hafner's mighty wallop of a walk-off grand slam, but I choose to lay most of the blame at the feet of "The Closer" Frank Francisco, who opened up the inning like this: Single. Double. Walk. That is how you turn a four-run lead in the ninth into a shameful, grievous thing. That is exactly how you do it.


KS 

Blue Jays 7, Phillies 4 and Blue Jays 9, Red Sox 7: Jays Break Out the Bats on Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day, Keep Them Out For Lesser Holiday A Day Later

Have never liked the black uniforms; have always liked dingers. You can see the bind I'm in.

Cliff Lee's utterly ridiculous streak of thirty-four consecutive innings without allowing a run -- the man allowed a grand total of one run in June, by the way -- came to an end in pretty dramatic fashion yesterday, as the Blue Jays thundered to a 7-4 win powered by three home runs in the eighth, from Eric Thames, who fills me with hope, Jose Bautista, who fills me with pride, and Edwin Encarnacion, who fills me with stomach cramps but it's not his fault. Had Jo-Jo been able to keep it together for like a second longer, he totally would have picked up a win over Cliff Lee, which would probably have been the coolest thing ever, but nevertheless, a big day! And even bigger because it all came on Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day. 


Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day has been an annual occurrence for pretty much as long as anums have occurred. For those of you not familiar with this whole situation, Mr. Sub are the purveyors of seriously the worst possible sandwiches, and I am not being stuck up about that. I enjoy Subway. Quizno's can be good. But Mr. Sub can never, ever be good. In my experience, Mr. Sub is a dank pit of strangely wet meat, genuinely questionable vegetables, and injudiciously applied condiments. I hate it and it is awful. But their sports bags, given away at Blue Jays games annually, serve a pretty interesting social function in the city: if you see someone on the streetcar or wherever, and they're rocking a Mr. Sub Sports Bag of any vintage at all, it is like "woah ok we've got a 500 here," which is to say, a citizen of the 500-level upper deck seats. I'm not hating, because that's where I usually sat, too; but generally speaking the 500s are a place for oddballs, drifters, and broke fanatics. The term "500s" applied to people outside the context of the stadium itself is a useful classification for, say, the kind of not-entirely-together but certainly not-entirely-untogether kind of slightly odd person you not uncommonly encounter at the public library, say. You know what I mean? Anyway, these people, this broader meaning of "500s," very, very often are in possession of Mr. Sub Sports Bags when you see them doing their thing, and yesterday is the day all those people got new ones. Somewhere, I have like five.  


Then today things got pretty rad in Boston, too! Brandon Morrow was pretty OK for a bit; Jason Frasor wasn't, really; and "The Closer" Frank Francisco had me uttering foul oaths but ultimately struck out three in the ninth after allowing a leadoff single and a stolen base. Aaron Hill went three-for-five with a home run, and please please please let this be the start of a torrid second-half pace for Aaron Hill, because this has been brutal. Also, Travis Snider is back up, and he too went three-for-five with two doubles. Let this be real. OK?


KS

Phillies 7, Blue Jays 6: This Will Lack Structure

Compared to the rest of these bums J. P. Arencibia is a defensive stalwart

There are all kinds of ways for a team to be bad, and most of them are roughly equally frustrating, except for a staggering inability to catch and throw the ball, which is the most galling thing that can afflict a team that you, in your foolishness, have chosen to attend to. Yesterday it became too much to bear. Aaron Hill has completely lost it, and it's baffling. John McDonald, who only exists to put his glove on balls and then swiftly transfer that ball to his throwing hand and then deliver it to a base at which a force play is in effect -- literally that is the only reason he is there -- is having a terrible time doing that. Rajai Davis refuses to charge hard at anything, which removes the possibility of not just potential fly outs but also plays at bases on balls that drop. Oh, and balls are dropping: it's gotten to the point that Ashby and Howarth were speculating on the radio that maybe Corey Patteron's mild speaking voice is the reason there's so much confusion in the outfield on catchable balls dropping in between outfielders. And Juan Rivera, motherfucking Juan Rivera completely misplayed an entirely catchable, routine fly ball in the ninth inning yesterday, which is exactly the kind of thing that can't happen when Frank "The Closer" Francisco is out there walking the leadoff man in the ninth with a one-run lead. 

