GAME 48, MAY TWENTY-SIXTH:
JAYS 7, RANGERS 6:
BIG BATS BOOM AGAIN
BUT LITTLE THINGS WIN BALL GAMES
Tonight was a festive homecoming in many ways for the Toronto Blue Jays. It was the opening night of a ten-game home stand after a tough but moderately successful seven-game road trip which saw them inch ever closer to respectability on the season. The opposition was provided by the ever-popular Texas Rangers, whose appearance at…
GAME 47, MAY TWENTY-FOURTH:
JAYS 8, BREWERS 4:
STROMAN SCUFFLES, BATS BOOM:
GOINS’ GRAND SLAM CEMENTS JAYS’ SWEEP
A tale of two baseball games: On April twelfth in Toronto, Marcus Stroman was the starting pitcher for the Blue Jays against the Milwaukee Brewers. At the end of the game his ERA had “balooned” from 1.42 to 1.76. He pitched a complete game, 9 innings, and gave up two runs on seven hits while…
GAME 46, MAY TWENTY-THIRD:
JAYS 4, BREWERS 3:
BULLPEN BAILS OUT BIAGINI
JOEY BATS SPARKLES AT THIRD(??)
Tonight's tight 4-3 Toronto victory in Milwaukee over the resurgent Brewers represented something old and something new in the ongoing saga of Toronto's strange 2017 odyssey. The old? Well, not so old, but for the second start in a row, Joe Biagini pitched four really good innings, and suffered one really bad one. To be…
GAME 45, MAY TWENTY-FIRST:
TORONTO 3, BALTIMORE 1
BALTIMORE BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, AND BEWILDERED
BY A BRILLIANT MARCO ESTRADA
When Marco Estrada is on his game, all you can do is sit back and enjoy it. While he's almost always very good, you can never really tell when he's going to be at his best, which is as good as it gets in terms of starting pitching in the American League. When Estrada took…
GAME 44, MAY TWENTIETH:
ORIOLES 7, JAYS 5:
ONE-ELL WELINGTON DOES IT AGAIN
Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap. Sometimes it doesn't matter if it's your team that took it on the chin. That it's your team that's struggling against all odds in the face of an incredible string of injuries to get back in the divisional race. That it's your team that's desperate to close…
GAME 43, MAY NINETEENTH:
ORIOLES 5, JAYS 3 (TEN INNINGS):
JAYS MEET THEIR WATERLOO
AS WELINGTON LEADS O’S CHARGE
Tonight was supposed to be all about Aaron Sanchez. Instead, it was all about the Baltimore Orioles' slugging catcher Welington Castillo. And maybe to a certain extent about Jays' Manager John Gibbons. But that's just me. Not sure what the weather was like at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, but it was pretty dodgy around…
GAME 42, MAY EIGHTEENTH:
JAYS 9, ATLANTA 0:
OFF-FIELD DRAMA OVERSHADOWS STRO-SHOW
After the mess and the drama of the last three nights, this should totally have been Marcus Stroman's night. Unfortunately for Stroman, the ugly hangover from last night's game and the off-field repercussions today of what went down then took most of the oxygen out of the world of Toronto baseball long before the game…
GAME 41, MAY SEVENTEENTH:
ATLANTA 8, JAYS 4:
SAY IT AIN’T SO, JOE!
Maybe it had to happen sooner or later. We've all taken Joe Biagini far too much for granted. No matter how talented someone is, no matter how comfortable they seem in their own quirky skin, there has to be hidden, somewhere in the inner recesses of their being, a vulnerable child half of the man-child…
GAME 40, MAY SIXTEENTH:
ATLANTA 9, JAYS 5:
IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?
A note from yer humble scribe: what follows is a truncated version of a very nice piece that I wrote about a very bad ball game that took place on Tuesday night. Somehow I chose a Mac “command” key that I didn't know existed and sent over 2200 words tumbling off into cyberspace. I have…
GAME 39, MAY FIFTEENTH:
ATLANTA 10, JAYS 6
NO WAY TO END A STREAK!
If tonight's game was an audition for Mike Bolsinger to stay in the rotation for a while, I don't imagine he's too hopeful of a call back any time soon. There's a spot for Bolsinger, or someone, at least until one of Jay Happ or Francisco Liriano comes back. It's a given now that Joe…