To What Extent Does Your Life Revolve Around Alejandro Kirk? (The 2023 Blue Jays Thread)

Did not quite get to Cole...My guess: they figure out a way to win tomorrow, win one out three from the Rays, and back in. I'd sit down and figure out different scenarios if these last two games--zero runs at home in 17 innings as I type (great pitchers, I know)--weren't so dispiriting.

Ha--watching the TV crew's post-mortem and heard the '87 Jays mentioned for the first time...

Posnanski evidently knows a little bit about our history:

The Blue Jays are still in good shape for a wild-card spot; they’re a half-game up on Houston for the second wild card and two games up on Seattle for the third. But they’re the Blue Jays, and history has been pretty cruel, and they might want to win some games and not put their playoff lives in the hands of fate.

Hopefully having a team meeting this afternoon about whether they might want to win some games.

apparently they still have more than half a chance to get in if they lose all their remaining games! Will they put us through that? 😫

That's what they said on the radio yesterday: 0-6 = 55% chance. That's wild, considering how bunched together they all are.

"Will they put us through that?" They just might. One of the lessons of this season for me is "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." In the spring, I was one of those people clamoring for them to switch the emphasis to pitching and defense, assuming that there'd still be enough hitting for a 2015-type Royals offense. Never again. A team that hits home runs is at least always entertaining. Even when they're four or five runs down, you're still fully engaged.

playoff odds up to 75% even if TB sweeps (who i guess we'd probably face Round 1). It's very important that they don't burn Gaus in game 162, so cinch it up tonight or tomorrow, pls.

Even though I'm there tomorrow, tonight please!

Good for Bassitt on the 200 IP--he was great last night--but it is weird for an old guy like me to see a pitcher ceremoniously removed mid-inning so he can get a standing ovation for his 200th IP. He'll probably be one of only four pitchers to get there this year.

Also weird: the Jays became only the fourth team in history--the fourth--to have four pitchers with 175+ strikeouts. I would have thought that's the kind of thing that would have been done many times.

Three is probably common enough, four less so. I wondered if the early 2010s Giants did, but this was the nearest I could see:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SFG/2012.shtml

They came within 17ks (Vogelsong) of doing so in 2012.

Really surprised that afaict the Braves rotation led by Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz never managed it.

They didn't? That is a surprise. Smoltz was a gimme, I think. Maddux struck out more batters than people remember; hit 200 once (just barely), and there were consecutive seasons of 198/199/197. Glavine wasn't a strikeout guy, but I would have guessed 175 regularly...nope. Then you had guys like Avery and Millwood filling out the rotation.

It's looking good, francisF.

Getting way ahead of myself here, but...Schneider shuffled the order last night in a way that drew attention: moved Belt to #2, Bichette to clean-up, and Chapman all the way down to eighth. They hit three HR last night, and another three tonight (including Belt and Chapman). It'd be great if this is the kind of small thing that fires up the offense for long enough to make a playoff run. Lineup order has been pretty conclusively proven to not matter a great deal. So even if it's just psychological, that'd be fine.

^^Jesus, shut up.

8-0 turns into...8-2, bases loaded, nobody out.

Got out of the inning with an 8-4 lead...take it easy, clemenza, it's the Jays.

Ducked out for a coffee and quick walk--was extremely nervous when I got home and turned on the TV. Disaster has not yet struck.

Great game. Painful loss though. Rogers Centre went SILENT after Walls' hit.

For TB, this was mission accomplished in a huge way, especially if the Jays need to burn Gausman tomorrow.

Very painful--I was down there. I thought they'd won it off Biggio's bat in the 9th. (Our seats weren't ideal in judging such things.) I don't question the flip-flop of Romano/Hicks at all.

Dreading having it go down to tomorrow, don't want to have to use Gausman on top of that. I'm eating dinner right now, two-hour drive home right after, so will have to follow the Mariners/Rangers on the radio as best I can.

My faith in the Rangers is just slightly less shaky than my faith in the Jays--even though they turned themselves into the '27 Yankees for those four games last week.

Thank god for that. And they don't have to burn Gausman now.

Am I right that tomorrow still matters as to who the Jays face in the playoffs? They're tied with Houston right now, and both are a game behind Texas. If all three end up with 90 wins, what happens?

Yes, if Texas and Houston are tied then Houston wins the West and is the 2-seed. If the Rangers and Jays tie then the Rangers hold the tiebreaker and would "get" to face the 4-seed, Tampa Bay, while the Jays have to face the 3-seed, Minnesota.

The Rays were in the WS three years ago and are clearly better than the Jays on paper.

The Twins haven't won a playoff game in about 20 years.

I've been semi-fooling myself into thinking I'd rather play Tampa--the Jays have played them about even this year, while the Twins might be bolstered by the absence of the Yankees--but the truth is I'd much rather draw the Twins. So if the Jays lose tomorrow, great. My suggestion is Davis Schneider as tomorrow's starting pitcher.