A disaster, yesterday, a disaster. Romero was good enough to win, had he any defense behind him, and even without it, he almost did: Jose Bautista launched a two-run shot to put the Blue Jays ahead in the seventh and that should totally have been enough to send 45,512 people home happy on Canada Day.

But no, that wasn't nearly enough, because nobody here can catch the damn ball. If my life wasn't perfect in literally every other respect I couldn't do this anymore. But it is, so I will. But I will register my displeasure on the internet.

KS

Blue Jays 4, Orioles 1: Realistically, I watched the hockey game.

Striking out twelve: apparently no big deal.

You only get so many Stanley Cup Final Game Sevens, so my attention was divided last night. However, I had the baseball game up on MLB Gameday, and thrilled (via text update) to Yunel Escobar's leadoff home run, Adam Lind's two-run shot in the seventh, and Ricky Romero's twelve-K, three-hit eight innings of work. And I was of course certain Frank Francisco would blow it. But he didn't! And so we're good. 


KS

Royals 3, Blue Jays 2 (F/11): Et tu, Mark Rzepcynski?

Juan Rivera, feeling about this game like I feel about Juan Rivera

Before I get into minding last night's extra-innings loss to the Royals, there are a couple of other things I would also like to mind. First off, I know Alan Ashby is covering for Buck Martinez on the TV side of the broadcast right now, but do they have to replace the absolutely first-rate Ashby with Gregg Zaun as Jerry Howarth's number two in the radio booth? The drop off from Ashby to Zaun is the difference between listening to an insightful adult or a smug bro. I enjoy insightful adults. I do not enjoy smug bros at all. Also, I think part of why I fail to care at all about the plight of the Royals -- in addition to lingering bitterness over the 1985 ALCS, plus the obvious fact that the reason the Royals have been almost entirely bad since then isn't about economic problems plaguing the game so much as utterly inept management that can't seem to develop enough talent to be competitive in the straight-up embarrassing AL Central while Tampa managed to surpass four teams with vastly larger payrolls in the AL East -- is that the games start an hour later when the Blue Jays are in Kansas City and I always forget, so when I turn on the radio at the appointed hour I get nothing. All of these things need to stop but I worry that they won't.

To last night's game, then: a really crisp affair in the early going, with both Morrow and Paulino throwing very well. When the Blue Jays scratched out a lone run in the fourth on an error, wild pitch, and two ground outs, it looked to me like that might be the difference. Not so, of course, as  Eric Hosmer reached on an error in the bottom of the inning, and came in on a Mike Aviles triple (oh man triples!). Another Blue Jays run on a groundout in the seventh should have meant nothing but good times, but my man Mark Rzepcynski kind of didn't get anybody out and walked three dudes in relief, including walking in the tying run. This is a shame, in that it is on its own awful, but also in that Scrabble has been terrific out of the bullpen this year. Alas, and also alack. 


Why even mention that it was The Closer Frank Francisco who gave up the walkoff hit to Eric Hosmer in the eleventh? Everybody knows. Francisco is awful, legitimately awful. You don't even need to get fancy about it: 6.06 ERA, 1.78 WHIP. That's brutal, and brutal in a way that is easy to understand. End this. Someone. Please.


Finally, I couldn't help but notice that Fangraphs ran a neat thing on the worst players in baseball by WAR yesterday. I recently did the same, but I'm going to take this as a loving tribute rather than anything untoward. Here's what Seidman wrote about our dude E5:


Edwin Encarnacion (-0.9 WAR): Some players are on here as a direct result of their suckitude with the bat. Encarnacion, aptly nicknamed E5, makes this list primarily on the lack of merit of his glovework. In just 43 games his UZR is a spectacularly bad -9.1. If you’re more into the fielding percentage metric, consider this factoid Dave Cameron discussed recently. As of May 27th, Encarnacion had a .784 fielding percentage. The next worst was Andy LaRoche at .892, a gap of 108 points. Encarnacion is one of the worst fielders in baseball history, and if he can’t even match the lower league average with the bat, what actual purpose does he serve?


Aside from using "factoid" in the debased and subliterate sense that indicates no understanding of the meaning of the "-oid" suffix, the man has some valid points. Also, I am a dick.


