Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 4: Knuckleballers Own

Tim Wakefield, shown here owning.

Either the Red Sox had some killer scouting report on Ricky Romero, or Romero was just junk out there, because the Sox were uncharacteristically free-swingers last night. They were not at all their usual patient selves, but they knocked the ball all over the place, so I am not dissing so much as noting. A night after Brett Cecil went the distance in a loss, Romero was out of the game in the fifth, so it was kind of a long night for the bullpen, who actually totally shut the door the rest of the way (nice job, bullpen). I didn't stay up through the forty-minute rain delay so I can't even act like I was heartbroken when the Blue Jays brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth or anything. I was resting comfortably. 


There's kind of an interesting thing going on with Travis Snider right now, I should mention. Since being recalled from Las Vegas, he's hit four doubles in three games. One would think that everything is cool, then, right? But both Gregg Zaun (who I loathe) and Alan Ashby (who I admire) have said that his swing is still not quite right in the way that it was not quite right before: he's still taking these basically one-handed hacks at breaking balls, and right now they're falling in, but over the long haul he's going to have the same problems that got him sent down, they say. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Some guys have pretty solid careers with kind of mechanically awful swings, but not many.


Finally, I would like to draw your attention to the WAR leader boards at Baseball Reference, where you can plainly see that Jose Bautista sits not only atop these standings but also the haters. Also, as much as everyone is making of Justin Verlander, I am not sure we are making enough of Justin Verlander. And maybe, maybe Andrew McCutcheon should have made the NL All-Star team.


A.L. WAR Bat / Pitch

	Tm	WAR
J.Bautista	TOR	6.1
J.Verlander	DET	4.8
A.Gonzalez	BOS	4.5
J.Weaver	LAA	4.4
J.Beckett	BOS	4.1

N.L. WAR Bat / Pitch

	Tm	WAR
M.Kemp	LAD	5.4
A.McCutchen	PIT	5.0
R.Halladay	PHI	4.5
R.Braun	MIL	4.2
C.Hamels	PHI	4.2

KS

Blue Jays 5, Athletics 3, and the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays are probably the greatest collection of athletes ever assembled for anything (ever)

The price you pay for playing "ski" near a triple word score.

Jesse Litsch struck out seven over six-and-a-third, Snider blasted a three-run shot to put the Blue Jays out front for good, Scrabble pitched two strong in his new role, and Rauch sealed the deal. Aaron Hill even made an awesome play on a ball deflected off of Adam Lind's glove and got it over to Litsch just in time. This game owned, friends, it owned. If it wasn't for Escobar ending a three-for-three day by probably concussing himself sliding headfirst on a triple, I would be a man utterly without cares right now. As it stands, I must admit to some cares, but I am also thinking quite a lot about how the Blue Jays will now share top spot with the Baltimore Orioles atop the AL East should Neil's Tigers hold on tonight, and with the Rays and Red Sox continuing to lose at a nice clip, I don't think I'm being premature in speculating that the Blue Jays will hold at least a share of the AL East lead every day for the next six months. 


KS  


edited to add: OH YEAH, after E5 hit a grounder to Pennington at short in the home half of the fourth. It was recorded as an infield single, but really it could and perhaps should have been an inning-ending double play ball, and Jerry Howarth talked about how things like that won't show up in the box score, but those are the kind of plays that really inflate a pitcher's ERA through no fault of his own. Just as he was finishing his point, Snider ripped it over the wall in right. If I were Jerry Howarth, I'd have been feeling pretty smug right then, but because he is Jerry Howarth, he was filled with nothing but a good-natured love of the game of baseball.