In a dud of a wild-card round, the Twins, Diamondbacks, Rangers, and Phillies all completed their little two-game sweeps over the Blue Jays, Brewers, Rays, and Marlins yesterday, ensuring that this entire postseason expansion project looks very stupid for the second straight year. Phillies-Marlins and Rangers-Rays weren’t interesting series in any way, while Diamondbacks-Brewers at least had a couple competitive games, but once the Diamondbacks took the lead in both games, the Brewers just never mounted any kind of comeback and instead chose to go home.
The Blue Jays, though. Ah, the Blue Jays. They are exactly what the Giants would have been if they’d made it in.
The Blue Jays lost Game 1 of their series 3-1, with Kevin Gausman giving up three runs in four innings, an unforgivable sin in a short series. The offense never got going either, with just six hits, and only one of those going for extra bases. They went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring positions, with the first of those hits leading to the runner — Bo Bichette — getting thrown out at home, and the second leading to Toronto’s sole run of the game.
Sure, the first game didn’t go well, but the second one had to be better, right? Well, at first, sure. As opposed to the two first inning runs the Twins scored in the first game, in this one they didn’t get on the board until the fourth. Jose Berrios walked the leadoff batter and promptly got removed for Yusei Kikuchi, who cashed in that run and another of his own. The Twins didn’t score again, but the Blue Jays didn’t score at all, with their best scoring opportunity ending on a pickoff of Vlad Jr. at second base in the fifth inning.
God, that’s Giantsy, isn’t it? Just smacking of 2023 Giants ineptitude in every way, right? And not because Brandon Belt struck out 5 times and didn’t get on base in 8 plate appearances. He wasn’t even on this year’s Giants. That’s just a fun bonus!
No, the most Giants thing is this: every player on the Blue Jays seemed absolutely baffled by the decision to take Berrios out and put in Kikuchi. Whit Merrifield said, “I hated it, frankly.” Vlad Jr said, “Everyone was surprised.” When Berrios was asked why he was removed, he said, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
Removing Berrios early and putting in Kikuchi was exactly the kind of I Am Smarter Than You move that the Giants front office would have tried. You see, the Twins had a bunch of lefties coming up, and Berrios is right-handed, and Kikuchi is left-handed, and they were never going to see it coming! It was tone-deaf, it was deflating, it was clearly imposed by a front office too in love with its own Smartness to let good baseball players play baseball well, and it was exactly the kind of bullshit the Giants would have done this year because a spreadsheet with an awful lot of unexamined assumptions said it gave the team a 0.6% better chance of winning the game. It was legitimately awful.
And it also didn’t cost them the game. The Blue Jays scored zero runs! I have triple checked the rulebook, and it is actually not possible to win a game in which you score zero runs, unless you somehow trick the other team into forfeiting, which, as strategies go, seems implausible. It was the offense, at Target Field, with the lack of any kind of stick (candle or otherwise) which was the culprit.
But God, it felt like it was that one decision. It felt like as soon as it failed, the game was over. Of course the Blue Jays weren’t going to come back. Of course the manager couldn’t make a single good decision. Of course they were doomed. Of course the good, honest baseball players were failed by the bad, arrogant decision makers. Of course that’s how it went.
How many Giants games did we see this year that went just like that? I’m going to estimate 40. This is such an old, trite story that I was almost surprised to see Blue Jays announcers and fans being outraged. Like, yeah, this is just what baseball is now. It’s dumb as hell and it seems like it never works and it’s boring and it sucks.
Imagine an analagous Giants situation. They start Sean Manaea in Game 2, and he’s dealing. Then, in the fourth inning, they take him out and put in Ross Stripling (a bunch of righties are due up!), and it takes him a minute to get up to speed, and in that minute a couple runs score, and then the offense never gets on track, and then the team loses.
You can see that happening. You have seen that happening. It’s about as 2023 Giants as a game could possibly go, really. And the Blue Jays, when crafting a plan to surprise the Twins, copied it. Guys, I know it’s probably been a while since high school, but you don’t copy off a C-student, even if he’s smart (obviously he would also have to be a slacker who never feels like doing his homework, but let’s not get bogged down in the metaphor here).
The worst part is the inflexibility. Yes, I’m sure the plan before the game was to go to Kikuchi early, but Berrios was throwing really well. You keep in the guy who’s throwing really well, because that’s the whole point of throwing really well! You do a good job, you get to stay in the game. It’s just so frustrating to watch.
And then you actually lose the game because your third baseman grounds into a 6th inning double play with the bases loaded to end the team’s last real scoring chance. God, it’s so perfect. I mean, sorry Blue Jays, I was rooting for you. But as someone who recently finished watching two months of games exactly like that one, man, I don’t miss it being my team out there. And I know that because yesterday, the Blue Jays looked just like them.
"Guys, I know it’s probably been a while since high school, but you don’t copy off a C-student."
Los Gigantes Norte! That's ASTUTE, Maestro!!