KS

Blue Jays 9, White Sox 8 (F/14): OH YEAH RIGHT COREY PATTERSON

OH. YEAH. RIGHT.

When Juan Rivera, who I am less sure should be cut but still mostly sure, ripped a three-run double off the wall in the seventh to put the Blue Jays ahead 8-6 and wake me up from my slumber in the car (I don't usually sleep in the car with baseball on the radio in the afternoon, but yesterday I did, and let's just leave it there), I was pretty sure we had gone ahead for good. But of course not, because Frank Francisco is still the closer. Consider, if you will, the ERAs of the seven Blue Jays pitchers who yesterday toed the rubber: 2.62, 1.80, 2.74, 5.40, 6.59, 1.64, 3.97. As learned baseball enthusiasts of the information age, we all recognize the imperfections of ERA as a measure of overall pitcher worth independent of defense, and we know that there are certainly better stats to measure the impact of relief pitchers in particular. But what I want to suggest to you here is that even if you didn't know anything about anything, with the game on the line in the ninth inning, you wouldn't put the guy with the 6.59 ERA out there would you? Of course you wouldn't. You would still be better than that.

Francisco's blowery -- and let us be fair: the damage came on a two-out bloop to right, but still -- did however set the stage for Corey Patterson's fourteenth-inning heroics. Patterson, who we apparently have, hit his walk-off home run as part of a 5-7 day with four runs scored, so thank you, Corey Patterson. That is awesome of you. Jose Bautista once again suffered from an outstandular condition that saw him go 3-4 with two walks, a double, a three-run home run, and three runs scored. Let any who still dare to hate reveal themselves now and be laughed at for being dumb and wrong.   

A wild one! Too bad Carlos Villanueva had kind of a rough outing. Today, though, it is Ricky Romero on the hill, and I have every intention of listening to at least some of the game this afternoon while I mow the lawn. It will be summer. 

KS

Yankees 5, Blue Jays 4: Baseball is The Worst and I Hate It

GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

In truth it isn't, and I don't, but that ninth inning cut me deep. Ricky Romero had gone seven innings in Yankee Stadium, pitching his way around seven hits and three walks to allow only one run (Jeter grounding into a 5-3 double play in the seventh did not not hurt one bit). An improbably bat-around fourth had the Blue Jays up 4-1, and were it not for C. C. Sabathia's continued dominance over Jose Bautista, who knows what might have been? But here's what was: Frank Francisco fucking blew it.


If you were going to be charitable about it, you could say that this was only Francisco's second blown save of the year. But if you were of the opinion that the save stat is itself super dumb, and has poisoned yes poisoned bullpen usage for more than a generation now, you would instead point out that Francisco is just plain awful: a 6.23 ERA in his thirteen innings pitched, with twelve hits and eight walks allowed. And that's not the half of it. Well, it's definitely the half of it, and maybe more, but here is totally another thing: you can seriously run on this guy, as much or more than you can run on any other guy in the American League right now. Am I right, Curtis Granderson who is currently do it all?

Yes, you can run on this guy. And I AM currently doing it all, thank you.

 If you don't believe me, believe Curtis Granderson, who has earned that much.


None of this has been a secret. Everyone who is trying to be diplomatic about it has been saying things like, "The bullpen has been excellent this year, with the exception of Francisco, who is an adventure out there," which is the nice way of saying this guy is junk but we keep running him out there despite everybody knowing he's junk. But he's the closer so you can't just, you know, replace him with somebody who is any good, like any of a number of guys, until you decide that that new guy is fit to be deemed the closer. 


That this meltdown happened against the Yankees obviously makes it that much more galling, but if I take three deep breaths I am afforded enough perspective to realize that all this means is that the Blue Jays now sit 2.5 games behind New York for the AL East lead rather than a game behind Boston, and in the big picture -- and not even the actual big picture, but the big picture of a season of professional baseball, which, I mean, come on -- nothing is really any worse right now than it was yesterday. But when the closer everyone knows to be junk blows a save as the ball kicks off the glove of the loathsome Juan Rivera at first, it is hard not to at least entertain the thought that maybe I hate baseball, and maybe the reason I hate it is that it is the worst.


KS