Can't remember who the guest was, but someone on the radio brought up Matt Chapman in connection with Brooks Robinson. Except for a stretch in the mid-'60s--which includes his MVP year--Robinson wasn't much of a hitter; his OPS+ for his career was 105. That's adjusted...because he played most of his career when pitchers dominated, his unadjusted numbers are not great: .267/.322/.401. Anyway, per 162 games, here's a comparison:

Robinson: 2.7 oWAR, 2.2 dWAR
Chapman: 4.1 oWAR, 2.2 dWAR

I'm definitely not saying Chapman is his equal, or headed to the HOF, or making any claim whatsoever. He's maddening--he was Mike Schmidt in April, and he's been Ken Reitz the rest of the year. But that comparison underscores that I and other Jays fans probably give him too hard a time.

Jays are starting Wes Parsons today, Gram's long-lost nephew. 31, hasn't pitched in the majors since 2019. Nice story, but I get the feeling they're content to lose and get the Twins.

Wes Parsons getting shellacked out there...Worst of all possible scenarios (if possible): Jays get killed, have to burn a bullpen arm or three, and end up having to play the Rays anyway.

Sorry for anyone who's down there and thought, when they bought their tickets weeks ago, they'd maybe be seeing a season-deciding game. Instead they've got the Buffalo Bisons and an 8-0 game after two innings.

All right--Houston up 8-0, Jays losing 12-6, if nothing changes we get the Twins.

Rangers have lost, so Twins fans can relax. The 19(?) game playoff losing streak will definitely end (there's no way this Jays team is sweeping anyone in a postseason series).

Hey--your equanimity is supposed to balance my doomsaying on this thread.

I want to win the $50,000 (mlb.com), so I made sure not to let emotion get involved.

https://i.postimg.cc/Z592cLjH/bracket.jpg

i'm with you . . . except for the brewers

Every guest on Blair and Barker, all I hear is Brewers-Brewers-Brewers.

Was personally offended by your brewers pick but I had the jays getting bounced in the wild card so all’s even-steven

I stopped posting here because I could just not be positive about this team (stopped watching them entirely for a while) - and watching them celebrate losing their way into the playoffs last night has absolutely not changed that feeling.

I just hope they have a plan for the postseason. This is a win now team. Baltimore and TB have the talent in place to dominate for the next few years, the Yankees will obviously be back and Boston is Boston. They have the pitching for a deep playoff run and if the offense can stay awake for a few games at a time then we might have something here. But I think this has to be the year.

They have a solid team for the next couple years imho. Only question I’m worried about next season is what happens with 3b. Also I think it’s weird they haven’t signed any of their young guys like Bo to contact extensions.

The team will be solid but I think they've hit their ceiling. If Pearson and Manoah can figure things out, if they sign another impact hitter, and everything goes right then they can win 95-100 games. But it's more likely that they're an 85-90 win team again, which might not be good enough to make the playoffs again.

https://bluejaysnation.com/news/toronto-blue-jays-brandon-belt-considering-retirement-hopes-he-made-his-family-proud

He faltered a bit in the playoffs, but otherwise he had a good year. His Ohtani MVP joke was one of the best quotes of the year.

Ancient history already, but I just wanted to preserve some player reaction here before this thread is replaced by a new one:

https://jaysjournal.com/posts/whit-merrifield-sounds-off-on-blue-jays-decision-to-pull-jose-berrios-early

I've sampled a lot of reaction in the last two days--online, on the radio, on TV; from fans, commentators, ex- and current players--and I've yet to encounter a single defense of pulling Berrios, which, considering that it actually didn't work out too badly from a run-prevention standpoint (and hinged on an infield hit), tells you everything you need to know. I think Blair summed it up nicely: this is a team that was preoccupied with gaming a 9th-inning matchup on the pitching side of it when their own offense was the same feeble joke for months on end.

NoTime: feeling the ground shift a little.

Aug. 13: https://torontosun.com/sports/simmons-blue-jays-saves-leader-tom-henke-deserves-to-be-up-on-level-of-excellence-too

Oct. 7: https://cooperstownersincanada.com/2023/10/07/humble-henke-should-be-on-blue-jays-level-of-excellence/

If it were up to me:

1) Put Buck and Howarth up next year. Not to be morbid, but both have had issues with cancer (not sure where they are in their treatment/remission), so make sure they're around for that.

2) Henke the next year to correct an egregious omission.

3) Edwin the year after that.

Great Ross Atkins explanation of Berrios: "deploy" three times in 20 seconds.

Buck and Howarth going in together would be fitting and well deserved. They have, what, eighty years or service to the Jays between them?

of service...

i'm with you on those names going up! is Crime Dog a non-starter?

check out At The Letters pod for great insight on that Berrios debacle. I just, cannot. with this team anymore, so i don't have an opinion on that post-season. less traumatizing than last year? so they're headed in the right direction

I'll look for that. McGriff was here for a relatively short time, I think that's the only issue--three-and-a-half seasons. Alomar was only here for five, but that included the two WS (and his name is down now anyway).

It was so funny at my sister's yesterday for Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law would say "Okay, no more talk about the Jays"--then we'd drift back to that, get worked up all over again, then we'd stop, then we'd drift back...

"Media availability" with Shapiro tomorrow. God, I hope someone steps to the mic and nails him to the wall. (Maybe Sid Seixeiro will be there.) "You basically think you're a genius and the rest of us are stupid, right?"

30 years ago today, Joe Carter touched 'em all.

I remember it so well, the time has passed in the blink of an eye.